The Oregon University System (OUS) has decided to extend the application process until June 30, 2011, for its Study Abroad Program in Tunisia. Please share this info with your students...

The Oregon Program in Tunis is open all qualified graduate and undergraduate students from anywhere, not just from Oregon. Participants at all levels of Arabic background (from Beginners to Advanced) are welcome. With the OUS program in Tunis, participants would accomplish 12 quarter credits (8 semester credits) / one year's worth of learning of Arabic (90 percent MSA + 10 percent Tunisian Dialect). The intensive Arabic course has about 150 contact hours and an opportunity of individualized tutoring at the Program Office, downtown Tunis, on Avenue Bourguiba. Additional special arrangements can be made to meet specific academic needs, upon request.

Participants will be placed with host families, some of whom have hosted our participants for several years in a row. Independent housing in an shared apartment space can be arranged, upon request.

Oregon has Memoranda of Understanding with six Tunisian universities. Since the early 1980s Oregon faculty have conducted numerous R&D and other cooperative projects in/with Tunisia.

Further enrollment and financial procedures to this Study Abroad opportunity are explained in the program web site at  http://oregonabroad.ous.edu/countries/tunisia/index.html

The OUS Tunisia Program started in 2004 and has been successfully conducted every year. The upcoming session will be held from September 20 to November 26.

Participants are encouraged to take the Culture Course taught in English in Tunis during the program. One third of this course will be in the form a weekly session devoted to cross-cultural dialogue with a group of Tunisian university students who are fluent in English. This year the themes of this cross-cultural dialogue will focus on revolutionary Tunisia and on the role of the US in the process of democracy in Tunisia and the Arab World. Local experts will be invited to give lectures on some of these issues.

Ten to twelve days of this ten-week program will be devoted to country-wide excursions. These field trips are designed to reinforce the linguistic and cultural learning of the OUS participants.

For additional inquiries free to send email questions to program principals listed in the web site http://oregonabroad.ous.edu/countries/tunisia/index.html