The University has issued a new policy on international travel with the help of other universities after travel warnings overseas threatened the safety of faculty and students.

"The decision was made because the world is a more dangerous place than it used to be," Associate Provost David Swanson said. "We needed a formal policy put in place to exercise diligence in protecting the well-being of our faculty and students."

The new policy states that travel for students and faculty to places where a travel warning has been issued will not be authorized. Faculty traveling on University funds will not be authorized to stay in places where mandatory evacuation orders are issued.

"Before this we dealt with students and faculty wishing to travel on a case by case basis," Swanson said. "Now we've regularized those practices."

The Office of the Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs created a task force, and one mission of the task force was to create the new travel policy after looking at rules at peer universities, specifically, the University of Michigan's overseas travel guidelines.

"We discovered that a number of our peers — if not most — were in the process of creating new policies," Swanson said.

Swanson said the first travel case that was affected by the new policy was when the policy was still in its draft stages. A trip to Kenya was originally planned for last July by the Envirovet Summer Institute based at the University's College of Veterinary Medicine. The program sends veterinarians, veterinary students, and wildlife biologists to developing countries. For the first time in three years, the trip will be going to Brazil instead of Kenya after a travel warning was issued for security reasons, he said.

"There were outbreaks of violence in many regions of the country," Swanson said. "It was a dangerous place for Americans."

Discussions were held to move the program to a different location. Chris Beuoy, director of communication in veterinary medicine, said that virtually everyone agreed to the change after some scrambling due to the last-minute nature of the decision to change the location. The opportunity came up to make new connections in Brazil, Beuoy said.

However, the travel warning in Kenya did not stop faculty members from conducting research in the country. Swanson said a number of faculty who had longstanding projects in Kenya were allowed to continue their research on location. Upon arrival, they also had to register with the U.S. Embassy to maintain contact with the University, keep the University informed of their research, and purchase evacuation insurance in the event that the situation in Kenya escalated.

Most of the faculty going to Kenya were going to regions in the country without warnings, Swanson said.

"We haven't had faculty who planned any of these trips complain," he said. "The provisions were not unreasonable."

Students studying abroad have not yet been affected by the policy and its provisions, although travel warnings in the past have terminated certain programs. Programs to China, Hong Kong and Turkey were canceled when warnings came out last year about the SARS epidemic.

"If we feel students are in a perilous situation or if the infrastructure in a country is such that instruction cannot proceed, we may elect to withdraw students," said Jeremy Geller, director of student international academic affairs. "Whether there is a warning or not, if we find reason to act to assure a student's welfare, we will act."

The University's Study Abroad Office makes several recommendations to its students during the application process, including reading State Department travel warnings and travel advisories.

"Students should take those materials to heart," Geller said. "They should be alert to their surroundings."