On Oct.18, International Programs (IP) announced that the Harding University Australasia (HUA) spring 2021 program would be postponed until fall 2021. This was the second postponement of the program since the fall 2020 program had to be rescheduled. On Monday, Oct. 26, IP announced to students that the spring 2021 Greece (HUG), Italy (HUF) and Peru (HULA) programs would also be canceled. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Peru remains under a Level 4 U.S. State Department Travel Advisory, and the European Union also remains closed to citizens of the United States, with no clear timeline in place for when the advisories will be lifted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Italy has advocated for the return of United States university students, but a new suspension on group educational touring was recently imposed due to rising COVID-19 numbers across Italy. Audra Pleasant, executive director of IP, said the suspension would limit both the number of activities available to HUF students and the quality of the HUF experience as a whole. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pam Little, the director of HUA, said she has been using this time to rework the HUA program to make it the best and safest experience possible. Little said she is eager to show future students how unique and beautiful God\u2019s world is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The directors of HUF, HUG and HULA each sent a video expressing their shared disappointment with the students with whom they would have spent the spring semester. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s just something about studying abroad that works on you,\u201d HULA program director Jeremy Daggett said. \u201cAs you ask questions about the world, as you see different cultures and travel throughout the world. If there\u2019s any way that you can make it work \u2013\u2013 even if it\u2019s not HULA \u2013\u2013 I would love for you to do that.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pleasant expressed her disappointment to the students as well, and offered support in making changes to plans for the upcoming year. Pleasant said she is hopeful that students will be able to study abroad by fall 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are using this time to strengthen those connections and continue to prepare and plan every day and pray that study abroad will be possible again,\u201d Pleasant said. \u201cWe haven\u2019t stopped preparing for study abroad; we just haven\u2019t quite figured out the exact moment that it will become possible for students to be traveling again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although disappointed, sophomore Parker Acri, who was planning to attend HUF, said he understood the program\u2019s suspension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAt the beginning of the semester, I had hope that somehow the virus would calm down and allow things to return to normal,\u201d Acri said. \u201cI think as soon as October hit and there were spikes, I figured it was going to get canceled.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Daggett said that, although their plans had to change, he is hopeful that good may still come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese are still very, very uncertain times that we\u2019re living in,\u201d Daggett said. \u201cAnd my hope for you, my desire for you \u2013\u2013 for all of us \u2013\u2013 is that you can hang onto something during this time. Find something that\u2019s bigger than you are to hang onto as we continue to move forward, continue to get better together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Oct.18, International Programs (IP) announced that the Harding University Australasia (HUA) spring 2021 program would be postponed until fall 2021. This was the second postponement of the program since…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15068,"featured_media":15327,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15068"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15313,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15309\/revisions\/15313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}