The VIS program is fully administered by Duke University’s Global Education Office for Undergraduates (GEO), including the application and admissions process.
Our Mission
Through intercultural academic experiences, the Duke Global Education Office challenges students’ perspectives, expands self-awareness, and inspires lifelong global engagement.
Our Statement on Diversity
The Global Education Office believes intercultural academic experiences should be accessible to everyone. GEO’s mission is to challenge students’ perspectives, grow self-awareness, and encourage lifelong global engagement. Such growth cannot develop within a homogeneous environment.
We are committed to nurturing a richly diverse student cohort and a study away community where all members feel empowered, heard, respected, and supported. We have a responsibility to our study away community both at Duke and in the places in which our programs operate and expect the same commitment to inclusion from our partner institutions.
We continue to examine our bias and privilege while improving GEO’s culture of open-mindedness, empathy, and reflection.
Our Philosophy
Duke University is committed to providing an undergraduate education with a truly global perspective. All of us live in a world of increasingly interdependent nations and cultures, and you must be prepared to live and work in an international environment. While you can prepare in part through academic study and open debate at your home college, nothing can match direct experience.
An extended encounter with a foreign culture’s different values and languages can teach us how to communicate across the barriers of custom, geography, and politics. Students who have studied abroad return with a deeper understanding of other peoples, of their own cultural background, of themselves, and of their place in the world.
Studying abroad will change your life. This is true not only in terms of personal development, but in terms of your career. Many students have pursued new interests or made contacts overseas that have had unforeseen benefits later on. Whatever your future holds, the time you spend abroad will be an undeniable asset.
Duke’s programs provide you with the structure for this personal and intellectual growth. We believe that the best possible study abroad experience offers students high caliber academics, a strong support system, and the chance to integrate intellectual inquiry into a mosaic of cultural and personal experiences.
