Penn Abroad introduces new summer programs at Hong Kong, Copenhagen universities for academic credit

Penn Abroad announced the launch of a new program allowing students to spend a summer term at partner institutions abroad for academic credit.

Students in the Wharton School or School of Engineering and Applied Sciences will be able to apply to study at either the Chinese University of Hong Kong or Copenhagen Business School. If accepted, they may enroll in pre-existing summer programs at the partner universities and earn two CUs of Penn credit, according to the announcement on Nov. 4. 

Penn Abroad Executive Director Kristyn Palmiotto said the idea of a summer term abroad for academic credit has been under consideration for many years.

“We collect student surveys about not only student experiences in our current program, but also what are some other opportunities that they're interested in pursuing,” Palmiotto said. “And we've consistently for years received feedback from students that summer opportunities for credit are of interest, especially among student populations for whom a whole semester might be challenging."

The 2025 summer term will be a small pilot program enrolling a maximum of 20 students, according to Palmiotto. She added that Copenhagen Business School and the Chinese University of Hong Kong were chosen as host universities because of their pre-existing relationship with Penn as exchange partners. 

College and Wharton senior Aravind Krishnan, who served as a Penn Abroad Leader from 2022-2023, was part of a project that supplied student perspectives on the initiative throughout its development. 

“We were thinking about ways to expand access to abroad opportunities for students, especially in academic areas that oftentimes don't get an opportunity to go abroad, like engineering and nursing and others,” Krishnan said. “We were thinking about ways to meet the steps, and essentially this evolved into this idea of, can we create courses?”

Palmiotto explained that Penn Abroad’s summer term is different from Penn Summer Abroad, a program conducted in collaboration with the College of Arts and Sciences. While Penn Summer Abroad gives students the chance to take classes overseas with Penn faculty, Penn Abroad’s summer term is unique in allowing students to immerse themselves in local host universities.

Although Penn Abroad’s summer term is currently only available to students in the Engineering and Wharton schools, there are plans to expand the program to Penn’s other academic schools in the future. 

“We've been in discussions with all four academic schools about the creation and development of the summer term initiative,” Palmiotto said. “We're very hopeful that in a future summer, we'll also be able to offer Arts and Sciences programming through our summer term initiative.”