University Times

During the 1980s, the Pitt-sponsored Semester at Sea (SAS) study-abroad program was among the first to take large groups of Western students to mainland China and the former Soviet Union.

In 1994, just two years after America lifted restrictions against its citizens traveling to Vietnam — and at a time when the Khmer Rouge holocaust was a recent memory — SAS began including Vietnam and Cambodia in its field component.

In 1999, despite the U.S. trade embargo, SAS added Havana, Cuba, to its ports of call.

What's next, North Korea?

"That's it, you hit on it!" said John P. Tymitz, chief executive officer of the Institute for Shipboard Education, which administers SAS out of offices in 811 William Pitt Union.

Tymitz revealed that SAS is, in fact, consulting with academicians, State Department officials and other Asian specialists about the feasibility of visiting that isolated and impoverished nation, which is closed to foreigners except those approved by the Pyongyang regime.

"We haven't tried to contact North Korean officials yet," Tymitz said. "But if world events allow it, we would love to visit North Korea in addition to South Korea on an upcoming voyage. We're looking at spring or fall 2003."

While traditional study-abroad programs emphasize one- or two-semester stays in the U.K., France, Germany and other developed countries, SAS ships undergraduates around the world on 100-day (fall and spring) and 65-day (summer) voyages to places that tourists rarely see.

The spring 2001 voyage, scheduled to conclude in the port of Seattle on April 25, has visited Havana; Salvador, Brazil; Cape Town, South Africa; Mombasa, Kenya; Chennai, India; Penang, Malaysia; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Hong Kong; Shanghai, P.R.C., and Osaka, Japan.

The voyage marks the 20th anniversary of Semester at Sea at Pitt. The program came here from the University of Colorado. Under Pitt's academic sponsorship, 20,153 undergraduates representing some 1,200 colleges and universities have studied aboard SAS's "floating university," which combines at-sea classwork with in-port field studies and independent travel.

Tymitz, 59, was a faculty member on the first of his dozen SAS voyages in 1972 and has worked full-time for the Institute for Shipboard Education since 1976.

University Times Assistant Editor Bruce Steele (a veteran of three SAS voyages) interviewed Tymitz last week.

University Times: Not everyone welcomed Semester at Sea when Pitt became the program's academic sponsor in 1981. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences Council complained that it wasn't consulted about your curriculum. Do you remember those days?

Tymitz: I remember very well. Our executive director and chief academic officer at the time also heard all of the complaints and asked [then-Pitt Chancellor] Wes Posvar, Why don't you set up a series of meetings with a faculty group? This committee spent nearly a whole semester reviewing every aspect of our program. It was from that effort that the Academic Advisory Committee was established. The advisory committee is still in existence today.

University Times: When SAS first came here, some criticized it as a "party ship."

Tymitz: I believe that even in the early 1970s we had a very serious academic program. There were probably more difficulties with the student population because of the times. More students got in trouble, more students experimented with drugs, more students were sent home for disciplinary reasons during the 1970s. I believe we were still offering a very solid academic program. I think it's better today as a result of continuous scrutiny, criticism and concerns that we've been hearing over the 20 years that we've been at Pitt.

University Times: Among the 439 students who sailed in spring 1981, only two were African Americans. Only five of the 439 students were from Pitt. How do those numbers compare today?

Tymitz: Diversity is definitely on the upswing. On the current voyage, we have 22 African American students. We have 75 Pitt students on the current voyage, the largest contingent from any university. This is the first time Pitt has sent more students than any other institution.

It's fair to say that early on, there was a general sense that Semester at Sea was financially out of reach for Pitt students. That's why, in our early years here, we instituted a special scholarship for Pitt students: They could go on Semester at Sea for about what it cost them to attend the University of Pittsburgh, in terms of tuition plus room and board. They still had to come up with some money for their airfare and field programs. Of the five Pitt students who sailed in spring 1981, three received these scholarships.

NOTE: According to Semester at Sea's financial aid office, SAS continues to offer such scholarships (usually, four $7,000 scholarships per voyage) to Pitt students. On a typical voyage, SAS provides 26 work-study grants (which reduce basic voyage costs by half), 60 grants of $4,800 each, 25-30 grants of $2,800 and 10-12 alumni-funded scholarships.

University Times: Traditionalists say that study-abroad should involve a full semester or academic year in one country or region, so students can be immersed in a particular culture.

Tymitz: I think every student should study overseas, but I don't think they should limit themselves to England, France, Germany and Australia, which are the big study-abroad countries — not that there's anything wrong with studying in those countries. I'm not going to bad-mouth immersion programs. I think they're an outstanding way for students to learn more about a country by living there for a semester or a year.

But I believe students should be able to see what the rest of the world has to offer by visiting places like India, South Africa, Malaysia and Vietnam, which are not normal stops in any of the traditional study-abroad programs right now. We're finding that, after students come off Semester at Sea, they are returning to those countries to study in greater depth.

University Times: Skeptics ask: How can you do justice to any of these cultures with a four-to-five day visit, with as few as a couple of days' preparation?

Tymitz: What I'd tell the skeptics is that they need to look carefully at how we prepare students for each country — through classwork, reading assignments, films and the interport lecturers we bring on to the ship. We do our best to see that students have a good, basic grasp of each country's history and socioeconomic situation, and that they come away with a better understanding of that country.

The first years we were at Pitt, we visited as many as 12 ports during a semester. Now, we're trying to stick to nine or 10 ports because we've seen there's a real need to spend more class-time at sea as well as more time in each port.

University Times: Let's talk about the safety issue. Students probably are safer in western Europe and Australia than they are in the United States, but that's not necessarily true of some of the countries on the SAS itinerary.

Tymitz: We tell students and parents from the get-go that safety is our No. 1 concern. In every one of the countries on our itineraries, we look carefully at whether or not we should go there. We study State Department briefings and we hire Pinkerton Global Assessments to review safety issues for every country that we go to. Our track record, I believe, is very, very good. We've had one accident in the 28 years that I've been involved with the program. (On an SAS-sponsored trip in 1996, five SAS passengers and two Indian nationals were killed in a bus crash near Agra, India.)

University Times: But that wasn't the only instance in which people have died while on Semester at Sea.

Tymitz: No, but the other deaths were primarily because students made wrong decisions. They have been told not to do X, they've gone ahead and tried it, and as a result an accident took place that took their life. For example, we tell students: Don't climb the pyramids in Egypt. But some do, and one girl fell to her death. It's not something I'm happy about, but it's also not something that we were to blame for. Among the 30,000 students who have sailed on Semester at Sea, no more than 10 have lost their lives apart from the five passengers and two Indians who died in 1996.

University Times: This summer, you're launching a Law at Sea program for law students sailing on SAS. Is this your first specialized program?

Tymitz: The very first. We made a few small attempts in the past, but never like this. This came as the result of [Pitt law professors] Ron Brand, John Burkoff and [dean] David Herring, who came to us and said law students want to study abroad, too. We're up to 20 law students now who are sailing this summer. I would think that other disciplines like business might be interested in creating programs like this, but that's not something we've explored yet.

University Times: Do professors who sail on SAS still tend to be older, tenured faculty?

Tymitz: It's kind of a cross-section now, among Pitt faculty. I think we've seen a ripple effect, as faculty who have sailed on Semester at Sea tell other faculty what their voyage meant to them.

I had the greatest pleasure, by the way, when Irwin Schulman applied to be academic dean for a 1994 voyage. He had been dean of the College of Arts and Sciences when we came to Pitt in 1981, and he'd made it pretty clear that he wasn't happy Semester at Sea was here. When I met with him about a deanship, I asked: "Irv, why are you here? I remember days when you weren't too happy with Semester at Sea." He said: "Well, I've listened to students and colleagues who have sailed, and I want to see if I can get that experience, too." He ended up being named dean, and did a great job.

University Times: Most people understand that Pitt doesn't own and operate your program's ships. But to what extent, if any, does the University subsidize Semester at Sea?

Tymitz: The University has never, ever been out a nickel to operate the Semester at Sea program. Every aspect of the program is administered and operated through the Institute for Shipboard Education. We pay rent for the space we use on campus, and for any office renovations. All money that we pay to Pitt goes back to operate the program in the sense that the academic dean's salary comes out of that, the registrar's salary comes out of that, the librarian's salary comes out of that money.

University Times: Does Semester at Sea come under fire for seeming to condone or validate regimes like those in Havana and Beijing, by visiting those countries?

Tymitz: In a limited way. Not to the extent that people have screamed and hollered at me over the phone. The people we're in touch with seem to be more open-minded. Nobody's ever accused me of running a Marxist or left-leaning program. I think today, people are forgetting those old ideological considerations. More than ever, people are interested in finding out: What is China really like? What is South Africa really like? What are Brazil, Morocco and Kenya really like?