• The Office of International Education and the College of Business Administration are hosting the Study Abroad Fair Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the second floor of the Alumni Memorial Union.
• There are new faculty-led summer study abroad programs and fall semester programs in China and England.
• The cost of studying abroad is comparable to a semester at Marquette.

The Office of International Education and the College of Business Administration will host the Study Abroad Fair on the second floor of the Alumni Memorial Union on Wednesday between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.

The event aims to provide students with preliminary information about the various study abroad programs offered through Marquette.

The fair will have information on programs for this summer and fall. Each program will have separate information sessions next week.

Most of the new programs being offered are for the summer term, according to Blake Ward, the International Marketing and Communications coordinator in the OIE.

The new summer programs are faculty-led programs. Some of the locations offered include Ghana, Italy, Mexico, Peru and Spain.

The College of Business Administration has added four new fall programs to its list, said Sylvia DuBeau, International Business Program assistant.

Three of the programs are in China: the Beijing Institute of Technology, Peking University and Tongji University in Shanghai.

The other program is at the University of Birmingham in England.

No program has been dropped from the OIE study abroad list in two years, Ward said. Last year, the St. Clare's, Oxford program in England was dropped from the College of Business Administration's list, DuBeau said.

As the number of programs that Marquette offers for studying abroad increases, so does the number of students who participate in them.

Ward said 19 percent of students from the class of 2007 and 21 percent from the class of 2008 studied abroad.

The OIE expects more students to study abroad every year, Ward said.

DuBeau said the College of Business Administration certainly hopes that more business students will study abroad.

"We want for not only international business students, but all other students in the college," DuBeau said.

Ward said he doesn't think the state of the economy will have a strong effect on students who decide to study abroad. Yet some students do take it into consideration, he said.

DuBeau said it was hard to say if the economy will have an effect.

Janelle Smith, a freshman in the College of Health Sciences, said she is looking into studying abroad.

The economy is not a factor for her decision because the cost of studying abroad is about the same as a semester here, Smith said.

"However, studying abroad does require that I plan my courses well ahead of time so that I can still graduate on time," Smith said.

Ward and DeBeau agreed with Smith about the cost of studying abroad in comparison to a semester at Marquette.

In some instances, they said it could be cheaper in places where the value of a dollar is stronger.