Consortium for Advanced Studies Abroad: Cuba

The main requirement is fluency in Spanish. Non-native speakers must have completed Spanish 20 or the equivalent.

The program runs twice a year for 15 weeks: late August to mid-December, and mid-January to mid-May.

The CASA program doesn’t overlap perfectly with Dartmouth terms; how does that work?

Fall term: students are required to leave for Havana a few days before the end of the summer term at Dartmouth. Students who go in the fall are generally “on” during sophomore summer and have to make arrangements to complete their coursework before they leave.

If you go in January, you will have to take one term “on” and one term “off.”

Dartmouth students take courses at the CASA headquarters in Havana and at the University of Havana; most students opt to take a mix. Here you can access course descriptions. 

The program also includes a week-long trip to Santiago de Cuba mid-semester and 2 weekend excursions.

About 25-30 students participate in the program each term from a consortium of universities that includes Dartmouth as well as Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Trinity College Dublin, Penn, the University of Melbourne, and Vanderbilt.

Students live together in apartments or with Cuban families; breakfast and dinner are provided.

A Program Director and Associate Director oversee the program onsite.

When you return from Cuba, submit Transfer Credit Approval (Form 2) and the syllabi for the courses you took in Cuba to registrar@dartmouth.edu.

The credits for the courses you take in Cuba will not automatically show up on your Dartmouth transcript; you need to apply for transfer credits.

Students may transfer up to a total of four credits to Dartmouth throughout their academic career.

After you have completed your term in Cuba, CASA Cuba will send the official transcripts for your courses to the Dartmouth Registrar's Office, and they will record the credits on your Dartmouth transcript. They often send them several months after your return and the Registrar's Office will inform you once the credits are posted.

You will get a letter grade from your Cuban professors, but Dartmouth records all transfer credits as TR, and these grades do not factor into your Dartmouth GPA.  Transfer credits can, however, be used for distributive and world culture credit at Dartmouth, if approved by the relevant department or program.

LALACS will approve transfer credit for all courses that you take in Cuba.

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese will give credit for up to one course to Spanish Minors, and up to two courses for Spanish Majors.

The Government Department will approve credit for US-Cuba Relations, upon completion of additional reading and an additional five-page paper.

The History Department will give credit for La Esclavitud, upon completion of the oral final for the course and the final paper, which must be 10 pages. (Note: The course's syllabus allows students to do either an oral final or a paper of up to 10 pages.) The 10-page paper must be reviewed by Dartmouth faculty. You should submit a copy to the HIST Department vice-chair as well as to your professor in Cuba.

Comparative Literature will grant credit toward the major/minor for the course, Hispanoamerican Voices of the 21st Century.

To request approval from other departments or programs, submit the syllabus and the program information packet from CASA.