The university this spring will offer a unique "service-learning" abroad program in which students and non-students alike will live and work for one month in Hanoi, Vietnam's capital.

The program will run from May 23 to June 25. Participants can earn six UB credits or select the non-credit option. Program developers say this will be a "short but intense introduction to Vietnam."

Participants will work five hours a day, Monday through Friday, with a Hanoi host organization, agency or company selected on the basis of each student's interests, skills and language proficiency. The point of the program is to make the experience relevant and mutually beneficial to both the intern and the organization.

"Service learning" is an educational concept that holds that learning is easier when it is rooted in practical experience, and that experience itself is enriched when it is linked directly to learning, in this case by bringing participants into contact with other cultures and other ways of being.

According to the tenets of service learning, living in another culture is the best way to prepare young people for the multicultural and globalized world of today and tomorrow. Students who have such experiences are better able to deal with the world of work, and tend to be more mature and more employable, says Mark Ashwill, director of the World Languages Institute (WLI) at UB, which offers Vietnamese-language instruction and developed the program in cooperation with the university's Study Abroad Programs office.

Ashwill adds that Hanoi was selected as the site for the program-UB's first service-learning-abroad program-not only because it is the capital of Vietnam, but because of the widespread availability of organizations and companies eager to host student interns from the United States.

While living and working in Hanoi, participants will take a course entitled "Vietnamese Society & Culture" that will be taught by faculty members of Vietnam National University (VNU), which will administer the program with UB.

Field trips and interpersonal experiences will be integrated into the program.

For registration and further information, contact the Study Abroad Programs office at 645-3912 or studyabroad@buffalo.edu or visit its Web site at http://www.buffalo.edu/studyabroad.