Announcements

April 29, 2009

Swine Flu Situation in Mexico

Dear students,

I want to write to you with an update on the 'swine flu' situation in Mexico and our plans for our summer programs.

Current Situation:

As you probably know, there have been over 1,000 cases of swine flu reported in Mexico which have lead to several dozen deaths. These cases have been centered in Mexico City and its surrounding regions.

There have been no reported swine flu cases to date in Guadalajara.

There have also been confirmed cases of swine flu in several other countries, including: the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, UK, Spain and Israel.

Current Status of The Programs:

As of today, we are still planning to operate our June and July summer programs in partnership with the Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara .

Given the dynamic nature of this situation, we will continue to monitor this situation very closely, including reviews of: government and public health organizations, information from our partner universities, information from the standards-setting organizations in study abroad and on-the-ground assessments from our local staff.

In the event that the situation deteriorates in Guadalajara and makes it, in our assessment, unsafe to operate the program, we will cancel the program.

But given that there is no outbreak in Guadalajara today and our program start dates are still 6 or 10 weeks away, we believe that a prudent decision at this time is to keep the program open and monitor very closely how the situation develops.

Contingency Planning and Options:

In the event that we cancel our summer programs in Guadalajara, we will make the following options available to our students:

1. Refund of program fees
2. Transfer of their acceptance and programs fees to another summer program offered by Global Learning Semesters, including Spanish language programs in Barcelona and Alcala/Madrid.
3. Transfer of program fees and acceptance to a future Global Learning Semesters programs

Rest assured, our top priority is always the health and safety of our students and staff and we will continue to monitor this situation extremely closely.

Warm regards,

Dr. Sandi Smith
Director, Institutional Relations