Violence in England won’t deter U-of-I study program

The director of the University of Iowa’s “Study Abroad” program says they will -not- be taking England off the list of places to send students, despite this week’s deadly terrorist bombings. Janis Perkins says there are 14 U-of-I students in London right now — and all are safe and unharmed.The students are involved in a number of academic programs there, taking classes and doing internships — essentially, having a summer job in London. Perkins says the U-of-I typically has about 950 students studying abroad during the academic year in 40 to 50 countries. She says each student is instructed before they leave that if there’s a major problem, like Thursday’s bombings, they are to follow certain guidelines. Perkins says the emergency protocols worked very well. All of the students quickly got in touch with the program and accounted for themselves and got word back to their parents and to the U-of-I. She says the University will -not- be taking the United Kingdom off its list of nations where students can go for such academic programs. She says there’s no reason to change as terrorist attacks are random and there’s no reason to think London is any less safe than it was two days ago. Perkins says several nations -are- off limits to students, those that are on the U.S. State Department’s list of travel warnings — countries that currently include: Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, the Philippines, Kenya and several others.