Our Story

We built URSA out of a desire to give students more opportunities to meaningfully engage with a culture unlike their own. Instead of sending our students abroad to take classes in Western universities, we bring them abroad and ask them to do research in a culture starkly different from the United States. That unique structure gives students the opportunity to set themselves apart by doing something monumental all while immersing fully in a rich, welcoming, unique culture. Together with our partners abroad, we prepare students for opportunities to push beyond what they ever thought possible for themselves. 

As a guiding principal, we build our program to curate meaningful developmental experiences by getting to know our students well and then guiding them individually into encounters that build growth, resilience and intellectual maturity. URSA students come back changed. By their own account, it's the hardest thing they do and their proudest memory at UMD. It's the same for us.