In partnership with the Harvard Summer School and the Korea Institute of Harvard University, the Graduate School of International Studies (GSIS) at Ewha Womans University has developed the Ewha-Harvard Summer School Program (EHSSP) in 2006. This is a yearly international summer program that provides both Harvard and Ewha students with an opportunity to build mutual friendships and learn about different aspects of Korean culture and history and has been part of the Ewha curriculum for almost two decades now. In order to encourage participating students to experience the beauty and wonder of Korea, the program focuses on various aspects of Korea’s culture and history, and provides rich in-class discussions along with many field trips to culturally and historically significant sites around the country.

Since its launch, the EHSSP has been offering substantive courses on the key aspects of Korean culture, focusing on one different aspect each year, while at the same time, offering a Korean language course to the invited Harvard students as well. The change in substantive courses offered each year is due to the dynamic trends and interests about Korean culture and history in the society– ranging from poetry, North-South Korea relations, archaeology, cities and culture, visual culture including cinema and film-making, societal issues, and etc.

The program is not only open to Harvard students and Ewha GSIS students, but also to other students from other universities in Korea that have credit exchange programs for summer school with Ewha Womans University, such as Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Korea National University of Education, Korea University, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Seoul National University, Sogang University, Sookmyung University, Sungkyunkwan University, University of Seoul, and Yonsei University.

The course is offered as a summer course in which Ewha students can receive three credits for after the completion of the program.