Four years after the Bing Overseas Studies Program (BOSP) announced the possibility of launching a program in Spain, Mexico or India, one of the three has finally become a reality. On Friday, BOSP announced the long-awaited opening of a new program in Madrid, Spain’s capital city.

“Substantial numbers of Stanford students study in Spain now with other universities,” BOSP Director Norman Naimark said in an email to The Daily. “[The Madrid program is for] those many students who asked us for one.”

The program will be open to students beginning next winter. Applications will be available starting today and will be due May 25. The Madrid program will operate in autumn, winter and spring quarters starting academic year 2008-2009.

University Spanish faculty and members of the Madrid academic community will teach the program’s courses. All classes will be taught primarily in Spanish and will offer academic credit from appropriate Stanford departments, in addition to fulfilling various General Education Requirements (GERs). Required Spanish courses will also be offered at different levels to accommodate students’ varying degrees of language proficiency.

The program — which mandates satisfactory completion of the University’s first-year Spanish curriculum or equivalent proficiency for enrollees — “will offer courses in Iberian Studies, political science, economics, history, Spanish language and literature, among other fields,” BOSP Outreach and Student Relations Manager David John Boyer said in a release last week.

“The courses given in Spain will undoubtedly be located primarily in the social sciences and humanities,” Naimark said, “but we have also had success in other programs teaching courses in HumBio and other science and engineering disciplines.”

Science and engineering students hope the program will be more “techie”-friendly than other BOSP programs. Due to the high number of classes required for many science and engineering majors, “techies” often do not have time to study abroad.

“I always wanted to study abroad in Europe,” said engineering student Mario Madrigal ‘09. “But with product design, I just can’t fit in any language classes and so can’t make the language requirement.”

“Since I already speak Spanish fluently, I think Madrid will be perfect,” he said. “I just hope they offer art classes so I can fulfill that part of my major while abroad.”

Unlike other overseas centers, the Madrid program will not be housed in a Stanford-run complex. Instead, the program will be located at the International Institute in Madrid. While there, students will be able to participate in a voluntary language partner program; they will also have access to the Institute’s vast library collections and will be able to participate in all of the Institute’s events.

While Naimark acknowledged the possibility of moving the program to a Stanford-run center in the future, he said he supported the choice of the International Institute.

“The International Institute, which has a long and distinguished history of educating Americans in Madrid, is a very good way to start out our Madrid program,” he said. “It is possible that once we get our feet on the ground in Madrid, we could move to our own facility. But we felt it was important to get started, and this was an excellent way to do so.”