According to a report by the Institute of International Education (IIE), the total number of U.S. students studying abroad is nearly 300,000. Morocco gets a large percentage of those students who chose to go to a majority Arab and Muslim country.

Morocco is in the northernmost part of Africa and the westernmost part of the Arab Muslim world. Amazigh people (whom you may know as Berber) have lived here since the beginning of recorded history. Jewish groups began arriving from 2000 years ago, followed by Greeks, Romans, Visigoths and Byzantines. Arab Muslims followed in the 7th century and Europeans returned in the 19th and 20th. While the movie Casablanca wasn’t filmed here, Tangier was an international zone during World War II. Paul Bowles and William Burroughs hung out here in the 1950s and 1960s, followed soon after by the Rolling Stones. And yes, Crosby, Stills & Nash took a trip on the Marrakesh Express.

All of these cultural, religious, political, linguistic and historical influences yield what we now know as Morocco. To be sure, some are more authentic than others. WPI students get the chance to parse the Morocco in which Moroccans live and the one to which tourists have long escaped.

The Morocco Project Center is located in Rabat, Morocco’s governmental capital on the Atlantic coast. Here, you’ll live with other students from WPI and around the world in a dorm in the Agdal neighborhood, across the street from Rabat’s newest mega-mall and a 5-minute tram ride from the Medina (or Old City). Rabat is an hour by train from Casablanca, the country’s economic capital, and a few hours by train from Fes, the spiritual capital.