This page is designed to assist all Vanderbilt travelers including undergraduate, graduate and professional students, and faculty and staff in understanding university requirements as they plan their travel abroad. University requirements for student travel are laid out in the Student International Travel Policy. Faculty and staff are strongly encouraged to register their Vanderbilt business related travel and enroll in our international medical and evacuation insurance through GeoBlue. GeoBlue is a reimbursable expense for faculty and staff per the VU finance policy.
What Is Travel Registration?
Vanderbilt University provides global assistance to travelers overseas through Vanderbilt Incident Response for Travel (VIRT), a team dedicated to providing safety-related guidance and assistance for traveling members of the Vanderbilt University community. VIRT’s services are available to anyone traveling for Vanderbilt-sponsored activities. The travel registration process ensures that VIRT can effectively aid travelers in crisis.
Who Needs to Register Travel?
All students—graduate, undergraduate, and professional—are required to register any international travel that is Vanderbilt-sponsored. A full definition of “sponsored travel” can be found in the Student International Travel Policy, but briefly:
You need to register your travel if your travel advances your degree, if it is organized by or on behalf of a Vanderbilt group (student organization, athletics, etc.), or if it is funded or paid for by or through Vanderbilt.
Examples of travel that require registration include travel to conferences, travel for research, study abroad undertaken while on leave of absence (if you will receive credit at Vanderbilt), athletics trips, trips organized by a student organization, and trips undertaken using funds from a Vanderbilt-managed grant or fellowship.
Students who study abroad on a program offered through Vanderbilt Study Abroad, including Maymester Abroad courses, will be registered automatically by Vanderbilt Study Abroad and do not need to take any action.
How Do I Register My Travel?
There are four steps to registering your travel. Your trip organizer or departmental administrative officer may require you to provide documentation that you have completed some or all of these steps.
- Determine if any of your destinations are high risk travel locations. If so, you will need to request an exception from the Vanderbilt Travel Risk Assessment Committee (VTRAC).
- Sign the Release of Liability Form and turn it in to your trip organizer or departmental administrative officer.
- If you have not booked your itinerary in Concur or with World Travel, you can forward your original confirmation email or e-ticket to VanderbiltTrip@anvilgroup.com to have your trip details parsed and added to our itinerary database. This document contains detailed instructions for this process.
- Purchase Vanderbilt’s international health insurance for the duration of your trip. Review the GeoBlue insurance Member Guide.
What Else Should I Do?
In addition to the required travel registration, we highly recommend that you also do the following:
- Get a travel health consultation from Vanderbilt Student Health, Vanderbilt Occupational Health, or another medical provider, at least 2-4 weeks in advance of travel.
- Register with your home country’s embassy or state diplomatic service so that you can receive local security updates and so that your country can aid you in an emergency. US citizens will register with the Department of State’s Smart Traveler Enrollment Program. Non-US citizens may also register for STEP through the U.S. Department of State in addition to their home country services.
- Review key health and safety resources.
- Add the phone number for Vanderbilt Incident Response for Travel to your phone’s address book, +1 615-322-2745. Learn what VIRT is so that you can use it if needed.
- Review the GeoBlue insurance Member Guide for information on submitting claims and accessing resources.