Courtesy photo

Keenan Fernandez drowned last week in Kathmandu, Nepal, where she was spending the summer with a study-abroad program called the Passage Project.

Before a University of Colorado sophomore drowned last week in Nepal, Passage Project for International Education had never had a student die while traveling with the study-abroad program, officials said Wednesday.

“This is the first time anyone has died or had any kind of accident,” said Dan Dawson, business manager for the Centennial-based company that offers study-abroad programs and internships in Nepal, India and Tibet.

Keenan Fernandez, 19, of Atlanta, left Boulder in the spring for a summer adventure with the Passage Project in Nepal, officials said. She had three weeks left in the program when she died July 31 while swimming in the Sundarijal reservoir, 15 kilometers northeast of Kathmandu.

Passage Project, which isn’t affiliated with CU’s study-abroad programs, was founded in 2002 by Vidhea Shrestha — an India national who has coordinated, managed and dreamed up educational programs for 15 years.

In its seven years, Passage Project has enabled about 75 students to go in small groups or as individuals on either generalized study-abroad adventures or specialized internships that allow students to pick a focus such as yoga, Chinese medicine, architecture or ecology.

The program’s small size makes for a close-knit group of students, and Dawson said the peers now are leaning on one another to cope with Fernandez’s death.

“They’re upset,” Dawson said. “They got together as soon as they could just to sort of bond.”

Passage Project has safety precautions posted on its Web site, and officials have created response guidelines in case of an emergency, Dawson said.

Fernandez was on a free day when she died, and Dawson said his group isn’t planning to change its safety protocol because of the accident.

“We had some pretty good procedures in place,” he said.

After the drowning, a program director in Nepal immediately contacted the U.S. Embassy, which then notified Fernandez’s parents. The parents, who couldn’t be reached for comment, traveled to Nepal and have met with project officials, Fernandez’s host family and other community members who knew their daughter.

Rituals for Fernandez began Wednesday, and Dawson said he thinks the student’s parents have been able to take some comfort in their daughter’s heroism at her death.

Fernandez is believed to have died after going after a friend — a Tibetan national — who was sucked under the water in a current. She, too, was taken by the current, officials said, and both swimmers died.

Passage Project is planning to find a permanent way to memorialize Fernandez in the program.