Amid spreading post-election violence in Kenya, American colleges and other organizations that provide study programs in the East African country are monitoring the situation and weighing their options. With most spring-semester programs set to start shortly, many study-abroad officials said they expected to make a decision on what to do in the next week.

St. Lawrence University, which has run a program in Kenya for more than three decades, is considering whether to delay or cancel its spring semester there, which is slated to begin on January 10. Lisa M. Cania, St. Lawrence’s associate vice president for university relations, said university officials had laid out several conditions that must be met before the program goes ahead as planned, including a marked drop in violence and a lifting of government advisories, by the United States and other countries, about travel to Kenya. Eighteen students, including five from other colleges, are registered for the spring program.

The School for Field Studies, a nonprofit organization that combines study abroad with environmental education and research, also is discussing whether to suspend or curtail its Kenya program. Already one student has dropped out of the program, and two others have shifted to School for Field Studies programs in other countries.

Paul Houlihan, the group’s president, said that although students were not scheduled to begin their in-country studies until February 4, the organization would announce a decision next week to give students the opportunity to make alternate arrangements for the semester if the program cannot go ahead. One option, said Mr. Houlihan, may be to take students only to its Kilimanjaro Bush Camp, in Kimana. (The program’s other site is closer to Nairobi, which has been the epicenter of the violence thus far.)

Other study-abroad providers, such as the School for International Training, said they were also closely watching the political unrest and communicating with staff members in the country.

Wachira Kigotho, The Chronicle’s correspondent in Nairobi, reported today that with universities still closed for the holidays, Kenyan higher education had not yet been directly affected by the violence. —Karin Fischer