President Barack Obama's announcement today to begin normalizing American relations with Cuba could affect a group from Indiana University traveling to Cuba this spring.
IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs Professor Daniel Preston plans to take a group of 15 undergraduates to Havana in March, with the aim of exposing them to a culture they've never seen before.
Preston says he hopes the looser restrictions will make the experience even more worthwhile.
"I wasn't expecting this at all and I'd been preparing for this program with sort of the status quo," Preston says. "But I don't think it will impact whether we're going or not, in fact I think it will make it easier for us to do what we need to do there. It will make it easier for students to use their credit cards and could bring some goods back, like souvenirs."
Preston says he hasn't been to Cuba before but has been to countries like Croatia and Bosnia and is interested in the transition from a communist system to a free market democratic system.
President Obama says isolation has not worked for the U.S. or Cuba over the past five decades, and it's time for a new approach to the two countries' relations.
Today's developments come after Alan Gross, an American who was imprisoned for his work with the U.S. Agency for International Development, was freed from a Cuban jail after five years.