Study Abroad Cancelled - now what?

blossom
Sun, 21 Jan 2024 18:06:58 +0000

tsbna44:

I’m just amazed that so many schools cancel trips. They don’t tell you that when applying - they just say - tons of study abroad opps (which is true).

Easy answer to this one. Check the course catalogue at a mid-tier LAC-- pick a department which has few kids majoring in it, but is popular for non-majors. Let’s go with Classics for the sake of argument.

SO MANY COURSES to choose from! Wow.

But then you dig deep trying to understand how a department with a small group of faculty can offer so many courses. Well, the “Art and Architecture of the Ancient World” is taught by someone from the Art History Department, except when that professor is on parental leave. The “Origins of Democracy in Greco-Roman society” is team taught by someone from Classics and someone from Poli Sci- but only every other year or so. The very popular course “Comedy and Tragedy” is taught by a rotating cast of visiting professors (it’s a lay-up in academic terms so a wide range of academics can effectively teach it well) except sometimes they’re only visiting for Spring semester when freshmen need it for their first semester humanities/literature core requirement.

Etc. Professor is on book leave. Professor is on a dig in Turkey. The grad student who taught Latin 3 graduated and the adjuncts who were hired to cover ancient languages are all specialists in Greek, Sumerian, Aramaic and Akkadian.

This is the “study abroad” model. Lots and lots of courses. They need a critical mass of students ready to put down a deposit; they need a host institution with the resources to run the program; they need faculty to teach these specific courses to a wide range of students, some of whom have the right pre-requisites and some of whom do not so the curriculum needs to be modified based on the student population. I know a kid who studied in Moscow- actually took a Tolstoy seminar taught in English (which sounds crazy to me, you can do that at 100 colleges in the US) because most of the kids in the program had conversational Russian but not at a high enough level to be discussing and writing essays in Russian on Tolstoy. Miracle the program could scramble and sub-in a professor who could teach the course in English!