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Eat wisely, pack light and don't phone home

By Jan McCoy Ebbets

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Off-Campus Study: Not Always Abroad

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It was evening in January 1996 when Smith College junior Alexandra Van Dyck '97 of Chatham, New Jersey stepped off the bus in the middle of Garissa, a small town near the border of Somalia in the northeast province of Kenya. She was immediately struck by new sights and sensations--livestock roamed freely along the town's only two intersecting streets, locals stared with interest at this new mzungu (white person) in their midst, and the heat, even at this time of day, was stifling.

Her mission in Garissa was to examine the connection between the countryside's nomadic, livestock-based pastoral way of life and the town's community life. So began Van Dyck's first day of a nine-day study of this small urban center in the African savanna; it was her second semester of study in Kenya through Kalamazoo College's program at the University of Nairobi. In August, when she finally and reluctantly left Africa, she carried a new sense of reverence home with her.

"There were constantly moments," she remembers, "when I was simply in a state of awe over what I was seeinglike when I was riding on a bus from Nairobi into the countryside and I looked out the window and saw a single-file line of women walking with babies on their backs and fifty pounds of firewood on their heads. You look off in the distance and you see just open treeless land, no homes, no source of firewood. You know they are walking for miles. The inner strength of these women who never complain or show signs of being tired added to my sense of awe and complete amazement," Van Dyck says. "And those women don't understand why we would even be in awe."

Some 173 Smith juniors went abroad for the 1995-96 school year, taking up residence for six months to a year in 31 countries all over the globe, from Argentina to Tanzania. For them, Van Dyck's experience was a common one. With a quiet sense of wonder, they opened themselves up to cultural challenges and at the same time found a new appreciation for both freedom and home. The experience undoubtedly reflects what thousands of Smithies have discovered since 1925, when the first Smith juniors went to Europe to study for a year.

In that year, President William Allan Neilson established the first Junior Year Abroad (JYA) program. Under his initiative, Smith was the first women's college to sponsor its own program of study abroad as one way to enhance the traditional four-year American college curriculum. That fall, 32 Smith students took a steamer across the Atlantic Ocean to France.

Now, 70 years later, approximately 25 percent of the Smith junior class, with majors as varied as art, biochemistry and geology, take flights over the ocean, arriving in destinations as diverse as Paris, Cairo and Beijing. But even before settling into their academic studies, they must settle into foreign university dormitory rooms or private homes with host families for whom English is usually not the common language. That's where the learning process begins.

"You not only discover a new country and learn about a culture in ways no tourist ever can, but you also get a whole new perspective on the world, on your own country, and on yourself," says Catherine Hutchison, associate dean for international study. "You grow, change and see and do things you never dreamed you would."

Above: Catherine Hutchison, associate dean for international study, left, and senior Camille Collins Lovell agree that studying abroad offers numerous opportunities.
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"I went to Garissa to see and to find, and I brought with me neither expectations nor knowledge," Van Dyck observed in "Nine Days in Garissa," a paper written upon her return to Nairobi.

"It was an excellent experience for me to arrive in a place where I had never been before and develop a strategy, on my own, for learning about the place," she summarized. "It was choosing places to go, people to speak with, situations in which to engage myself, that was as instructional as learning about the profits that a drought-stricken Somali can make selling water with a donkey cart."

Meanwhile, on the European continent last winter, Joanna Slater '97 of Toronto was learning to navigate the busy streets of Paris in the midst of the three-week general transportation strike, or la grève. Without the subway, bus or train to take her from her host family's residence to classes at the Sorbonne, she took to walking. "It was a wonderful experience," Slater now recalls. "Thanks to la grève, I had to get to know the city on foot."

Slater considers it an added benefit to her Parisian experience that she had a ringside seat for viewing the effects on daily life of a strike that began in response to the French government's plan to reform the country's system of social security. And what better time to observe the Parisian way of life than during political upheaval, asks Slater.

Slater documented what she saw in a letter published in the Sophian. "La grève was not confined to Paris, not solely to public transportation," she wrote. "Postal workers, teachers, students and electric and gas workers all participated in varying proportions, as well as the èboueurs (garbage-persons) of Bordeaux. By the end the police too, weary from controlling so many demonstrations and chasing down terrorists, had issues they wished to discuss."

The opportunity to study for a year in France was one of the major reasons Slater elected to attend Smith College in the first place. Other schools didn't seem to make it as easy as Smith did, and having spent three months in Belgium when she was 16, Slater was determined to return to Europe in college. "It was an inspired obsession," she jokes.

Like Slater, many Smith juniors have found ways to explore and study away from the familiarity and comfort of the Smith campus. They apply for grants or financial aid, or ask Mom and Dad to pay the bill. All those interested must apply in their sophomore year and meet certain academic requirements and have sufficient language preparation to communicate comfortably in a foreign country.

All applicants are also asked to write an essay explaining why they want to go abroad and how a year of study away from Smith will be integrated into their academic program and later into their lives. A typical applicant is "usually a student who is reflecting on her position in the world, who is looking for a broadening of her intellectual and cultural horizons," says Hutchison. "But all students benefit from international study. Even a student whose study is based principally on lab work on the Smith campus benefits from study abroad."


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A concerted effort is made to help students with various majors and diverse ethnic backgrounds to study abroad, but officials say the prevailing characteristics of international study participants are the ones common to all Smith students-a spirit of independence, curiosity, a sense of humor and an openness to adventure.

Discovering that you can handle new and challenging situations is part of the experience, says Mary Ellen Birkett, professor of French language and literature. She directed the Paris program in 1985-86, the Geneva program in 1986-87 and again in 1992-94, and will return as the Geneva director for 1997-98. "But it's not just about the ability to cross borders," says Birkett. "It's also about the ability to learn how other people live, think, and do things in their daily lives, which in turn causes students studying abroad to look at themselves and to look in a new way at their own country."

Birkett always tells her flock of travelers to expect an adventure. "And I remind them adventures bring great rewards," she says. "You really are faced with intense self-discovery while studying abroad. Most students do flower in that year, and come back very different."

For Deborah Czarski '97 of Jones, Oklahoma, an internship in a German hospital during her JYA year in Hamburg confirmed her desire to go into medicine. For an entire semester she supplemented her academic study at the Universität Hamburg with work at Elim Hospital. She was the first nonmedical American student granted permission to shadow German doctors as they made their daily rounds. "I was not allowed to touch anything," she recalls with a smile, "but I was very willing to help with research and with intake paperwork with the patients."

Czarski, who is a German cultural studies major with a minor in physics and an emphasis on pre-medicine, now hopes to enter medical school in 1998.

Internships held by students while studying abroad are now considered fundamentally important (as are internships held while studying at Smith or elsewhere in the United States) in providing the experience and training necessary for both graduate and professional work. Student interns at Smith have worked for the United Nations, the International Labor Organization, the International Academy for the Environment and Christie's International, for example.

Joanna Slater began her search for a summer internship midway through her year in Paris by sending out "cold letters" to a variety of media organizations. One letter went to a bureau chief at the Paris office of Newsweek. She humbly attributes her success in landing an internship with the news division at Newsweek to luck and persistent phone calls.

Nevertheless, within very little time, Slater, whose major is comparative literature, was interviewing French notables such as businessman Christian Blanckaert, former president of the Comité Colbert and current chairman of the luxury goods company Hermès Sellier. Others she interviewed included a French history professor who had just authored a book on vacationing in France and a deputy in the French Parliament.


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"I had not expected to be able to pursue my interest in journalism while in Paris," Slater says. But she did after all. Now back in Northampton and in her final year at Smith, she is working as a news intern for the local newspaper. She also has been selected as one of two Smith nominees for the national Luce Scholars Program, funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. Slater will know by mid-March if she is one of 19 students from the United States selected to spend a year in Asia, and, in her case, pursuing a career in journalism.

Orchestrated through the Smith Office for International Study, the options for approved overseas study are abundant. As participants in the original Smith JYA program, juniors may opt for a year of study in one of four European cities: Paris, Hamburg, Florence and Geneva. Tuition and room and board charges are the same whether a student goes to one of Smith's JYA locations or stays on campus; students are responsible, however, for their airfare and personal expenses while abroad. Each city's program is directed by a Smith faculty member who oversees the academic program as well as assists a troop of neophyte travelers with practical matters such as finding housing and transportation in a host city.

Students may also apply for one of five Smith-affiliated consortial programs, which are administered in cooperation with educational institutions in Japan, China, Rome, Spain and South India. Christine To '97 of Portland, Oregon, whose ancestral roots trace back several generations to China, chose to spend her time abroad with Duke University's program in Beijing and Nanjing.

Study in several other countries may be available soon. Consortial agreements in Russia and Latin America are currently under discussion by the Smith Committee on Study Abroad.

A third option gives a student the opportunity to make her own independent study arrangements in some 150 other programs, all approved for transfer credit by the Committee on Study Abroad. These include universities in Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

A Canadian-American who grew up in Saudi Arabia, Sarah Thompson '97 chose to spend her junior year in Egypt as an independent study student at the American University in Cairo. She chose Egypt because she wanted to return to the Middle East, and because she wanted to be closer to Saudi Arabia, where her father still lives. But, to her dismay, she found that many upper-class Egyptians in Cairo considered her a "privileged American" simply because of her blonde hair and blue eyes. "That's all they saw; they didn't take me seriously. On the other hand, taxi drivers and merchants seemed more likely to look past appearance and see a universal humanity in foreigners."

Taking time to sightsee outside Cairo, Sarah Thompson '97 stands on top of a small pyramid at sunrise with the larger pyramid of Cheops behind her.
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As a college student from Smith with dual citizenship in Canada and the United States, Thompson found herself challenged both by academics-her major is history with a concentration in the Islamic Middle East-and by the misconceptions some Egyptian acquaintances held about the United States. "They still have the idea that being an American automatically means you are smart and beautiful and rich."

Despite the cultural misunderstandings, and the fact that she was living in a very different society, she says she delighted in her surroundings. "The love and light of God are ever present there," she insists.

Another independent study student, Camille Collins Lovell '97 of Brimfield, Massachusetts, spent six months last year working in a free clinic in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. She had gone there with the intention of conducting fieldwork in Latin America before graduating from Smith with a degree in anthropology and then "speeding into graduate school." Through an independent self-funded project that combined a focus on medicine and anthropology, Collins Lovell worked with Dr. Juan Almendares in the free clinic he ran. She then signed on with a group of health advocates connecting with community health organizations to promote what she calls a "popular/traditional medicine"-a growing grassroots movement that encourages a return to traditional methods of health and healing for both economic and cultural reasons.

"You can't look at just the individual and treat an illness," she explains, trying to simplify a complex issue. "If you actually want to diminish pain and sickness, you have to look at the whole community and the economic, political and cultural issues impacting that community. The emerging philosophy among these health groups is 'We have our traditional agricultural techniques, and we have our practices of medicine that we as Hondurans need to rely on more. Let's respect the knowledge of our ancestors and return to what works for us.'"

So enthused was Collins Lovell about her work that upon her return to Smith for her senior year she began writing a thesis based on her fieldwork and applied for a Fulbright scholarship to return to Honduras in 1997-98 to continue her work in public health as a graduate student. Then she plans to go to medical school and someday return to rural northern Vermont, where she lived as a child, to practice medicine and deal with community health issues in marginalized and disadvantaged communities.

"I have now had opportunities others haven't had," she says. "I've gone to good schools and been educated at Smith, and I've traveled and studied abroadand now I want to take these resources and opportunities and make them useful. I want to give something back to underserved populations," she says.

Van Dyck, who changed her major from sociology to anthropology after returning to Smith for her final year, dreams about going abroad a second time following graduation. "There's so much about the world I still want to know. I've lived in the same suburb, the same small town, all my life. I knew my picture of the world was so, so tiny," she says. "I just didn't know what exactly was outside that picture. Now I know there's quite a lot."

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Applications for Smith JYA programs are due February 1; deadlines for obtaining Smith credit for consortial programs vary according to each program; and all independent program applications for credit are due March 1. For more information, stop by the Office for International Study, College Hall 23; phone (413) 585-4905; or e-mail intlstudy@ais.smith.edu.


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