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.
"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."
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.
"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.
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."
............................
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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