While most Wabash students will be either heading home or south for warm beaches, some will be extending their education through spring break. On Friday and Saturday students from across academic disciplines will travel the world to experience immersion trips.
"I’m excited to go see Europe," said Mike Hotz ’08. "It’s my first time and I’m happy the college is paying for it."
Wabash is one of only a few colleges that uses institutional funds for these types of programs. Doing so allows students from all socioeconomic backgrounds to have such important learning experiences.
Hotz will be traveling with political science professor Stephen Dyson and economics professor Peter Mikek to Brussels and Frankfurt. Mikek and Dyson team taught a class on the European Union from both an economics and political science point of view.
"As far as the class goes, we put a lot of work into it," Hotz said. I feel like we frontload the classes so we can actually go over there and understand what’s going on with the European Union." In preparation for the trip, the class studied E.U. governance structure, monetary policy, and the process of integrating new E.U. members.
Each student in the European Union class will be required to write a paper at the end of the class. "With the prospect of writing a paper on the subject at the end," Hotz said. "I can’t think of a better way of studying the subject than actually going there." Their experiences with everyday Europeans will also provide them with a better context to construct their papers.
The European Union class is not the only team taught immersion trip scheduled this year. Professors David Timmerman and Timothy Lake will take students on a trip to Harlem, D.C., and Atlanta, for their class on African American Rhetoric and Expressive Culture.
Art professors Greg Huebner and Doug Calisch will examine many of New York’s fantastic museums in addition to meeting with NYC Wabash alumni.
Professor JD Phillips will, as in years past, take the senior mathematics majors to Prague (pictured above), in the Czech Republic.
"Our senior mathematics majors will be working on their senior papers," Phillips said, "under the guidance of post-docs from the mathematics department at Charles University.
"Part of the experience will just be to participate in the life of a major research university for a week. And of course, part of the experience will be the immersion in one of Europe's great capital cities," he added.
Other immersion trips include Professor Greg Redding and his German 202 class’s trip to Germany, Professor Eric Wetzel’s Biology 222 class’s trip to Belize, a marketing immersion experience in Indianapolis, and a business externship program in Washington, D.C.