Study Abroad Shapes Students at Davidson


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A recent article about Archives and Special Collections regular guest Dr. Jerry “The Sage” Putnam encouraging his premedical students to go abroad inspired the Around the D staff to examine  the history of study abroad programs that have shaped Davidson students, particularly the Junior Year Abroad.

Brochure for Davidson's study abroad program, "Foreign Study Plan Davidson College" with an image of foreign students holding a signAccording to a 1968-1969 brochure, “A year of study in a foreign country, confronting the student with new combinations of old ideas and opening his intellect to the possibilities for the development of new ideas, is an invaluable adjunct to any college program. This is particularly true for Davidson, which has as its goal the development of ‘disciplined and creative minds,’ minds which ‘make relevant and valid judgements,’ which ‘discriminate among values,’ and which communicate freely with others in the realm of ideas. Such study goes far toward making understanding out of prejudice, intellectual sophistication out of intellectual provincialism, and mature insights and habits of thought out of uncritical and adolescent minds. It therefore contributes in the most profound way to a truly liberal arts education.”

On this basis, faculty encouraged students to undertake the Junior Year Abroad program, wherein Davidson students would spend 10-11 eleven months abroad in Germany or France, taking classes as if they were regular students in a foreign university, to achieve maximum cultural immersion.

Davidson Students in the Montpellier Library

Davidson Students in the Montpellier Library

In France, students studied at the Universite dé Montpellier, one of the oldest and most eminent European universities,  dating back to 1221. In Germany students took courses at Marburger Universität, an institute of learning that emerged during the Reformation (1527) as the first Protestant university in the world!

an article in the Davidson Journal by William R. Giduz, "Thirdy Years of JYA France" with two pictures, one of his passport and another of him in France

Davidson Journal – Spring 1995

Davidson’s own Bill Giduz ’74 recounted the experiences of his Junior Year Abroad program in France in a spring 1995 Davidson Journal article. Giduz explained that from the time students arrived in Montpellier with the first challenge of finding an apartment, “during the JYA, the journey was always as important as the destination, whether it was just around the corner or to a far corner of the continent. Every new sight in the land was a discovery, and most conversations with friends concerned the new park, restaurant, bakery, bar, museum, or tourist attraction we had just found.” Giduz continues “The reward of JYA is the tremendous confidence gained as students learn to function at increasingly sophisticated levels in a foreign land.”

Signing the Davidson-Würzburg Agreement

Signing the Davidson-Würzburg Agreement

The JYA program to France has changed in recent years, moving from Montpellier to Tours beginning in the 1994-1995 academic year as students began to opt for only a semester abroad, and the Montpellier program could not serve this need. The Junior Year Abroad program in Germany has also changed sites and now sends students to Würzburg.

With its central place in the liberal arts tradition, Davidson now sponsors wide range of study abroad programs in its history, ranging geographically from Europe to the Indian sub-continent to Africa to South America. The current study abroad program for Davidson students is administered through the Dean Rusk International Studies Program.

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