Volume 11, Number 3, 2002
The College's Winter Session programs in Europe are some of the most popular and longest-running study-abroad trips offered at UD.
In the Department of Economics, a program that travels to Geneva each winter marked its 25th reunion in 2000, with a turnout of 750 alumni at Homecoming festivities, and is still going strong. This year's program, which combines classroom study, guest lectures by international experts and tours of corporations, filled to capacity early.
Another economics department study-abroad opportunity, originally known as the London Program, now travels widely throughout western Europe. Enrollment dipped immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but David Black, associate professor of economics, says the number of students interested in study abroad "is increasing by leaps and bounds" again this year. Black and Charles Link, MBNA America Professor of Business, have served as faculty directors for many of the European programs.
Amy Donohue, BE 2004, an accounting major who traveled with the group in winter 2002, says she experienced aspects of doing business abroad that couldn't have been learned in a classroom.
Bryan Thompson, BE 2002, who also traveled that year, says the program shows students that an understanding of other cultures is necessary to do business overseas.
"This was my first time across the Atlantic, and it was worth it--hands down," Thompson says. "I liked [Europeans'] sense of knowing how you fit into society. I think I prefer that sense of self in society to American individualism."
The group spent its first 12 days taking classes at the UD London Centre and visiting such institutions as the Bank of England, the London School of Economics and the DuPont Co. for presentations on how business is done in the United Kingdom. Next, students were off to Dublin, Paris, Barcelona and Rome, where University faculty made presentations that were followed by visits to a variety of corporations.
The trip took place just three years after the euro became the standard currency in most of the nations the students visited. The timing of the program also gave students a chance to observe firsthand some of the changes that have occurred with the growth of the European Union.
During the five-week program, students had a total of nine free days to use their rail passes to travel throughout the Continent or do local sightseeing.
"For many, this trip is a life-changing experience," Black says. "Students are out of their culture, away from their language, facing new situations."
-- Barbara Garrison