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Why JYA... Germany... Würzburg?The following information offers a brief overview of Davidson College's Junior Year Abroad program in Würzburg, Germany. For more details, please contact me, Prof. Maggie McCarthy, current resident director of the program. Davidson College's Junior Year Abroad Program offers a number of distinct advantages. Whereas one semester programs abroad generally rely on coursework and activities taught and arranged by a resident director from the home institution, JYA Würzburg - a full year program - allows students to be fully matriculated and integrated at a German university. Rather than remain in a small enclave of their own compatriots, JYA Würzburg participants experience German student life in all its facets. This year Stephanie Corwin, for example, is studying bassoon at Würzburg's renowned Musikhochschule; Grant Lovellette is working in the university religion dept. editing the English translation of a scholarly anthology. JYAers are also obliged to find their own extra-curricular activities, like Bess Dawson and Will Humphrey, who have joined soccer and biking clubs respectively. Mari Defede is taking a yoga course at the Volkshochschule. Scott Reid is pursuing individual research by watching classic German films at archives in Berlin and Munich. All participants live in Haus Berlin, a dormitory that boasts not only single rooms with cable and internet access, but mostly German inhabitants. JYA Würzburg takes language acquistion very seriously. From the moment students step off the plane, they pledge to speak German only. During the first month, students participate in the "Homestay" in Northern Germany, living with German families and partaking of local cultural activities. The following month students take an intensive language course at the University of Würzburg. And the coursework that follows in the next two semesters is, naturally, auf Deutsch! Like their fellow German students, they give oral presentations and write longer research papers. On a recent trip to Nürnberg, I happened to overhear my students through the thin youth hostel walls and am proud to report that they were indeed only speaking German. At Haus Berlin, the Davidson students are proud of their snobby reputation for speaking German with other English-speaking exchange students. Serious commitment to the language over the course of a full year brings, of course, enormous returns. Another unique and popular aspect of the Davidson program is the one course taught by the resident director, Ger 321. An overview of German history and culture, it obliges the students to make fully subsidized weekend trips to various German cities and to research the local culture and history. Students take with them individually bound diaries and record their impressions in both word and image. Then they report back to the class with mini presentations. The program also subsidizes several longer group trips, which in recent years have taken participants to Berlin, Vienna and Weimar. Cultural activities of all kinds are subsidized by the program; my own rule of thumb is up to pay up to € 50 if students provide a small written report of their cultural adventures. And I define culture broadly to include everything from the local production of Lessing's Nathan der Weise to visiting the Münchner Oktoberfest. Participants in Davidson's JYA Würzburg have gone onto much success and acclaim in life. Christian Hunt (JYA '98 - '99) is now a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University; Chad Wellmon (JYA '97 - '98) and Justice Kraus (JYA '99 - '01) are doing graduate study in German at Berkeley and Harvard respectively. Geoff Evans and Beth Dederick (JYA '99 - '01) received Fulbright Teaching Assistantships for Austria and Germany. Derrick Miller (JYA '96 - '97) is not only a grad student of German at Chapel Hill, he was also awarded a Fulbright Research grant. For more information about the program, please see the general JYA homepage, plus the student-written Let's Go Würzburg. Info on the city of Würzburg and the University can also be found at the links there. Thanks for considering Davidson's JYA program
in Würzburg, Germany! |