Campus Launches Global Seminars
Program for Study Abroad During the Summer
Ioana Patringenaru | February 11, 2008
Lynn Anderson, UCSD's dean of International Education, during a trip to China .
They will try to discover the mathematical beauty in Rome’s ancient monuments. They will watch flamenco performances in Spain. They will volunteer at a clinic in Costa Rica.
More than 200 students are getting the opportunity to take part in UCSD’s new Global Seminars program, which will offer 10 five-week sessions this summer. The application deadline is Feb. 15.
About 15 to 30 students will take part in each seminar and will travel to various destinations, including France, Italy and Costa Rica. There, they will take classes with a UCSD professor and go on field trips. They will write papers and take quizzes but also will have time to explore on their own in the evenings and weekends.
The seminars provide a great opportunity for students and faculty to get to know each other, said Lynn Anderson, UCSD’s dean of International Education. Joseph Pasquale, a computer science professor who will be teaching a seminar about mathematical beauty in Rome, is already looking forward to this summer.
“I think about this 99 percent of the time,” Pasquale said. “I think this going to be an unforgettable experience for everybody — the students and me.”
When Pasquale first heard about the program, he said he immediately thought about a seminar that would appeal to engineering, math and science majors. Many study-abroad programs tend to focus on the humanities, but other students are interested too, he said. He designed his class around Rome’s many architectural treasures. “There’s so much there and it’s so easily accessible,” Pasquale said.
Students will be able to study the Coliseum by actually visiting it. They will notice, Pasquale said, that the structure is oval, not round. It was built that way to allow spectators to get a better view of the arena below, the professor said. Back in the classroom, students will analyze the Coliseum’s geometry and learn more about the engineering principles behind the structure. They will also visit many other famous Roman monuments, including the Pantheon.
To prepare for the class, Pasquale plans to take a sabbatical in spring. He already has talked to some students interested in his seminar. “They’re hungry for appreciating art and architecture from a technological point of view,” he said. He added he hopes his students will learn that the ancient Romans didn’t design buildings just to look beautiful. Architects of the time applied a strict mathematic logic to their work, the professor said.
A committee of faculty and administrators selected this year’s 10 seminars from a number of faculty proposals. Culture, Gesture and Language, taught in Sorrento, Italy, is another one of these seminars. For that course, students will take a field trip to Pompeii. They will take a close look at the gestures depicted in the city’s murals. Some are still used today. For Human Impact on the Environment and Bacteriology, students will volunteer at a clinic in Costa Rica and observe health care in that country first hand.
UCSD students already have access to a wide range of options to study abroad, from classes offered by the University of California, to classes offered by private, third-party providers. But the university didn’t have any formal, short-term study abroad program led by UCSD professors. These programs are common at other universities, including UCLA, said Anderson.
The short-term global seminars were designed to attract students who might not consider studying abroad for a whole quarter or a whole year, said Jim Galvin, director of the opportunities abroad and faculty-led program at UCSD’s International Center.
The university is contracting with third-party companies to provide the infrastructure for the trips, including classrooms, computers and living arrangements. In most programs, students will share apartments in the cities where they study, said Galvin.
Fees for the programs vary between about $4,000 and $5,000, with an additional $1,400 going to UCSD registration fees. But students can apply all of their financial aid toward the cost, said Anderson. The International Center also will offer scholarships, for which officials are actively fundraising, she said. The seminars will allow students to earn eight UCSD academic units.
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