Roanoke students travel world during May Term
June 22, 2018
Uganda-or Palau or Wales or Alaska. Or maybe Salem, Virginia. Course options for Roanoke College's 2018 Intensive Learning Term-also known as May Term-were as varied as an ice cream parlor menu board. Students had their choice of 31 three-week courses, 10 of which included study abroad.
Roanoke professors led students on immersive travel experiences to New York, Argentina, France, Greece, Palau, Uganda, Alaska and Seattle, England and Wales, Poland and Ukraine, and Denmark and Switzerland. Course topics included metropolitan gentrification, non-Western perspective of NGOs, promotions management, economic principles and the more offbeat "Vampires, Witches and Werewolves in Slavic Culture." Other groups saw firsthand the influence of globalization on Palauan livelihoods or studied the layperson's appreciation of the theories of relativity and quantum physics. Some experienced the Oresteia in its geographical context, studied female Argentinean writers or encountered dragon folklore through a scientific lens.
Students experiencing May Term on campus may have stayed closer to campus physically, but they, too, had the opportunity to think beyond the classroom. Professors led them in writing a Broadway-style musical; interpreting novels and films about Africa; learning to cook Italian cuisine; understanding people with "differ-abilities;" taking field trips around Southwest Virginia, Philadelphia or Washington, D.C.; and much more. One class examined poverty experientially through group volunteer projects.
21 documented their May Term experiences with photos. We've created a photo gallery where you can view the fantastic results.
This year, students' photographic journaling was supported by Middleton Hunt '65, a photographer whose work has taken him all over the world. Hunt created the C. Middleton Hunt, Jr. '65 and Cornelia Jean Hunt Experiential Learning in Photography Fund, which provides stipends for students traveling for May Term who photograph their experiences for the College's Office of Public Relations.
-Sharon Nanz '09