Study Abroad: WWC Faculty-Led Courses
Ada Lambert | September 22, 2022
Special to The Echo | Liesel Erb
Study abroad trip in Paris, France.
Warren Wilson College (WWC) is widely known for its diverse study abroad programs. This past spring, the college offered three faculty-led study abroad courses.
These classes consist of a spring semester or term class in a specific concentration and top off the semester with a two-week trip out of the country. This past spring, the course offerings were Ceramics and Art History in Italy, Climate Crisis in France and Rights, Revolution and Ruins in Mexico.
WWC Ceramics professor, Leah Leitson, was one of the faculty leaders for the Ceramics and Art History course. She has offered this class many times in the past fifteen years since her first trip to La Meridiana, a Ceramics school in Certaldo, Italy.
“In 2005, I was invited to teach ceramics to adults from all over the country,” Leiston said. “I went to this place where I was invited, called La Meridiana. I was there for two weeks at the center. When I returned and I was teaching in this position here at Warren Wilson, it occurred to me that this could be a nice fit for our students and study abroad courses, so I made that happen.”
This year, Leitson and Art History professor, Julie Caro, combined their areas of expertise and brought together a group of students with different interests in the course. Rachel Beaver, WWC senior, was immediately interested in the ceramics aspect of the trip and getting the opportunity to immerse herself in a new, creative environment.
Beaver enjoyed the first week of the trip that was spent in Florence, primarily exploring art history through day trips to museums, but she particularly loved the second week that was spent in the studio at La Meridiana.
“It was gorgeous,” Beaver said. “It's an open-air studio, so we only had one solid wall and the others were just completely open to the elements and we were throwing on a wheel and there were just vineyards in front of you. It was absolutely stunning.”
For Beaver, the experience would not have been the same without the group that came along. Before she went on the trip, she didn’t know many people going but grew very close to many of her classmates through this study abroad course.
“I feel like I have a stronger community here at Wilson because I spent two weeks with these people in a foreign country where, you know, not a lot of people speak English,” Beaver said. “Those friendships really helped us get through it.”
A train away in France, WWC students learned about the climate crisis through French culture. They spent their first couple of days in Paris, then traveled to Toulouse where they connected with partners from the local university.
Science professors Liesl Erb and Amy Knisley had the idea to plan this trip two summers ago and worked hard throughout the school year to find opportunities that would live up to their expectations of the course.
“It was nice connecting across the Atlantic with differences in our culture and our outlook and there was a sense of some solidarity on this really daunting problem of climate change,” Knisley said.
Finding ways to remotely discover opportunities came as a challenge to Erb and Knisley initially, but once they found partners in France to work alongside with, it was much easier to create a meaningful itinerary for the class.
Knisley was able to connect with a French professor through a webinar on sustainability and climate resilience.
“There were two or three people that I took notes on and I found one in particular, a professor at the University of Toulouse,” Knisley said. “She wound up being a gold mine to upgrade contacts and ideas. She helped set some things up for us, too. She was an important part of the process.”
Students also contributed in finding opportunities during this course, one of them being a tour through an alternative greenhouse in Paris that was built underground in an abandoned parking garage.
Rosemary Thurber, a WWC sophomore, found this experience to be one of her favorites of the trip.
“This space was turned into a functional farm and so they grow things that don't need photosynthesis, like endives grow in the dark and they also grow mushrooms,” Thurber said. “They rent out space to people that want to grow like microgreens or flowers. It was super lush and beautiful down there.”
Thurber loved the trip so much that she decided to stay in France for a couple more nights with permission from her faculty leaders. She was eager to see a few more things before she left.
“I went and stayed in an Airbnb in Paris for two nights,” Thurber said. “I went to some more art museums that I hadn't had time to go to before and went to a cat cafe that had like 14 cats just roaming around. It was delightful. I just ended up having a really lovely extra couple days there before I flew home.”
For students interested in other topics such as history and religion, the Mexico course was an attractive choice. This trip was held by faculty Jay Lively and Paul Bobbitt and was spent in Mexico City and San Cristobal de las Casas.
“The intentions were basically to talk about Mexican history about rights and revolution, specifically on the state of Chiapas and an even greater focus on the Zapatista indigenous folks that were made famous by a revolution that they had where they fought for rights to access to food and water.” Bobbitt said. “The class structure of Mexico forbade them or eliminated their access to things.”
Quinn Bonney
Ryan Sawyer with big coconut in hand on Mexico abroad trip.
The trip was designed to immerse students in the culture surrounding Mexican history. Students were able to receive first-hand experience of the course material they had been learning for weeks prior to the trip. Ryan Sawyer, WWC sophomore, enjoyed learning about different systemic issues and visiting historical sites in Mexico alongside other Wilson students.
“While we were there we went to some museums focused on indigenous rights and focused on rights of the people in Mexico,” Sawyer said. “It was cool to go exploring around San Cristobal with some of the other Wilson students, trying different food and just getting to connect with Wilson people in that way.”
Sometimes out of country trips can run the risk of sickness; this group encountered a stomach bug spread. Despite the obstacles of this, Bobbitt was proud of the endurance and willingness to help that the students demonstrated.
“I think that we had a very solid group, which I'm really thankful for because we did end up kind of having to persevere through some gnarly things and it would not have gone so well had the caliber of the students that went along with us not been so high,” Bobbitt said. So I'm very thankful that we had the folks with us that we did.”
Many students who have gone on faculty-led courses have found them to be incredibly enriching, between the immersive opportunities to learn on a deeper level and the bonds that they develop in the duration of the course. It is an option for students who would like to experience studying abroad, but might not be interested in the idea of spending an entire semester in another country.
WWC will be offering new courses for the upcoming spring semester. These courses can be accessed through the myWWC website. Here can be found price estimates, course descriptions, application deadlines and links for further information.
Students interested in participating in a faculty-led course should start looking into the process now! For any additional questions, contact Rachel Kerr, Assistant Director of Global Engagement, at rkerr@warren-wilson.edu.