Rockhurst University

INSTITUTIONAL PROFILE

Total international undergraduate students (FTE): 18.86

Total international graduate students (FTE): 7.375

INTERNATIONAL VOLUNTEER/SERVICE/IMMERSION PROGRAMS

Belize, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador

• These week-long immersion programs are central to Rockhurst. The students go to a community where we have a connection and work in service with those in the community. In some cases this is within the context of a parish, or in other cases it is through a group such as Crispaz who has long term volunteers on the ground. Student's work ranges from manual labor to health screenings and immunization clinics. The crux of the work is not the activity so much as an opportunity to be exposed to another culture, meet and live with the people, eat indigenous food and understand their way of life.

• We work with the following organizations: Handmaidens of the Sacred Heart in El Salvador, parish priest from the US in Guatemala, Adorers of the Blood of Christ in Guatemala, St Mark's Parish of Independence, Mo in Mexico, Hand in Hand Ministries in Belize

STUDY ABROAD

Most popular countries: Spain, Australia, Mexico, Ireland, Italy

Consortia programs:

Reciprocal Exchange (i.e.- ISEP) - none

Affiliate - none

Non-Institutional (i.e.- CIEE)

Australearn, American Institute for Study Abroad, Center for Education Abroad (Arcadia University), Institute for Studies Abroad (IFSA) (Butler University), International Study Abroad (ISA); students may go for a summer, a semester, or year-long

With AJCU institutions: The Bejing Center, the John Felice Rome Center, and the Madrid Campus-SLU; students may go for a semester or year-long

Summer programs to France, Mexico, and Spain offered through the language department

Highlighted Program:

We have worked with two models on the France program, and are always working towards integrating the best of these elements. In the past, on our Paris Program, students took classes on French language and culture and also engaged in service learning at a Catholic middle school with ethnic and economic diversity. Rockhurst University students worked with English teachers in the school on specific aspects of language and culture. We were able to videotape one of our student teachers putting her skills to work, and she had the students very excited about her personal photo album and pictures of Kansas City. The students in the middle school put on a play every year in English, so some of our students have worked with very practical aspects, such as helping with pronunciation. Inevitably, our university students have also been quizzed by the middle school students on a variety of topics including U.S. government policy, which has almost always given our students pause for reflection as they hear the questions of these young ones. For the Paris Program, students have also been required to engage in cultural interviews with the French on a range of topics from music and literature to comparison of educational systems.

Our most recent program (summer 2006) was a new one and a change in that it was an intensive language and culture program in Brittany, France. We also spent time in Paris before and after traveling to Rennes. In Paris, we saw the major/popular tourist sites (e.g. the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, Sainte-Chapelle, Sacré Coeur, the Louvre and Orsay museums, the café where Amélie was filmed), but we also arranged our own "offbeat" tours and events. For instance, the director found a tour of a neighborhood in Paris called La Goutte d'Or; during the neighborhood's festival, they offer guided tours of the area. Thus, there we were in Paris accompanied by an Algerian guide, who brought us into all kinds of shops in which students met people from all over the world; a student chatted with a woman from Turkey trying to start a business, and the student later went back to buy a handbag from her to support her. In another shop, students were greeted by Africans who introduced them to a number of African products. We saw a mosque and a traditional Moroccan dress shop, and after sipping mint tea in a local restaurant, our guide told us about the Algerian/French conflict from her perspective. Later that evening, we went to a completely different section of town to try couscous, a north African dish. Optional visits were also included during our time in Paris, including a visit to the chapel where the first Jesuits took their vows (recently restored), where we were also able to talk with the director of a performance about the Jesuits which is to be performed there this September 2006. We also got together with a Parisian family who has housed our students before for a picnic at the park around the Vincennes castle.

We then traveled to Brittany as the French do. No air conditioned bus: instead, we took taxis to the train station, got our luggage down to the quai, found places to put the luggage in the train (a lesson in and of itself one how lightly by comparison many Europeans travel, even for lengthier vacations), then took the metro to the Rennes university area. Students took their language exam on the first day of the next week, and then began intensive language and culture classes on mythology, proverbs, film, the press, etc. Excursions included a tour of the Benedictine Abbey at Mont St-Michel, the medieval towns of Dinan and San Malo and a walk through the Brocéliande Forest with a storyteller who told them Celtic tales in French, including Arthurian legend. Of course we saw Merlin's tomb. After their final exam, students were evaluated on the rigorous French academic scale (1-20). Lest the academic side became too stressful, though, we also had the great luck to take breaks at the events such as the World Cup matches (a lot of fun afterwards, until the last one, though the Italians at the university were happy afterwards) and the Tour de France individual races, which went by only a block from the university. Our time in France culminated with a return to Paris and Mass at Notre Dame Cathedral, a guided tour of Versailles and a boat ride down the Seine river.

Study Abroad Logistics:

Requirements for studying abroad: Student must be in good academic standing

Financial aid available: Student loans, and we are looking into the possibility of portability of certain grants

Other student services available: Our summer programs take care of lodging for students

INTERNATIONALIZATION OF THE CURRICULUM:

Related Majors/Minors/Concentrations:

Global Studies - major and minor

International Journalism Program

Communication Sciences and Disorders bilingual certificate program

Concentration in international business at the undergraduate level

Economics minor with global perspectives emphasis (undergraduate)

French, German, Spanish

Rockhurst does not have a language requirement for admission or graduation. However, ten major programs of studies have language requirements.

Institutes or Centers promoting global awareness:

International Studies and Global Perspectives Committee

FACULTY EXCHANGE/COOPERATIVE RESEARCH

Rockhurst currently has no faculty exchange programs in place. We are not aware of any cooperative research.

OTHER PROGRAMS OR INTERNATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES:

The Executive Fellows MBA program has an International Study Trip in the first year of the program.

Annual trip abroad for alumni, students, and community members coordinated by the Center for Arts and Letters.