Westmont in Northern Europe

Westmont in Northern Europe

Program Review Summary

Site Visit Team Members[1]:

Dr. John Blondell, Professor of Theatre Arts

Dr. William Wright, Associate Provost For Planning and Research

Dr. Cynthia Toms, Director of Global Education

Off Campus Programs Committee Members:

Dr. Gregg Afman, Professor of Kinesiology

Michelle Hardley, Registrar

Dr. Han Kim, Assistant Professor of Music

Dr. Marianne Robins, Professor of History

Barbara Pointer, Assistant Director of Global Education

Dr. Cynthia Toms, Director of Global Education

Westmont in Northern Europe Study Abroad Program Overview:

The Westmont in Northern Europe (WNE) semester-long study abroad program was envisioned and constructed through the efforts of Dr. Larsen Hoeckley and Dr. Hoeckley. With a vision to explore issues of conflict and peacemaking and to deepen student encounters in relevant places and cultures related to this theme, the program was launched in Fall 2014. This review occurs during the second running of this three-year pilot program.

Dr. Hoeckley and Dr. Larsen Hoeckley are veterans of seven semester-abroad programs in Europe and the UK. Dr. Larsen Hoeckley teaches English, and specializes in Victorian literature and women writers. The influx of global voices, especially female voices, into literature in English in the 19th and 20th Centuries has led her to an increasing interest in global literature. Dr. Hoeckley directs the Gaede Institute for the Liberal Arts at Westmont and teaches philosophy. He has interests in philosophy of science and philosophy of religion, but more recently has turned his attention to exploring the possibility of just warfare in both secular and Christian thought.

The Fall 2015 curriculum includes the following courses:

• Studies in World Literature (4 units, Dr. Larsen Hoeckley)
• Philosophical Reflections on Conflict and Peacemaking in Modern Europe (4 units, Dr. Hoeckley)
• Encountering the Cultures of England, Ireland and Germany (2 units, Dr. Larsen Hoeckley & Dr. Hoeckley)
• German Language (4 units, German Language School)
• Exploring Wellness (1 unit PE)

These courses fulfill six General Education requirements: Thinking Globally; Reading Imaginative Literature; Philosophical Reflections on Reality, Knowledge and Value; Foreign Language; Communicating Cross-Culturally; Physical Education (one semester).

The Westmont in Northern Europe Program also utilizes the global learning cycle:

• Introduction to Northern Europe: 1-unit seminar (Spring 2015)
• Retry Seminar: 1-unit (Spring 2016)

In order to explore the theme of peace and reconciliation, the WNE program utilizes two extended-stay locations:

• Rostrevor, Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland has a long history of conflict, but peace has come in the last two decades, and reconciliation, though slow, is underway. The program aims to discover the beauty, the painful history and the emerging hope of this region. Rostrevor offers access to a Benedictine monastery and quiet space for final reflection and re-entry preparation.

• Berlin, Germany has become one of Europe's most vibrant and dynamic cities and is unmatched addressing the themes of conflict and peacemaking. From its complete destruction at the close of WWII, through its rebuilding as a divided city symbolizing the cold-war conflict, Berlin offers social, political, and religious constructs to enliven the theme of peace and reconciliation.

In the midst of these extended stays, students also travel to other locations to broaden their learning:

• First World War battlegrounds in Belgium
• Desden and Bratislava in Central Europe
• Dublin, Belfast
• Irish coast in Ireland
• Slovakia

Students are also given the opportunity to pursue independent travel through a four-day weekend excursion.

Westmont in Northern Europe

“Exploring Christ’s Call to be Peacemakers”

Site Team Visit Summary

In and through a variety of teaching methods, practices, and opportunities, the Westmont in Northern Europe program displays excellent, and in some cases exemplary, teaching and instruction for Westmont students. WNE teaching includes, but is not limited to, traditional classroom teaching through mini-lecture, conversation, and discussion; intensive German language instruction at Berlin’s German Language School; experiential learning on the streets and sites of the cities visited; visits by individuals that provide informational, provocative, or otherwise compelling personal knowledge and experience of the cultural and/or historical context of the locations and locales; cultural and artistic experiences such as theatrical and musical performances; and hikes and bike rides through significant European locations. The combination of teaching methods, and the thorough, intentional structuring of these methods, lead to a robust, multi-dimensional, various, and rich teaching climate. Perhaps most importantly, however, the program displays, at every turn, and in numerous ways, the theme of peace making and reconciliation, taught from a rich and deep Christian perspective.

WNE is built around the broad theme of conflict and reconciliation. The intent was to establish a multi-year program theme that would provide faculty from different departments the opportunity to teach courses within their disciplinary expertise but that also informed the program theme. In 2014 and 2015 course offerings have include an introductory philosophy class (Dr. Hoeckley) and a world literature class (Dr. Larsen Hoeckley). In both classes, readings and lectures informed the conflict and reconciliation dialogue. It is easy to consider how faculty from the social sciences and humanities could participate in the program and adjust courses to the setting and theme. Having a program that allows faculty to teach more within their discipline is seen as a significant human resource benefit. Also, by having a constant theme than crosses over years, changes in faculty means that some aspects of the program do not have to be created every year. Future faculty will benefit from the logistics and contacts made in prior years, reducing the burden to faculty staffing the program for the first time.

Faculty often experience the demands of teaching all classes on a program. Another feature of WNE is that local expertise is used to provide some instruction. Language instruction is recognized as an essential part of the curriculum, since developing even rudimentary skills in the local language enhances opportunities for cross-cultural exchange. The extended stay in Berlin allows students to enroll in a language institute and receive academic credit for German, thereby students receive credit for coursework that WNE faculty did not teach.

The review team experienced many of the teaching methods listed above during its four-day residency in Berlin. During the time the team was there, it encountered an East German Christian woman who discussed and described her experience in the former GDR: professors Hoeckley and Larsen Hoeckley developed significant perspectives relative to empiricism and the poetry of Evan Boland, respectively; students described the learning environment and experience of the trip; a Kristallnacht service at a Berlin Lutheran church; and locales such as Holocaust and Berlin Wall Memorials, the Brandenburg Gate, and the Tiergarten, among others. It is the perspective of the review team that the teaching appears sophisticated, personal, encouraging, and decidedly faith-based. Students appear deeply satisfied with what they are learning, the amount they are learning, and how they are learning it. The program provides significant responsibility to students for their own learning, and this particular group of students seems to have grabbed that opportunity, and run with it. Conversations with students displayed their abilities to reflect, synthesize, and integrate difficult, challenging, and often provocative material and subject matter.

In short, the review team commends the WNE program, and its two leaders, for their thoughtful, visionary approach to program purpose and idea, and the development of teaching that realizes that vision in compelling and in some cases profound ways. The teaching component of this program is indeed impressive, and the WNE team should be congratulated and applauded.

Academic Instruction and Course Delivery

It is absolutely clear that all aspects of the teaching are infused with the central goal of peace making and reconciliation, which is revealed throughout in tangible ways. The vision of the program is inspired by reconciliation, and the teaching and instruction bears out that vision time and again. Some examples include: visit to a Kristallnacht worship service, which provided classroom opportunity for exploration and reflection the next day; interaction with the program’s sites themselves, the conflicts that resulted there, and the ensuing work of reconciliation as an ongoing process; students’ reflections about how faith and peacemaking make their ways to conscious behaviors and decision making about students’ faith; and the exploration of poetry (in the case in question, that of Irish poet Eavan Boland) as both subject and vehicle of violence and reconciliation. This is impressive: form follows function beautifully in this program, and the students benefit from a program that delivers what it promises.

During one class session we observed, students heard of the life experiences from a German woman (born in 1946). Telling her story and the story of her parents, WNE students learned about life in Nazi Germany, life in communist East Germany and finally, what it has meant to live through German unification. She was a soft-spoken woman with a simple story but students listened intently as they learned from a first-hand participant of a period in history they only know from books.

The review team visited the German Language School, and explored and investigated the German language instruction encountered by Westmont students. GLS officials acknowledged that the program is a rigorous one, not only because of the difficult and deeply analytical nature of the German language, but also because WNE students concentrate four weeks of German learning into three. Students are obviously challenged by the material, and perhaps initially confused by the immediate immersion into a total German-speaking classroom. They are, however, eventually satisfied, and perhaps even surprised, by the amount of German they learn during their time at GLS. The German Language director reports that students successfully complete A.1 language learning program during their course of study (See Appendix 1).

Students do, on occasion, have some suggestions to increase and improve their student learning. This is to be expected, since there is – of course – no perfect program. Suggestions encountered include: develop a quicker feedback loop relevant to student papers and other projects; solve some confusion relative to the technology used to upload student work; entertain the possibility of scheduling student homestays after students have achieved some rudimentary language training. Perhaps more substantively, the review team suggests the exploration of continuing language training past the intensive three-week course. Is it possible to include further training – perhaps 2-3 times per week – in the remaining weeks that students are in residency in Berlin, as a way to keep language learning throughout the Berlin residency?

Student Learning Outcomes and Assessment

The review team reviewed all program course syllabi and found an appropriate number of reading, writing and participatory assignments, clearly stated learning outcomes, and evidence that a variety of methods were being employed to assess student learning.

ENG 044: Violence and Peacemaking in World Literature.

Learning Outcomes: Students will (1) develop an awareness of the vast literary offerings available to readers of international literature, by reading a selection of literature about war and peacemaking; (2) acquire basic skills that help foster understanding and enjoyment of literature from other cultures by participating in discussion, evaluating internet resources, and, of course, reading closely; (3) be able to use the term “imagined communities” with clarity and insight for written work and in discussion as a means of understanding the connection between literature and the study of violence and peacemaking; (4) further develop as a writer.

Student evaluation methods included: (1) Two essays (5-7 pages each), each analyzing one of the texts; (2) written responses to discussion questions presented in class; (3) class participation; (4) quizzes and a final exam.

GER 001: Elementary German I.

Learning Outcome: Students will successfully complete Level A1.1 of the Common European Framework of References, which includes developing elementary conversational skills and an understanding of basic German language structure and grammar.

Student evaluation methods included: (1) speaking in class and (2) weekly exams.

IS 120: Encountering the Cultures of England, Ireland and Germany.

Learning Outcomes: Students will (1) gain understanding of British, German, Slovakian, and Irish cultures, especially the conflicts that have shaped cultures in the past century and the peacemaking efforts to bring reconciliation to those cultures; (2) discover the place of Christian communities in these cultures, both historical and in the present, and their role in conflict and peacemaking; (3) practice combining written reflection with learning experientially, so that they can take this skill into future life situations.

Student evaluation methods included: (1) reflective essays of reading assignments; (2) reflective essays on required group site visits and self-directed site visits; (3) worship reflection paper; (4) “my one big idea from Westmont in Northern Europe” essay.

PEA 094: Exploring Wellness.

Learning Outcome: Students will development and successfully implement an appropriate fitness outcome based on the training principles of frequency, intensity and duration.

Student evaluation method: documented independent activity of walking, running, hiking, cycling, or other approved activities.

PHIL 007: Philosophical Perspectives: Conflict and Peace.

Learning Outcome: Students will be able to articulate major philosophical ideas and describe their bearing on the Christian liberal arts.

Student evaluation methods included: (1) class discussion of reading assignments; (2) contributions to online discussion; (3) essay on Ethics and War; and (4) midterm and final exams over reading and lecture material.

Overall, the review team commends the WNE program, and its leaders, for creating a nimble, layered, culturally aware, spirit-infused program of impressive richness. The relationship between culture and curriculum is thoroughly reasoned, well structured, and enacts the relationship in daily, profound ways.

Learning Context as it Relates to Curriculum

As is implicit from above, it is difficult to disentangle the context and curriculum components of the WNE program, and this is one of the reasons that the program is a successful one. This particular year, the program spent time in London, Belgium, Slovakia, Berlin, and Northern Ireland, with the bulk of the time spent in Berlin. Sites are selected relative to the peacemaking and reconciliation theme, as well as to faculty experience and expertise. There are numerous “texts” used in this program, including the various literary texts used to explore, describe, and elucidate the experience of violence and the hoped-for restitution of wholeness, but also the sites used to engage those themes and experiences. In this case, sites themselves become valuable, even obligatory, texts for student engagement, contemplation, reflection, and learning.

Though all students might not have been initially aware of the program’s Peacemaking and Reconciliation theme, students are by now deeply aware of its significance and implications. Many students commented upon the current refugee crisis as a contemporary example of the implications of the theme, and noticed how this theme was actively engaged in each of the worship services encountered while in Berlin. This suggested questions about a range of responses relative to being an American and a Christian, and the possible avenues of reconciliation available to students. Other students commented upon the bicycle trip through WWI sites in Belgium, in relation to their reading of All Quiet on the Western Front, and the connections made between the literary and the physical, and how context and content become fully intertwined and layered. Still other students reflected upon the trip’s beginning in London, and exploration of the nature of Empire, and then what was presumed to be the appropriate bookend for that experience, when the trip finished in Northern Ireland.

Homestay experiences in Berlin provide a significant learning context for students. Students described a variety of experiences with their homestays. Some described relatively deep, intentional, and fully developed homestay experiences, where students now identify their homestay families as important relationships in their lives. Others described a more hands-off approach on the part of homestay families: one student described that homestay families would prepare meals for the students, but would eat separately from them. Another homestay family described hesitancy to provide homestays to American students, but by the time the homestay was completed, described a complete turnaround of attitude about American young people. This seems an important testament to the character of Westmont students, and underscores an interesting fact: our students themselves are engaged in an interesting kind of peacemaking, when they change peoples’ minds about the nature and character of American people. The review team finds this compelling: it is possible to create a program that uses sites like a buffet meal, where students graze and take in all they can about the culture. The approach of WNE, however, creates opportunities for student participation and contribution to the cultures in which they find themselves, and can thereby – even in small but very meaningful ways – participate in cultural change and renewal.