Can you say, “Please pass the salt” in another language? Residents of McTyeire International House can. Table conversation might be in any of the seven languages spoken at McTyeire, a residence hall where cultivating language fluency is a community commitment and expanding that fluency a 24-hour opportunity.

Founded in 1981 and now celebrating its 30th anniversary, McTyeire is a project of the College of Arts and Science in partnership with the Office of Housing and Residential Education and Dining Services. Open to students from all Vanderbilt colleges, McTyeire provides cultural and language immersion for residents without leaving the Nashville campus.

McTyeire’s kitchen is known for its international-themed dinners.

Organized around six language halls—French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Russian and Chinese—McTyeire residents are encouraged to speak their target languages daily. Monday–Thursday suppers in the house’s dining room—when students are required to converse exclusively in their designated language—are the cornerstone of the McTyeire experience. The dining room is renowned for its international meals. Other activities include weekly study breaks, social events and parties.

Residents just learning their target language and others with greater fluency live side by side. Each hall has a faculty adviser from the College of Arts and Science and a hall coordinator—typically a native speaker—who spearheads cultural understanding in the context of increasing fluency at dinner conversations and activities.

During dinner on Monday–Thursday, students must speak exclusively in their designated languages. It can be a challenge—and it can be fun.

Life Changing

For Shana Wamuhu, a native of Kenya majoring in political science, the McTyeire melting pot is a lush, yet level, cross-cultural playing field.

“McTyeire has helped me learn to interact with other cultures. Without that, the potential for cultural misunderstandings is enormous,” says Wamuhu, a senior in her second year on McTyeire’s International Interest Hall.

“I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for McTyeire,” says Adam Hunter, BA’00. Hunter parlayed his two years on McTyeire’s German Hall, his German and European studies majors and study-abroad experience into jobs with the German Marshall Fund and Robert Bosch, one of Germany’s largest foundations. He later worked in the German parliament with Cem Özdemir, co-chair of the Green Party. After earning his master’s in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, he joined the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service.

Junior Ben Juvelier in his room at McTyeire’s German Hall.

More than Fluency

Associate Dean Fräncille Bergquist was one of McTyeire’s founders and has oversight responsibility for the academic program. “McTyeire isn’t so much about creating language fluency as about giving students an opportunity to enhance their language ability,” says Bergquist, also an associate professor of Spanish. “McTyeire is unique because we mix the languages in one residence hall, providing a deep cultural experience as well as a cross-cultural one.”

Cross-cultural is an apt description of Todd Miller’s application of his three semesters at McTyeire while studying economics. “I have lived abroad continuously since graduating, except when I earned my MBA from Columbia,” says Miller, BA’88, who spent 17 years based in Hong Kong as an executive with Sony Entertainment. “Practically everything I have done since Vanderbilt has had some international dimension. I have traveled to more than 100 countries for work and for play. McTyeire nurtured, whetted and shaped my international outlook.” Miller recently took an 83-day bicycle trek from Portugal to Turkey to raise funds for an Asian children’s charity and credits his German fluency with helping him make friends along the way.

For some residents, like Erika Leicht, a junior majoring in German and public policy studies, McTyeire fulfills multiple goals. “I was close to fluent in German, but McTyeire lets me speak spontaneously, to have conversations,” she says. “Unlike in class, here you can’t plan everything you say.” Leicht says McTyeire also builds unity and camaraderie.

“There’s a sense of community among the people in the halls. We’re close. It’s totally different than the dorm I lived in previously,” says Leicht, who has set her sights on study in Germany and a postgraduation Fulbright Fellowship or internship with a German company.

Needed: Desire and Commitment

McTyeire is open to sophomores, juniors, seniors and graduate students. A committee that includes residents, faculty and staff makes selections. Bandas, a cultural anthropologist and native of Germany who also serves as the German Hall’s coordinator, says that when it comes to joining McTyeire, fluency carries less weight than motivation and commitment.

McTyeire Spanish Hall alumna Clarissa Adams Fletcher, BA’86, MA’90, was a Latin American studies major. “I came to McTyeire with a love for languages and found it to be a place where I could use it (Spanish) every day,” says Fletcher, who was named the 2011 National Language Teacher of the Year by the American Council on Teaching of Foreign Languages. “I met people there from all over the world and that opened my eyes to different points of view.”

She tells her Spanish students at Georgia’s Dunwoody High School that fluency is only one benefit to language study. “It helps create globally competent citizens who are flexible and able to learn and relearn, apply new skills and communicate with a broad spectrum of people,” Fletcher says.

Traditional fishing nets, Meghna River in northeastern Bangladesh.

Mention Bangladesh and images of poverty, famine and environmental disaster might come to mind. That’s only half the story, says Steve Goodbred, associate professor of Earth and environmental sciences.

“Bangladesh is a land of superlatives,” Goodbred says. “It has big rivers draining big mountains [the Himalayas], a big climate, the world’s largest river delta and lots of people. We have a lot to learn from them.”

Vanderbilt and its College of Arts and Science agree. Scholars from Earth and environmental sciences, political science, sociology and religious studies have joined forces with colleagues from the School of Engineering and the Owen Graduate School of Management to study Bangladesh and its people.

Above, top: A typical street in the Sadarghat area of Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh. Above, bottom: River dweller life—marketing, ferrying, hauling by water—on the Buriganga.

Why all the interest? “Bangladesh mirrors problems the rest of the world will be facing in the next century,” says Professor and Chair of Religious Studies Tony K. Stewart , who has studied the literature and religion of Bangladesh for 35 years. “They are developing innovative solutions to problems of overpopulation, poverty, rising sea levels, coastal flooding and cyclones through a creative synergy between their traditional culture and the use of modern technology.”

Stewart’s expertise includes several fellowships in that country, including a recent Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship. He is also the founder and director of the Bangla Language Institute at Bangladesh’s Independent University. Stewart recently joined the College of Arts and Science from North Carolina State University in a move that will increase Vanderbilt’s scholarship in South Asian studies.

Environment, Politics and People Intertwined

With a population of 162 million people—about half the size of the United States—crammed into an area roughly the size of Iowa, Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Its Muslim majority has existed in relative peace and harmony with a Hindu minority for centuries. And while the country is currently stable, the potential for conflict stemming from environmental stresses exists, Goodbred says.

“Natural disasters and environmental change can cause political instability,” says Goodbred, who has been studying the Ganges-Brahmaputra river delta for more than 15 years.

“Bangladesh has flooding, river migration, arsenic-contaminated groundwater, climate change, tectonic activity, earthquakes, cyclones and sea-level rise—it is a dynamic region,” he notes. “We’re trying to understand when, where and at what magnitude populations migrate in this area. Where’s the tipping point at which large numbers of people migrate and strain other cities and countries? Can we anticipate migrations and limit potential damage through advanced preparation?”

Impressed by the interdisciplinary nature and quality of research being done at Vanderbilt, in part through the Institute for Energy and Environment, the U.S. Department of Defense recently awarded Goodbred and his team $7 million to study the impact of climate and environmental change on human migration patterns in Bangladesh. The team includes Professors David Furbish and John Ayers and Associate Professor Jonathan Gilligan, all from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences; Associate Professor of Political Science Brooke Ackerly; Professor of Sociology Katharine Donato, and engineering colleagues George Hornberger, University Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth and Environmental Science, and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Mark Abkowitz. The five-year grant is a multidisciplinary university research initiative with Columbia University under the Office of Naval Research.

Far-flung Field Study

In spring 2010, university funds allowed Goodbred, Ackerly and Gilligan to take a class of 15 graduate and undergraduate students to Bangladesh to study water resources and water-related hazards, their impact on the population and possible solutions. The Arts and Science, Engineering and Peabody students were enrolled in a transdisciplinary seminar on “Water and Social Justice in Bangladesh” [see “Active Earth” in the fall 2010 issue of Arts and Science magazine].

“Vanderbilt’s investment in that course put us in a position to secure the DoD grant,” Goodbred says, as well as a $1.1 million National Science Foundation award that will enable him to take classes to Bangladesh in 2012 and 2014.

The interdisciplinary culture of the College of Arts and Science helps scholars better understand the dynamics of complicated problems by bringing together teams with varied expertise, Goodbred notes. “We can engage each other to answer complex questions and our students get to sit in the middle of that process.”

Political scientist Ackerly, who studies injustices associated with natural disasters, agrees: “We are teaching students from various disciplines to approach these questions informed by a broader view.”

A Different Perspective

In March 2011, then-junior Haley Briel traveled to Bangladesh with Goodbred to study the Brahmaputra River. The Earth and environmental sciences major continued her research on campus this past summer, supported by the Vanderbilt Undergraduate Summer Research Program.

“Meeting the exceedingly generous and curious Bengali population gave my academic studies a new sense of enthusiasm and purpose,” Briel says. “To meet literally hundreds of Bengali people, all with so little, but willing to give so much, was a truly touching experience.”

That is exactly what Goodbred hopes his students will take away from their experience. “We need to educate our students and get them to foreign places to give them a different perspective,” he says. “Our goal is to prepare the next generation of students to give service in the international arena.”

Imagine an American studying Shakespeare by exploring where his mother grew up. Picture a British historian researching slavery by examining a former slave cabin. Those perspectives are only a few of the benefits that faculty and students gain through a developing partnership between the College of Arts and Science and the University of Warwick in Coventry, England.

The Vanderbilt-Warwick International Collaboration is a venture between each institution’s English and history departments to further research and develop joint projects. It’s also creating synergy and cultivating what Mark Schoenfield, chair of Vanderbilt’s Department of English, terms “academic citizens of the world” by broadening graduate students’ opportunities and employment potential.

Schoenfield says that the collaboration is building intellectual exchanges between faculty and students in both organizations, and in doing so, creates opportunities for scholars that reach beyond what their home institutions have individually.

The collaborative effort launched four years ago and is still in its formative stages. It focuses on academic exchanges and conferences between faculty at each institution and providing opportunities for graduate students to work with or learn from each other’s faculty. University of Warwick is regarded as one of the United Kingdom’s leading academic institutions; it consistently ranks in the top 10 research universities in that country.

Complementary Scholarship

The faculty’s commitment to the program and corresponding areas of scholarly expertise are essential to the collaboration, says James Epstein, acting chair and Distinguished Professor of History. “Warwick has one of the top history departments in Great Britain, with strengths in Latin American and Caribbean history. Warwick has a strong interest in Atlantic history and slavery, which fits with our program.”

Similarly, Warwick’s focus in South Asian history adds depth and breadth to Vanderbilt’s own studies in that area. Other Warwick complementary areas include the history of medicine, religion and world literature.

Currently, the cornerstone of the collaboration is developing conferences on topics relevant to both institutions. Symposia are hosted on an alternating basis in the U.S. and Britain, with faculty and graduate students at both institutions participating in presentations and commentary. Nearly a dozen College of Arts and Science faculty, students and administrators traveled to Warwick for a symposium on estrangement and the natural world last spring.

Common Ground

For Jacqueline Labbe, chair of Warwick’s graduate school and director of its Humanities Centre, the program has great potential. “Warwick and Vanderbilt have a shared vision in the education of graduate students,” she says. “We see collaboration as offering ways in which colleagues can complement and energize each other’s research. The targeted nature of the relationship allows…access to an enlarged nexus of scholarly activities.”

Amanda Johnson, MA’09, a doctoral candidate in English at Vanderbilt, says the Warwick connection has enhanced her research and broadened her employment options. “Experiencing how different historians think and contributing my point of view to the conversation has been valuable,” says Johnson, who attended a summer 2010 symposium at Warwick.

In addition to the stimulating, interdisciplinary discussions, Johnson valued learning how U.S. and British educational institutions differ. “For instance, the British academy takes a more traditional approach and students are encouraged to know as much as possible about a certain topic,” she says. “In America, we’re more comfortable wandering around accumulating knowledge. We look at topics across different theoretical paradigms and how those can be portable across a century or a discipline.”

Firsthand Experiences

“Successful programs like VWIC are based on multiple strands of interest that are woven together,” says Joel Harrington, Vanderbilt’s associate provost for global strategy and professor of history. “Vanderbilt is always looking for ways to enhance the international dimensions of our scholarship and teaching in strategic ways that make the most of our strengths. The catalyst [for these programs]
is always faculty relationships and driven by research and teaching.”

Harrington says discussions are ongoing about expanding collaboration with Warwick into the sciences and other areas where the two institutions dovetail.

One strength for Vanderbilt students is working directly with materials in British libraries and experiencing what they’ve read firsthand. The Coventry Cathedral, for example, stands not far from the Warwick campus. “The sight of the bombed-out shell of the original cathedral, standing next to Basil Spence’s new Cathedral built after the second World War, recalls the devastation suffered by the British people during the war and the depth of their commitment to rebuild,” Epstein observes. “What better way to help students understand the resolute mood of the British people during the immediate postwar years?”

Likewise, for students in Warwick’s School of Comparative American Studies, stateside experience is irreplaceable. “Warwick scholars at Vanderbilt gain more than academic knowledge,” Schoenfield says. “They experience a particular slice of American culture, which adds depth and validity to their scholarship. Nashville figures importantly in American history and literature in ways more visible up close. Students gain an understanding of the forces that shaped the subjects of their research.”

The program also provides advantages to graduates in the world job market. A graduate student’s curriculum vitae that includes international collaboration makes a job candidate more attractive, Schoenfield notes. Jane Wanninger, MA’08, currently a doctoral candidate in English at Vanderbilt, agrees. “It’s important to build intellectual and professional networks, and to access a range of mentors and a base in Britain from which to conduct research,” Wanninger says. “In the time I spent in Warwick, I made valuable connections with other graduate students which gave me a more nuanced sense of the intricacies of transatlantic scholarship.”

Long term, Labbe says, the working partnership’s success will be measured by the passion of faculty and students. “We hope to see regular research workshops and symposia leading to sustained interinstitutional projects and annual graduate student visits and exchanges,” she says. “Within a few years, this should become an embedded aspect of each department.”

Watch The University of Warwick: Explore New Worlds
Watch “University of Warwick – A World Class Campus”

Imagine living in a country where participating in a survey could get you killed.

Not long ago, that was reality in some parts of Central and South America, where dictatorships ruled. Then as democracy spread, so did the ability to express political opinions openly. Today citizens of nearly every country in the Western Hemisphere participate in the AmericasBarometer, a regional survey series conducted by the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP). LAPOP was founded and is directed by Mitchell Seligson, Centennial Professor of Political Science and professor of sociology in the College of Arts and Science.

Through LAPOP, researchers in North, South and Central America and the Caribbean interview thousands of citizens on topics related to democratic values and citizenship. The survey data are made public and mined for insights into the nature and determinants of public opinion. The information is used by scholars, as well as utilized by those who support democracy and good governance to determine policies and programs.

The U.S. Agency for International Development uses LAPOP data, as do the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, United Nations Development Programme and numerous other governments and nongovernmental organizations.

Seligson and his colleagues regularly travel presenting the surveys’ results. LAPOP scholars and Vanderbilt graduate students also prepare short, targeted analysis of results, which are released biweekly. These AmericasBarometer Insights Series reports provide tightly focused analyses of specific, timely topics ranging from the role of government in job creation to citizen satisfaction with municipal services and even vigilante justice in Mexico.

The most recent AmericasBarometer wave of surveys was completed in 2010, and is focused on the effects of the world economic crisis on attitudes toward democracy.

“Analysis of this data can provide insight not available from other sources,” Seligson says, using the overthrow of the Honduran government by the military in 2009 as an example. “Data collected in 2008 were really leading indicators of that event, as they reflected Hondurans’ discontent, which eventually boiled over into the breakdown of constitutional democracy.”

Credible and Meticulous

LAPOP’s AmericasBarometer surveys are meticulously developed with input from academics, policymakers and others with a stake in democracy. LAPOP’s partners are drawn from universities and think tanks located in each country, and the surveys are translated into respondents’ languages—currently 15 different languages.

Expansion in scope and sophistication has been a recent hallmark of LAPOP’s AmericasBarometer program. “In 2010, we did surveys in Trinidad/Tobago and in Surinam for the first time,” says Elizabeth Zechmeister, associate director of LAPOP and associate professor of political science. In all, the 2010 AmericasBarometer survey included 26 countries, representing the largest coherent public opinion project in this hemisphere.

One recent and novel addition to LAPOP’s approach is the use of GPS technology underwritten by the National Science Foundation. It was employed in Chile, which experienced a magnitude 8.8 earthquake just prior to the survey there. The technology will support a study of political opinions in the aftermath of a natural disaster. “The GPS units will allow us to tag interviews based on the street block where they were conducted,” Zechmeister says. “We’ll be able to create a data set reflecting the individual’s distance from the hardest hit areas and then analyze how experiences with the earthquake affect attitudes toward democracy.”

Seligson and Zechmeister

LAPOP evolved from the two years Seligson and his wife, Susan Berk-Seligson, associate professor of Spanish, spent with the Peace Corps in Costa Rica in the late ’60s.

“For years, it was impossible and dangerous to do surveys in many Central and Latin American countries,” says Seligson, recalling hearing of people murdered in Paraguay in retaliation for participating in a survey in the 1960s. “The horrific consequences of dictatorship are clear to me. We have to retain a deep commitment to democratic systems, despite their many flaws.”

In 2004, Seligson moved from the University of Pittsburgh, where LAPOP had been based, to Vanderbilt. Today the program covers every major country in mainland North and South America and the Caribbean, and is spreading. Seligson and his team are currently working with the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health to develop a survey on health and other topics for Mozambique.

Draw for Young Scholars

Seligson says in addition to their value supporting scholarship and policies focused on democracy, LAPOP and AmericasBarometer are strong recruitment tools for the College of Arts and Science. Not only does the program attract graduate students who want to participate in survey development and implementation, but each AmericasBarometer database provides rich fodder for master’s theses and doctoral dissertations.

Zechmeister uses AmericasBarometer survey data in her undergraduate classes and will teach an honors seminar in 2011 on LAPOP. “We want undergraduates to learn more about how high quality public opinion data is collected and to build skills with respect to its analysis,” Zechmeister says. “This can carry forward to their working lives where public opinion may be an important part of their jobs.” She also sees LAPOP as a means of challenging undergrads to broaden their view of the world.

LAPOP funding comes from research institutions such as Princeton, Notre Dame and Vanderbilt, but the majority of its operating costs come from governmental and international entities including the USAID, the Inter-American Development Bank and the United Nations Development Programme. Such organizations share LAPOP’s passion for democracy and often rely on its findings to guide policy, programs and funding.

An endowment to provide permanent support for their work is Seligson and Zechmeister’s fondest desire and ongoing goal. The potential for return on investment is direct and clear, they say. “I am committed to a democratic Americas,” Seligson says. “But democracy isn’t an end goal, it’s a process. It’s constantly being challenged and constantly changing and our work demonstrates that. …The AmericasBarometer helps policymakers understand the strengths and weaknesses of democracy.”

Time spent abroad experiencing other cultures and gaining new knowledge has been part of the College of Arts and Science experience for thousands of alumni.

Groups of students recently traveled to Australia, Britain, China, Egypt, Germany, Greece and Canada (with Washington, D.C. thrown in for good measure) for intensive learning experiences known as Maymester. Thanks to new Global Summer Fellows Scholarships, need-based financial awards created by the Vanderbilt Student Government and the provost’s office, 25 students who otherwise would have been unable to participate experienced the four-week Maymester session or another study abroad program.

Exploring China participants at the Great Wall. In what students say was one of the most powerful experiences of the class, they also visited Tiananmen Square on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests.

Berlin 2009 participants made a visit to St. Nikolai Church, Leipzig, Germany, center of peaceful protests against the communist regime of East Germany in 1989.

Students took time out of their Artistic Escape to London course to see the city’s iconic sights.

Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. (left) met with Politics and Leadership students in Washington, D.C., led by Mark Dalhouse (center), director of Vanderbilt’s Office of Active Citizenship and Service.

Students in the Uncovering Greek Religion session gather before the Temple of Poseidon during a once-in-a-lifetime learning opportunity.

Conservation Biology participants experienced Australia from rainforest to barrier reef to the world-renowned sandstone formation, Uluru/Ayers Rock.

Riding camels to the pyramids of Giza was only one unforgettable adventure for students in the Egypt Culture and Society class.

Manoj K. Dora

Graduate student Manoj K. Dora was born in a poor village where people die of starvation and people sell their children for a meal. In this squalor, he dreamed of helping families launch small businesses to provide for their needs. Today, enrolled in Vanderbilt’s Graduate Program in Economic Development (GPED), his dream seems possible.

“GPED classes helped me to refine and articulate my plans,” the native of India says. “I am more confident about my plans now with the strong network I established during my stay here at Vanderbilt.”

For more than five decades, dreams like Dora’s have flourished at Vanderbilt’s GPED program and taken root in countries around the world. In 1954, Vanderbilt established the Summer Institute on Economic Development to teach international students how to help developing, low-income national economies and countries. Funded by the predecessor to the U.S. Agency for International Development, the program was located at Vanderbilt not only because of the university’s reputation, but also because of its location in the South. The aim was to show that there were pockets of America that faced similar issues to developing countries. Some 200 participants attended the three years of the summer institute, which led to the year-round degree program in the College of Arts and Science, the Graduate Program in Economic Development.

In the years since, more than 1,300 students from 125 countries have received degrees. (To put that in perspective, the United Nations has 192 member countries.) “It puts Vanderbilt on the map of the world,” says Suhas Ketkar, PhD’73, interim director of the program and professor of economics.

Some students have returned to their home countries to create programs like that Dora hopes to institute in India. Others have gone on to careers in public service. Finance minister, ambassador and bank governor are among the positions held by program graduates. Others have worked for international organizations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund or regional development banks. Still others have entered academia. A handful work in the private sector.

International and Influential

Süreyya Serdengeçti, MA’86, worked at the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey. When the bank recommended he pursue further education, he enrolled in the GPED. Returning to Turkey, he worked his way up to governor of the Central Bank, retiring in 2006 when his term expired. He lectures in economics at a university in Ankara and is director of a think tank.

“The quality of the education together with the international environment made the classroom experiences a delight,” he says. 

In 2005 Serdengeçti returned to Vanderbilt to speak to students, marking the long reach of the program and its vibrant network of alumni. That, says the program’s director, is one of the enduring effects of the GPED.

“We have a large group of alumni with whom we keep in touch,” Ketkar says. Of the 1,300 GPED graduates, the program maintains contact with more than 850 around the world. “We recruit new students largely on word of mouth. We have a number of graduates who have, over time, risen to important positions in their respective countries and they carry the Vanderbilt name with them.” 

Marie Kelley, Director Suhas Kethar and Mouzon Siddiqi.

Ideas that Impact

That helped draw Dora to the program. His ideas to impact his community were built upon the work of Mohammad Yunus, PhD’71, microcredit founder, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize recipient and an alumnus of the program. 

Ketkar himself holds a Vanderbilt degree in economics. His wife, Kusum Wadhawan Ketkar, MA’75, PhD’80, attended the program before earning a Ph.D. Ketkar taught at Vanderbilt after graduation, then went to Wall Street where he focused on emerging markets. Business travels took him around the world where, by merely being a Vanderbilt graduate, he would often be entertained by GPED alumni. After retiring from Wall Street, he returned to Vanderbilt to teach. 

Tatiana Mihailovschi-Muntean, MA’02, calls GPED “an unforgettable family. The existence of such a program is the most beneficial aspect of my experience,” she says. “It gave all of us a great opportunity to study and enjoy our stay in the U.S., and to gain invaluable educational and cultural experience. Honestly, those two years in Nashville were one of the best times of my and my family’s life.”

Mihailovschi-Muntean worked for the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova when she came to GPED. After graduation, she pursued her doctorate and is currently an assistant professor at Trent University in Canada. “The GPED program is one of the best for international students,” she says. “Everything is well-organized, and everybody is extremely helpful, friendly and welcoming.”

The first master’s class, 1956-1957.

Hospitality From Day One

Ketkar says the friendliness that students find when arriving can be attributed to Mouzon Siddiqi, program coordinator, and Van Marie Kelley, program secretary. The two women meet students at the airport, maintain a list of suitable off-campus apartments and even help students move furniture in a truck that Siddiqi purchased for just that reason. Siddiqi’s husband, Sultan Siddiqi, MA’70, is occasionally pressed into service to help a student navigate the Social Security office, enroll children in school or find halal meat (meat permitted by Islamic law). 

For Siddiqi, the issue is personal. Her husband came to Peabody College from Afghanistan to pursue master’s work without the benefit of a program like the GPED. “He found his way to the campus on his own. However, there was a university-owned, furnished house available to share with another student,” Siddiqi says. “After we married, I returned to Afghanistan in 1970 with Sultan for two years. The Afghans were incredibly hospitable, and it meant so much to me as a foreigner.”

For Kelley, the support and help they provide is just the right thing to do. “They come here from around the world,” she says. “We just want to make them comfortable and help them get set up and settled as much as possible before their classes begin. I know I would appreciate the same if I was in their situation.”

Both women also see their roles as impacting the world without leaving Calhoun Hall. “I like to feel that setting a good example of love and understanding will go abroad and help make the world a better place,” Kelley says. 

Siddiqi refers to the alumni as her children, and says she hopes to continue to have a positive effect. “It will never match the impact that our students have had on my life,” she says. “I would be a different person—my world would be much smaller—if I had not had the marvelous opportunity to work in the GPED.”

photo credit: Lize Rixt

Today’s ViF program has adapted to contemporary students’ needs and gives them a more global view of France and its people, says Associate Professor of French Virginia Scott, who served as professor-in-residence for summer 2008. “A critical topic among people who teach French is ‘why French?’” Scott says. “Because of global trends, many students want to study Spanish, Arabic or Chinese.” 

That shift has challenged ViF to find new relevance and appeal. Key to meeting that challenge has been the establishment of a resident director of the program in France. Maïté Monchal, who became the resident director in 2005, is credited with revitalizing the program and instituting new initiatives.

The ViF team, from left: Alice Cheylan, financial manager; Manu Meize, administrative assistant; Virginia Scott, professor-in-residence summer ’08; and Maïté Monchal, resident director.

ViF is Vanderbilt’s oldest study-abroad program. Begun in 1961 by the College of Arts and Science, ViF cultivated language fluency and cultural understanding. While those aspects remain, ViF now strives to be international, innovative and focused beyond cultural exploration. 

Stepping Stones 

Cannon Kinnard, BA’08, spent a semester with ViF, refining his French during a four-month internship at La Provence, the newspaper in Aix. Providing internships is a recent ViF innovation. They enable students to put a practical edge on their language skills and gain international work experience. ViF students also have done internships at Ballet Preljocaj, Marseilles’ children’s hospital and Aix schools.

Following his internship, Kinnard became the first ViF student to spend a semester at the Institut de Sciences Politiques (Sciences Po), a Paris university. Vanderbilt and Sciences Po now have an agreement to exchange up to five students annually. 

Today, Kinnard is pursuing graduate studies in journalism at New York University (NYU). “The head of admissions at NYU said he was impressed I’d worked at a newspaper abroad,” Kinnard says. “My experience in France was mind-opening and a fluid study in cultural differences.”

Living and Learning Language

Exposing students to different experiences has long been a hallmark of ViF. Marion West Hammer, BA’69, remembers her ViF days fondly. “It showed me a whole new culture,” says Hammer, now a Memphis, Tenn. middle school teacher of French and English. While in Aix, she lived with an older couple and became part of their extended family. “It helped me to be more open to the different ways people think.”

Although ViF students no longer board with local residents, they do interact with them. “Now we rent apartments around the city. Each has three or four ViF students and one or two French students,” Scott says. “The native speakers tie our students directly to student life. At the same time, the students form life-long bonds with each other and the city.” To provide a complementary view of life, several nights a week, students eat dinner with local host families. 

Senior Corinne Hartong spent summer 2008 falling in love with Aix. “The people I have met evoke all the elements that I now associate with the culture of Provence: colorful exuberance, respect for provençal traditions, love of cuisine and lively, long meals, and care for the earth,” she says. “The stories told at the dinner table by my host family offered me first-hand insight into their deeply-rooted love of the language and culture of Provence.”

The program’s life-changing impact was spoken of often during the first ViF alumni reunion, which took place in Aix in June 2008. More than 50 past participants, including three pioneers from the first session in 1961, traveled to France to celebrate the program, share memories and discover the ViF program that today’s students experience. They participated in activities alongside current students, enjoying trips, language and cooking classes, and long, laughter-filled dinners with host families. 

Senior Rachel Hanemann helps alumni attending the ViF reunion brush up on their French.

Cultural Strengths

In its 40-plus years, the program has evolved, but some aspects of ViF remain consistent. Students still attend classes taught by French faculty at the Vanderbilt Center located in a historic building in Aix. They experience trips to Nice, the Luberon, Avignon, the Pont du Gard and Marseille, plus excursions to museums and theater performances, French cooking classes and a week in Paris. Fall and spring sessions draw students with some level of proficiency in French although they do not need to be French majors. The summer session includes non-French speakers. 

In a new partnership initiated by Monchal, those students with greater proficiency can take classes alongside native French speakers at the Université de Provence in Aix. “MaÏté capitalized on our long history in Aix by creating internship opportunities, as well as relationships with the University of Provence so that our more proficient students may take courses there,” Scott says. “Her work makes it possible for our faculty in French to serve as professors in residence, teaching and doing research, instead of administrating.”

Reunion attendees assemble on the famous Cours Mirabeau in the center of Aix-en-Provence.

Citoyens du monde

For junior Fabiani Duarte, the program opened his eyes to “the power of communication, of connecting with people at a basic human level and the amount of respect, candor and human connection that engenders,” says Duarte, who used his French this summer while working as a congressional aide. “It’s important for Americans to be citizens of the world, to be able to communicate on a basic level with people.”

Increasingly, ViF serves students with interests in disciplines other than language. ViF includes a summer dance component and a two-week music program in which the Blair School of Music collaborates with the European Academy of Music. In spring 2009, the program will explore an alliance with a center for Islamic studies in Aix. This link could attract religious studies students who want to study Muslim faith and culture.

To reinforce the relevance of French and French culture internationally, ViF has added a spring semester week of study in the North African nation of Tunisia, where French is spoken. “Marseille is the gateway to North Africa and French-speaking countries there,” Scott says. “French isn’t just France, and we want to distinguish ourselves by having our students experience the greater Francophone world. By refining and recreating ViF, we’re able to create new niches for ourselves and our students.”

Say Nashville and language, and some people immediately think of a Southern drawl. But say Vanderbilt and language, and scores of scholars, diplomats and business executives around the world think of Spanish and Portuguese. 

Vanderbilt is one of a handful of U.S. universities offering a comprehensive course of study in Spanish and Portuguese, says Cathy Jrade, Chancellor’s Professor of Spanish and chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. That comprehensiveness emphasizes both cultural knowledge and fluency, with the result that the department’s graduates can now be found all over the Spanish-speaking world. In addition, a unique, more than 60-year connection to the Portuguese-speaking country of Brazil has made Vanderbilt one of the top centers in the United States for Brazilian studies. 

“Many of our undergraduates combine Spanish as a double major with other fields—premed, engineering, economics, political science,” Jrade says. The globalization that links North America through business, industry and immigration to its Spanish and Portuguese-speaking neighbors has placed the department at the forefront of learning and resources. 

Undergraduates focus on Spanish and Portuguese language study coupled with exploring the traditions, culture, history and literature of the nations that speak those languages. They are encouraged to study abroad and immerse themselves in the language and culture. Students can opt for one of several tracks in the Spanish and Portuguese program, including majoring exclusively in either language or both. 

That marriage of language and culture makes the program successful, according to Emanuelle Oliveira, assistant professor of Luso-Brazilian literature, who teaches classes on the culture of Brazil. “You can’t understand a culture if you don’t go deeper than just learning the language,” says the native of Rio de Janeiro. “The arts and literature of a country represent its soul.”

Skylar King, BA’05, credits her study-abroad semester in Chile for preparing her in both language and cultural understanding. King parlayed her double major in communications studies and Spanish into a job marketing public service and living abroad programs through an Austin, Texas, nonprofit. “Speaking the language deepens and widens your experience with other cultures,” says King, who recently led an alternative spring break group from Indiana University to Costa Rica. “It enriches you.”

Prominence in Portuguese

Although Vanderbilt’s emphasis on Spanish is not surprising, the university’s strength in the study of Portuguese is more unusual.  According to the Modern Language Association, 52 percent of foreign language students nationwide study Spanish. Less than 1 percent study Portuguese, although that figure represents a 22.4 percent increase since 2002. The gain acknowledges Brazil as the 10th-largest economy in the world; overall, one in three people in Latin America speaks Portuguese, and nearly 250 million people worldwide, including those in Angola, Cape Verde, East Timor, Mozambique, Portugal, and São Tomé and Príncipe.

The College of Arts and Science has three full-time faculty teaching Portuguese, a rarity among U.S. universities. Those scholars, along with a longtime partnership with Brazil, make Vanderbilt one of the top five U.S. institutions for the study of Brazil today. 

The foundation for leadership in Portuguese came under the direction of Chancellor Harvie Branscomb, fresh from a trip to South America. He saw offering Spanish and Portuguese as a way to position Vanderbilt as a national institution. Under his direction and using a grant from the Carnegie Corporation, Vanderbilt founded the Institute for Brazilian Studies in 1947. In the 1950s, interest and expertise in things Brazilian led to the founding of Vanderbilt’s Center for Latin American Studies, which eventually became the Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies (CLAIS). In the 1960s and ’70s, Vanderbilt professors taught at Brazilian universities. The College of Arts and Science’s landmark graduate program in economic development attracted Brazilian students, who returned to their county to serve in positions of prominence in finance and government. 

Vanderbilt is also a leading research center for Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula studies, home to the international Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA), and holds an extensive collection of reference materials. “Our Brazilian collection is one of the best in the country,” says Marshall Eakin, professor of history and executive director of BRASA. “We have materials that aren’t available anywhere else, including Latin America.” Those materials draw scholars and researchers from around the globe.

Good to Be No. 1

While the undergraduate program prepares students for a variety of careers, the graduate program focuses on educating academics and scholars. More than 50 students apply for the four to five slots available annually. Graduate students from both the U.S. and abroad, already fluent in Spanish, Portuguese or both, attend Vanderbilt to prepare for academic careers via specializations that are immersed in the rich culture, literature, industry and business of Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula. Competitive and comprehensive, the program was recently ranked as the country’s most productive graduate program in the area of studies by The Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index.

Vanderbilt’s comprehensive approach has led its graduates to teach at top-tier institutions such as Notre Dame, Michigan, Dartmouth and Florida. “As a university, we accrue value through the placement of our graduates,” Jrade says. 

That sense of value runs both ways, according to Juan Vitulli, MA’05, PhD’07. Now an assistant professor of Spanish Golden Age literature at the University of Notre Dame, Vitulli says Vanderbilt nurtured his aptitude for scholarly research and teaching. “The Spanish and Portuguese program offered me a great chance to develop my academic interests. When I entered in 2003, I didn’t know what my future would be. I just came to do my M.A. In less than four years, I completed my doctorate and obtained an excellent job,” Vitulli says. “When I started at Notre Dame, I was well prepared to get the balance between teaching and research.” 

Artwork by Nishan Akgulian.

Chile might seem a bit far to go for spring break, but in 2008, then-Dean Richard McCarty and a team of Vanderbilt faculty and staff made the trip as part of a university-wide effort to build research-based relationships with peer institutions around the globe.

McCarty, Assistant Provost for International Affairs Joel Harrington, Department of Anthropology Chair Tom Dillehay, and Vanderbilt International Office Program Coordinator Melissa Smith visited Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, one of South America’s top academic institutions. Although a partnership between Vanderbilt and the Chile university has not yet been formalized, all involved are enthusiastic.

“One way we can serve our students and faculty is to extend Vanderbilt’s reach internationally,” McCarty says. “The trip went very well. We had wonderful discussions across many disciplines.”

Vanderbilt has already established research-based institutional partnerships with the University of Melbourne, University of Cape Town, Fudan University and the University of São Paulo. “We want to build strong institutional relationships with a small number of peer institutions around the world. These are based on research collaborations, in contrast to student exchanges, which is what we’ve done in the past,” says Harrington, who noted Vanderbilt’s approach is unique compared to those at most American universities.

These partnerships provide new opportunities for students through research and internships, facilitate greater international research and teaching opportunities for faculty across disciplines, and improve Vanderbilt’s reputation abroad, Harrington says. Future initiatives may also include joint labs, symposia and conferences, and perhaps courses or degrees.

“The College of Arts and Science is very involved in these core partnerships, and it’s a great way for us to strengthen our academic programs,” McCarty notes.

Although students and faculty represent the primary beneficiaries of the internationalization efforts, staff and administration may also have the opportunity to participate in an exchange of ideas. The University of Melbourne sent a senior member of its development staff to meet with Vanderbilt development staff, and in exchange, one of Vanderbilt’s international office staff members visited Melbourne to learn from its expertise in internationalization.

The College of Arts and Science has had close ties to South America for decades, and to Chile in particular. Dillehay has led numerous archaeological and anthropological projects in the region. Simon Collier, former chair of the Department of History, had a long-standing relationship with Pontifical Catholic University through his academic interest in Chilean political history. In 2006, Pontifical Catholic University Political Science Professor Juan Pablo Luna participated in Vanderbilt’s Latin American Public Opinion Project directed by Mitchell Seligson, Centennial Professor of Political Science and fellow of the Center for the Americas.

“One of the priorities for the College of Arts and Science is creating new knowledge through research,” McCarty says. “International partnerships have the added bonus of tapping into other institutions’ strengths while providing our faculty and students with experiences that increase their personal knowledge.”

Artwork © iStockphoto.com/Marisa Allegra Williams.