World travel is essential, yet it is inaccessible for too many. According to the Pew Research Center, roughly 27% of American adults have never left the country. Many who have left the country may travel the world for work or personal pleasure, and not necessarily to expand their world view. At Wabash, immersion courses provide the perfect chance for students to expand their horizons by studying the world authentically. These courses feature trips that are a medium between the liberal arts education and international travel; the goal of these expeditions is to encourage students to embrace a higher quality of learning. Immersion courses focus on tangible learning rather than enjoyable tourism; even students that are well-traveled benefit from the trips as they can connect their knowledge to the real world.
“One of the joys that I have in leading these is that there’s less of a distinction between when you’re in class and when you’re not in class,” said Professor of Classics Jeremy Hartnett ’96. “You learn stuff when you are sitting down at a restaurant for example…The things that we see on the trip are constantly touch points for the rest of the semester.”
The concept of international travel for the purpose of education has existed at Wabash for decades; however, immersion courses were formally created in 2000 as a part of the College’s strategic plan through the Center for Academic Enrichment. One of the earliest trips, co-led by Professor of Biology and Global Health Initiative Director Eric Wetzel, was held near Jamaica’s Hofstra University Marine Laboratory in 2001 and allowed students to complete field research in ecology by studying octopi. The trip to Jamaica is just one of the many unique and exciting trips that professors have hosted through immersion courses.
“Students have the opportunity to travel with faculty experts, who help them navigate a new environment and interpret what they are experiencing,” said Associate Professor of Spanish Jane Hardy. “You can learn from books and in a classroom setting, but the learning is much more profound and lasting when you can experience what you’re studying first-hand. Imagine, for example, the difference between reading about coffee production or watching a film about it vs. going to a coffee plantation in Costa Rica, seeing the landscape, walking between the rows of coffee plants and picking coffee fruit yourself… Best of all, Wabash covers nearly all of the cost, making immersion courses accessible to everyone.”
In the early 2000s, the courses grew in popularity, and were funded mainly through the College’s campaign, where a major grant that supported the courses was secured by then Dean of the College Mauri Ditzler ’75. The courses have always come at no cost to students (outside of personal meals and travel documents), but in 2007, a donation from the Eli Lilly Endowment Inc. matched $2.5 million to the $2 million the college received from donors. Then-President of the College Pat White announced that the funding would allow the college to set up a $2 million endowment to fund classroom programs including immersion trips. More recently, in 2018, Board of Trustees Member John C. Schroeder ’69 and Diane Schroeder H’99, generously gave to the College to ensure that every Wabash student has access to fully-funded immersion courses.
“The impact of these trips is tremendous,” said Hardy. “The learning is deeper and longer-lasting when you can immerse yourself in what you’re studying and experience it first-hand. Beyond that, students gain confidence by traveling and learning to navigate a new environment, while still having the support of an experienced faculty member… Planning, teaching and leading an immersion course is a tremendous amount of work for a faculty member, and we usually sacrifice a break in order to do it, but many of us are dedicated to offering such courses because we see the tremendous impact the experiences have on our students.”
While learning in a classroom at Wabash is tremendously valuable, there are simply incomparable advantages that come from traveling. Students can further understand why they are learning specific subjects, and can feel a stronger connection to course material.
“When we are walking through the streets of Pompeii or climbing a volcano, which is one of the things that we do, it is really palpable that the Romans and the Greeks were real people who lived radically different lives from ours,” said Hartnett. “I showed in my Latin class today a picture of the first immersion course that I led, which was in 2007. There were 14 guys on the trip and I think seven of them went back to Italy for their honeymoon, which shows the impact that the trips can have on students.”
While the trips provide incredible experiences and impact, they are not intended to fully change the worldviews of students. Rather, they are designed to expand them.
“The successful immersion course doesn’t mean that everybody’s coming back from Paris wearing a beret and smoking clove cigarettes and reading Camus,” said Hartnett. “It’s that a seed has been planted about how interesting and complex the world is.”
Outside of education, immersion courses can influence students in many ways.
“Immersion courses open the world to students, stimulate their curiosity and imagination, and inspire them to continue traveling,” said Hardy. “Not only do they learn about other countries — in the case of an international trip — but leaving the US and seeing it from the outside provides students with a different perspective on their own country.”
Ultimately, these trips are made possible through the generosity of alumni, faculty, staff, and of course, the professors who plan and lead these brilliant experiences. In the nearly thirty years since their development, immersion courses have served students across the board. They help students tangibly apply information from their classes, give them a unique firsthand understanding of the world, and often lead to greater realizations and wisdom in the context of their education.