Visit study abroad site Montpellier, France with ICD's Senior Academic Advisor Meghan Allen Eliason
I was so fortunate to be able to visit a learning abroad program with ICD connections last spring, after the pandemic delayed the original attempt by several years!
Back in 2017, Dr. Ann Masten and I began conversations with the UMN Learning Abroad Center about ways to incorporate our content into their longstanding program site in Montpellier, France. Montpellier has been a flagship program center for the University for decades, starting with opportunities only for French majors or minors and then slowly adding other disciplines over the years (including a teaching field experience for our Early Childhood majors). Our group envisioned a new academic track, now called Youth Development & Psychology, that would allow students in both Developmental Psychology and Psychology to earn credit in their majors or minors. The program would be built around a required course based off of Dr. Masten's work on resilience in children and youth, taught from a global perspective. Additional course offerings (all taught by French professors but in English) now include Adolescent Psychology, Cross-Cultural Psychology, and Intro to Child Psychology.
All students studying in Montpellier take a French course at their level, along with a class that connects them with the local community in some way. For students doing the Psychology track, this is a community engagement opportunity in which they are placed with a local organization and earn credit as a CPSY internship. Our students serve at places such as schools, humanitarian services, and family support centers while meeting weekly with a professor to discuss the historical, social, and political context of the French (and broader European) community in comparison with American systems.
While we are so excited to make this opportunity available for UMN students in our related majors, the Montpellier program also welcomes students from many other universities. So we are very proud that students from other UMN departments as well as from universities across the country are able to take these versions of ICD courses. And non-ICD students from the U of M can be introduced to our courses while in France and therefore may be inspired to pursue our Dev Psych major or minor!
Pictured: Meghan Allen Eliason, Madeline Siegersma, Ella Narowski, Varsha Venkatesh, Rose Kindred
At the Mediterranean Sea with two of the Montpellier program center staff members
Ella and Maddy helping to serve meals at their community engagement site
Les Arceaux: the 18th-century aqueduct outside my hotel
During my visit to Montpellier I was able to sit in on classes, observe students at their internship sites, meet with program center staff and instructors, see student housing options, and generally take in all this beautiful and historic city has to offer. Their fantastic staff also took me on one example of the many "excursions" offered to students throughout their time abroad: we walked on the medieval city walls of Aigues-Mortes, overlooking the Mediterranean sea and its famous salt flats. Our students spending a semester in Montpellier report that they love feeling at home in a somewhat smaller town, but also having so many amazing opportunities to easily travel around the rest of Europe and even Northern Africa.
Students and I will be offering information sessions in November to hopefully encourage others to consider this wonderful program and spend a semester in this enchanting part of the world. Returnees consistently report how deeply their lives are impacted by international education, and I am proud that ICD can now claim a small role in these transformative experiences as well. We are all grateful to Dr. Masten for her expertise in supporting the French instructors and classes as they created this new program. I look forward to continuing and hopefully even expanding on our partnership with the incredible Montpellier and Learning Abroad Center staff members, for the benefit of current and future ICD students!