On Wednesday May 6, the Office of Study Abroad hosted a virtual pre-departure orientation for students planning to study abroad for the fall semester. The orientation covered Wesleyan-specific considerations and items such as health and safety practices, acclimating to a new culture, negotiating one’s own cultural identity abroad, academic policies, as well as the potential…
Returning from abroad can be difficult for students as they reacclimatize to life back in their own country. You have changed during your time abroad, home has changed, and you will be seeing familiar people, places, and behaviors from new perspectives. These changes will lead to some new emotional and psychological responses as part of a process called…
Study abroad in spring 2020 was certainly not what any of our students expected. The Vassar-Wesleyan Program in Paris celebrated the end of its semester on April 24 with a reception, held, of course, on Zoom. Vassar Professor Vinay Swamy, who was Resident Director of the program for 2019-2020, provided some highlights for students who…
Peter C. Cherr, BA ’79. MALS ’80, put himself through Wesleyan, working as a security guard, in the dean’s office, the admissions office, and for the summer school, and majoring in philosophy and religion, one course short of a world music major and doing his thesis in film. At Wesleyan he learned to problem solve…
I’m Luke Pang, a 2010 Singaporean Freeman scholar. I double majored in Neuroscience and Psychology at Wesleyan, and upon graduating, decided to postpone my medical school studies to explore the culinary world. I worked in the kitchen in Convivio and Ciano in New York City for a year, and upon deciding to commit to the…
Don Fels, Wesleyan ’68, and father of Benjamin Fels ’06,was an American Studies major at Wes, one of the first two to graduate. He put together his major from English, History and Art. Half a century later, he still is very much involved with all three disciplines. A visual artist and writer, he is based…
My name’s Samantha Meagher. I’m from New Jersey. I’m a rising senior with a double major in Sociology and HISP. I wrote this poem because Wesleyan is a place that has allowed me to form deep connections and learn so much more about myself. It feels awful to be torn away from it so abruptly…
Katie Murray I’m from the class of 2019, my majors were Government and Hispanic Literature and Culture and I received an English Teaching Assistantship to the Canary Islands. It sounds like I’m exaggerating, but my experience was better than I had ever imagined. The best part for me was getting to know a…
Written by Kennedy Odede ’12 When Covid-19 hits Africa, will we be ready? This was a distant thought just one month ago. Now, as cases climb, we are braced for impact. As the crisis deepens in the world’s largest economies, taking up most of the media bandwidth, Africa hardly makes the headlines. In international news…
My name is Sophie, I’m a sophomore at Wesleyan, a freshly declared Italian Studies major, and a student employee for the Fries Center for Global Studies and the Office of Study Abroad. Over the spring semester I, along with my peers and coworkers, have been preparing for next fall abroad. My peers and I have…
by Konstance Krueger, OSA Graduate Assistant It’s been a challenging last few weeks for students who planned, prepared, and saved to study abroad this spring. In difficult times like these, it’s important that we treat ourselves kindly, find community, and recognize that we are not alone. The Office of Study Abroad, WesWell, and the Office of…
Written by Kennedy Odede ’12 The Covid-19 crisis will move our problems from a health pandemic to class warfare. For most of my life, I lived in Kibra — before a series of chance encounters brought me to attain my university education in the United States. My life in Kibra was shared, intimate, inextricable. At…
Professor H. M. FazaleHaq, a linguist who arrived at Wesleyan a year ago, will be offering a timely new course in the fall: “Language and Politics: Making and Unmaking of Nations” (CGST212). Here is the course description: This course explores the key topics at the intersection of language and politics, including language choice, linguistic correctness,…
Written by Alice Hadler In this time of social distancing, a very quiet campus, and a pandemic whose reach extends from down the street to the most remote corners of the globe and everywhere in between, we have decided to temporarily change the focus of the Wes and the World newsletter for the remainder of…
Written by Lexi Cummings A recent article published in the Harvard Business Review heralds the psychological benefits of studying abroad. In order to explore this claim, researchers examined the concept of “self-concept clarity,” referring to “the extent to which someone’s understanding of him or herself is ‘clearly and confidently defined, internally consistent, and temporally stable.’”…
“The Truman Foundation is the nation’s official living memorial to our thirty-third president and The Presidential Memorial to Public Service. Created by Congress in 1975, the Foundation was President Truman’s idea. President Truman did not want a bricks and mortar monument. Instead, he encouraged a living memorial that would give life to the values of…
