“For the students whom we help to study abroad, visiting other countries is a broadening
experience,” says Academic Dean Amelia Harris, who has worked to expand the College’s
international offerings. “These students return with cultural perspectives they could never
gain from a book or a class. They have a better

understanding of how life is lived in at least one other country, and they generally
comprehend that some things are better here, and some are better there, a valuable lesson.”
      Students who study abroad typically return to UVa-Wise as more mature individuals with increased self-confidence. “And almost always, they want to see and experience more of the world,” Harris says.
      For four consecutive years, Anne Gilfoil, assistant professor of Spanish, has led students on a four-week adventure to Seville, Spain. Students lived with Spanish families and used the city of Seville as a classroom, meeting for excursions to museums, theaters, palaces and churches and for language classes in the plaza.
     "We’d be in a castle or a palace or a cathedral and I’d see their faces just light up,” Gilfoil says. “It makes it real for them. There’s no way to compare learning in a classroom that’s divorced from the culture and seeing it first hand.”
      Other options include a semester at UVa-Wise’s sister institution, the CEU-Cardinal Spinola, a private university in Seville.
      Students studying French may choose a four-week summer course in Beaune, France. Participants live with French families and pledge to speak only French during their stay.
      A UVa-Wise student will begin study in Baden, Austria in the fall at the Pädagogische Akademie, a sister institution located thirty minutes from Vienna. The student will live in a house with other international students and have frequent opportunities to travel in Austria. Intended for German students, the option could also be open to less proficient German speakers as some courses are taught in English.
      Students also may enroll in a UVa-Wise independent study course in the culture and civilization of Austria and Germany. Students travel within the region visiting the cities and towns which are studied in the course and their buildings, palaces, churches, and museums.
      Students who want to spend a semester or a year in Turkey and who want to study economics or business, the only subjects taught in English, may attend the University of Istanbul, the College’s sister institution in Turkey. Students may take Turkish courses while attending the University.
      Other agreements are pending with the Berlin School for Economics, which has whole curricula taught in English, and with the University of Seville. Both of these might include exchanges for faculty as well as exchanges for students.
     "The only way the world will be able to survive the misunderstandings and the clashes between cultures is by positive connections between the people of those cultures,” Harris says. “And the best way to make those connections is personal contact, underpinned by knowledge of the culture. We must encourage our students to study another culture here and be immersed in that culture by studying abroad; we must make it possible for students from other countries to come here and learn about us. I believe UVa-Wise is off to a good start at making that happen.”