Lyon College Study Abroad Center

The third avenue of study abroad available to Lyon College students is to study at a particular foreign university or educational institution for a period of one month to one semester. At a study abroad center, some of the student’s classes will be taught by Lyon faculty and some may be taught by visiting professors from other universities or by host institution faculty. Normally, a study session at a center will allow students to earn a minimum of six credits.

Currently Lyon College has three study abroad centers: the Vesuvian Institute in Southern Italy; the Mark Rothko Art Centre in Daugavpils, Latvia; and the Centre for European Studies at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland.

Lyon College at the Mark Rothko Art Centre in Latvia

Lyon will offer a study abroad opportunity for students interested in art on location in Latvia in June of 2022. The program will focus on the art and the unique culture of Latvia with a partnership with the Mark Rothko Art Center in Daugavpils, Latvia. The Center’s website can be seen here. Art majors and students interested in art will be allowed the opportunity to interact with the rich cultural heritage in Latvia, a Baltic Country, that gained its independence as a former Soviet country in 1991. Students will have the opportunity to paint and study Baltic art history in an immersive and expressive environment. Students will stay in a former military citadel used during the early nineteenth century toward the end of the Napoleonic wars, later converted into a Soviet era military base and now restored as an art museum and residency program. Classes will be offered on site at the Mark Rothko Art Center, where you will be inspired by the modern tradition of Color Field Abstraction that Rothko popularizes.

Students are encouraged to have had the prerequisite of ART 101, ART 120, or ART 232 before traveling on the trip and can creatively and loosely approach the theme of color field painting gaining inspiration from Rothko’s work. Abstraction is the predominant subject matter, but students can also incorporate landscape and/or figurative elements depending on their interests. 

The art history course will center on the unique comprehension history of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, as you navigate individualistic art movements of these countries from their very beginnings to the 20th century through contemporary art. Topics will include Art Nouveau architecture (studied first hand in the capital Riga); social realism during the Soviet era; and revolutionary art in the liberation of Latvia, first in the early twentieth century and again in the 1990’s.

Tentative list of classes to be offered for the Latvia art program:

ART 282: Special Topics: Painting Color Field

ART 382: Special Topics: Baltic Art History

Students will be expected to pay for meals (billed by Lyon College), optional excursions, and incidentals. The combined basic estimated cost for 2022 is approximately $2500, with most students being eligible for a $2000 grant based on the length of the program. The program will last four weeks and carry at least six credits, which should be covered by institutional and governmental financial for eligible students.

For cost of living information for the area, visit this site.

Lyon College Kraków Study Abroad Center

The Poland Study Abroad Program would involve a summer semester (approximately 31 days) of course work and related excursions and visits to cultural, economic and academic sites in Poland. The program would build off the two-week Nichols trip undertaken in Poland in Summer 2018, and would involve cooperation with the Jagiellonian University’s Centre for European Studies. Ideally, one of the courses of the program would be taught by Jagiellonian’s faculty (we had a very positive experience with Dr. Joanna Orzechowska-Waclawska (Economics and Sociology) during the Nichols trip).

We hope that the Centre can also assist us with lodging and classroom space for our students. The other two courses (together with an extra credit hour for the cultural portion; the entire semester would be worth 10 credit hours) would be taught by Lyon Faculty, presumably Dr. Szulga and another faculty from History or Politics.

The three courses are described below. In addition to the course taught by the Jagiellonian faculty (ideally on the Economy of Eastern and Central Europe), the other courses would take advantage of the location and history of the region. The Multinational Financial Investment course, which we already have in the catalog, would fit in with the purpose of the program as it deals with exchange rates, international economic issues, and the operations of multinational firms. A new course, which would be offered as part of the program, would either be Economic History of Europe or a History course on World War 2 and/or the Holocaust. This last course can be adjusted according to the availability and interests of other Lyon Faculty that wish to participate.

Lodging for the students could potentially be obtained through the Jagiellonian University, although the particular dates can affect availability of dorm space. Alternatively, it would be straightforward to obtain month long apartment/hostel rental in the vicinity of the university, if the total number of students participating in the program is not too high (anything under 16 can be easily accommodated).

In addition to the course work students would be required to read several books (listed below) and participate in cultural and academic events in Poland. There are two possible ways to set up the exact schedule. In the first variant, students would take courses Monday through Thursday (perhaps including early Friday) and then participate in the excursions on the weekends, with Sundays off. In the second variant, we could extend the duration of the program, and have a week in the middle of the trip to do all the major excursions at once. The schedule below is based on the first variant.

Costs involved would consist of travel, lodging, food, event ticket prices, and tuition. Since the coursework will count towards graduation, if the students are charged summer tuition rates – they would be saving money in this respect. Likewise, because food and lodging are cheaper in Poland than United States due to favorable exchange rates, so these categories of costs might also be lower for the students. On the other hand, the plane ticket and event tickets would be costs that students would normally not pay if they did not participate in the program.

For the college, additional costs will consist of the compensation of faculty for teaching the course, as well as some per diem costs.

Dates (tentative, picked for illustrative purposes)

July 8th – August 8th
~31 Days
8 weekend days – cultural events related to course material in Kraków, Warsaw, and possibly Gdansk.
23 week days – students attend classes, some cultural events in Kraków in the afternoons and evenings.
Alternatively, take a week off in the middle to combine the Warsaw and Gdansk visits, but require classes on some Saturdays to compensate

Weekend Trips
Weekend 1
Saturday: Wieliczka Salt Mine (Cultural)
Sunday: Wawel Castle (Cultural)

Weekend 2
Saturday: National Bank of Poland in Warsaw (ECO 401, ECEE)
Sunday: Warsaw Uprising Museum (WW2)

Weekend 3
Saturday: Solidarity Centre in Gdansk (ECEE)
Sunday: Westerplatte (WW2), Cultural Spots in Sopot (Cultural))
Note – because Gdansk is 7hrs away from Kraków, maybe skip Gdansk (alternatives: Czestochowa, Sandomierz, Lodz (museum of textiles and industrial revolution) or combine it into a single Warsaw-Gdansk trip

Weekend 4
Saturday: Zakopane/Polish Highlander region (ECEE)
Sunday: Auschwitz (WW2)

Academics
Three 3-hour courses:

• ECO 401 Multinational Financial Investment (taught by Dr. Szulga)
• ECO/POL XXX (ECEE) Economy of Central and Eastern Europe: From Transition to EU (taught by UJ faculty)
  
  And one of the following, depending on faculty interests/availability:
  
  
• HIS XXX (WW2) World War 2/Holocaust course (taught by another Lyon faculty or UJ faculty)
• ECO/HIS XXX (EHE) Economic History of Europe (taught by Dr. Szulga)

One 1-credit hour for participation in cultural events; total of 10 credit hours.

Program related readings and media:

Books

• God’s Playground, Norman Davies (Columbia Univ. Press)
• Postwar, Tony Judt (Perigree)
• Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction, Robert Allen (Oxford Univ. Press)
• The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery, Witold Pilecki (Aquila Polonica)

Movies

• Man of Marble, Andrzej Wajda
• Man of Iron, Andrzej Wajda
• White, Stefan Kieslowski

Lyon College Vesuvian Institute

The Institute will offer its first round of courses in July of 2022, if circumstances allow. The first program to be implemented at the Institute will be for computer science majors and will feature extensive onsite practical work in GIS based on data from the archeological site supplemented by classes taught by Lyon faculty. Italian language will be offered as part of the orientation.

Tentative list of classes to be offered:

CSC 482: Database for Interdisciplinary Research
CSC 482: GIS for Archaeology
CSC 482: Special Topics – Web Development

Students will be expected to pay for meals (billed by Lyon College), optional excursions, and incidentals. The combined basic estimated cost for 2021 is approximately $3000 with most students being eligible for a $2000 grant based on the length of the program. The plan for the Vesuvian Institute is to later add other courses, such as art restoration, which would follow the same model of combining onsite and online classes with practical experience.