A few of the tens of thousands of students whose campuses were washed out by Hurricane Katrina have ended up with an unscheduled study abroad in Germany.
Several public universities there have made available a total of 30 places for the fall semester — with all expenses paid.
The 12 universities of the German state of Hesse have accepted 15 students. Ludwig Maximilian University, in Munich, is taking 5, and the University of Dortmund is taking 10. In general, the offers include airfare, all fees, accommodations, health insurance, and about $20 per day spending money.
Students who have been studying German will take at least some classes in that language. (The university waived the German-language-proficiency examination in favor of informal phone conversations.) But the others will choose from the growing number of courses taught in English that German universities have been developing to attract more foreign students.
“The Hessian universities provide more than 30 study programs in English,” in the humanities, hard sciences, and social sciences, says Michael Werz, director of a New York office representing the institutions. “It has been no problem for us to find English-language programs to put them in.”
Money for the project comes from the publicly financed German Academic Exchange Service and from private contributions.
The German academic semester runs from mid-October to the end of January.
Ashley M. Stone, a senior majoring in Spanish and sociology at Loyola University New Orleans, flew to Germany after being accepted by Dortmund, in the western part of the country. She says she had considered enrolling temporarily in an institution near Lafayette, La., where her family is staying, until she came across the offer from Dortmund on Loyola’s Web site.
The German institution, she says, offers more courses of interest to her than do the American institutions she was considering.
“I’d rather be in Europe than in a little town in Louisiana,” she said in a telephone interview, minutes after arriving in Dortmund. “I’m interested in foreign languages and thought this would be an excellent opportunity.”
All 10 students accepted at Dortmund are from Loyola. (The two institutions already had a formal exchange program.) Walter F. Grünzweig, a professor of American studies at Dortmund, is coordinating the project there. He says he received 30 applications for the 10 places.
“We received letters from lots of people with horrible stories,” he says. “We wanted to accept those with the best chance of succeeding here.”
He says five of the American students are enrolling in courses taught in German, and the other five will study in English.
http://chronicle.com Section: International Volume 52, Issue 9, Page A47