updated June 16, 2008

Passports and textbooks in hand, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology students have traveled to Tokyo, Stuttgart and Rome –- and many interesting places in between –- in international educational opportunities throughout the world this summer.

Rose-Hulman has several study abroad programs with universities throughout Europe, Asia and South America; Department of Humanities and Social Sciences faculty members have organized international trips to complement course work; and students have found their own study experiences in Australia, Chile, Ireland, Scotland and Spain.

Fourteen students are currently studying at Kanazawa Institute of Technology through an Intensive program in Japanese for Science and Technology (IJST) between Rose-Hulman and Japan’s largest institution of higher education that specializes in engineering and technology.

The group includes senior David Ellestad; juniors Ted Frater, Thomas Kleeman, Matthew Luke, Nicholas McNees, Jon Papp, Colin Rice, Kyle Schmetz, Eric Smith and Gregory Zynda; sophomore Alexander Jones; graduate students Robert Anderson and Scott Ruskamp; and 2008 graduate Daniel Soledad.   Leading the contingent is Maki Hirotani, assistant professor of Japanese.

Besides studying Japanese language and culture, some of the students have visited Akihabara, Tokyo’s electronic/anime/entertainment district; Shinjuku, a large shopping and business district in Japan’s capital city; and a famous Buddhist temper in Asakusa, Japan.  Visits to the Kansai and Kyushu regions of Japan and Miyajima Island are also planned before returning to the U.S. in August.

“I hope to learn about Japanese daily life, both in the home and in the academic setting; Japanese culture in the forms of religion, personal interactions, cuisine, and architecture; and to improve my Japanese speaking, writing, and reading skills,” stated Smith, a junior chemistry major from Clinton, Ind.   

Smith will be studying courses in Japanese communication, academic Japanese, and Japanese for science and technology.  He will also design and construct a Rube Goldberg mechanical device with a Japanese student partner.

“I can get by in Japan with my knowledge of Japanese (from classes taken at Rose-Hulman), but any sort of conversation outside of normal daily activities has been very difficult so far,” Smith admits.  “I am prepared enough to engage in this program, but there is much that the KIT-IJST program can teach me.”

Meanwhile, 11 Rose-Hulman students are spending the summer studying or participating in international internships in Germany through study abroad programs at some of the world’s oldest and most prestigious institutions.

Participating in a summer university program at the University of Stuttgart are sophomores Taylor Coleman and Andrew Horvath, while seniors Samuel Long, Ryan Mondonca, Kelley Ruehl and Lauren Trennel have joined junior Michael Voll in a study abroad program at the college.

Marlow Bakken, a junior, is studying for the summer semester at the University of Magdeburg, while senior Christina Davis and junior Christine Price are spending the summer semester at the University of Ulm.  Justin Jent, a senior, is participating on an internship in Germany through the International Association for the Exchange of Students for Technical Experience, an organization dedicated to developing global skills in tomorrow's technical leaders through international exchange.

These international experiences are important in developing students that can understand and appreciate other cultures, political systems and religions, according to Andreas Michel, professor of German and European Studies.

“American students need to encounter the foreign culture -- live in it -- weigh it, in order to accept or reject it, to work with it, so they can see that their own indigenous way of dealing with things is not the only, right, good, acceptable and defensible way.  They have to experience it so that they may accept or reject it.  This cannot be taught in the classroom,” Michel stated.  “Many of the Junior Year Abroad veterans make the ability to travel a precondition for future employment.  Some go back for postsecondary work abroad.  Some marry the sweethearts they found abroad . . . Students who have spent some time abroad become ambassadors in a non-trivial sense -- because they constantly compare, weigh, where, what, who they are as against where, what, who they were.”

Rose-Hulman’s football team spent nine days in early June traveling through Italy while playing the Lenaf All-Star Football Team in an exhibition game in Muggia.  Students toured Rome, Florence and Venice, and had the opportunity to visit the Colisseum, Pantheon and historical religious sites of Rome, the marble cathedral in the Piazza del Duomo in Florence, and the Piazza San Marco on the largest island in Venice.