If you are interested in this opportunity please contact Haley (hjs142@psu.edu) today to discuss how this course and travel will fulfill the ESP travel abroad/internship requirement.
Program Description:
The Department of Communication Arts and Sciences prepares students to better grasp and harness the power of communication in the personal, professional, and public spheres while also seeking to open students’ minds to the complexities of human affairs. Offering students to fully immerse themselves in a different culture for a two week-period and focus on a few specific aspects while abroad provides a unique chance to support our mission: Students get to work on academic, inter- and intra-personal, career, and intercultural development outcomes.
This optional embedded 12-day program is open to 10-15 students enrolled in the online course CAS 271 INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION, offered in the summer of 2014. Students can choose to earn 2 or 3 credits and hence, an individual student’s workload will vary. However, attendance at all events scheduled as part of the embedded program is mandatory no matter how many credits a student pursues.
Eduard T. Hall’s observation that “communication is culture and culture is communication” guides the activities and encounters in this course. While the focus is on Austria and its unique location within the European Union (EU) – geographically, socially, politically, and culturally – the course also shows how different cultures from outside Central, Eastern and Western Europe have been and are still shaping life inside the EU today.
This course offers a plethora of formal and informal opportunities to engage in dialogue with Austrians of a variety of backgrounds. The goal to improve students’ intercultural competence: Attitudes such as curiosity and the willingness to step beyond one’s (cultural) comfort zones, skills such as observing, listening, and analyzing, plus, being adaptable and showing empathy are a requirement to successfully complete and fully benefit from this program. The objective is to provide students with an immersive experience abroad to enhance self-reflection, flexibility, and sensitivity in intercultural communication settings that can be applied to both personal and professional environments.
You can learn more here: http://austriainaction.wordpress.com/
Don't delay, there are limited spots and scholarships available!