Augustana encourages all students of Spanish to travel, to explore new cultures and to use their language skills to engage with people through international study. Without the type of cultural immersion opportunities that foreign study provides, language learning is only a shell of what it can be, a transformative growth experence. International study is a vital tool towards both cultural comprehension and linguistic proficiency for any student of world languages. For this reason Augustana College and the Department of Spanish offer numerous ways for its students to travel and study in both Spain and Latin America.
The Augustana Summer Spanish Program in the Andes is actually two programs, a 10-week language immersion program June through August with courses at all levels of Spanish, and a 5-week intensive language program for students at the Advanced level who are eligible for literature or culture & civilization coursework. In both programs Students live with families while attending classes at the Center for Inter-American Studies (CEDEI) in Cuenca, Ecuador. Augustana students earn 3 or 6 credits in the 5-week program or 9 credits (a year of Spanish) in the 10-week program. This popular program has been running for over 25 years, providing students not only college courses but also life-altering experiences. In addition to their coursework, students on the program participate in several one-day and multiple day excursions (both programs) and the 10-week program participants also experience a 10-day trip to Peru, where they visit, Lima, Cusco and the famed lost city of Machu Picchu.
For advanced students of Spanish the college has developed an affiliation with the Center for Cross-Cultural Study in Sevilla, Spain. This program allows students to earn credit for two full trimesters, including coursework in fields as diverse as Business, Art History, Sociology and Political Science in addition to Spanish, while attending classes from January through May in the heart of Andalucía. The Sevilla program places students with families for their time in Spain, enriching the classroom learning with family life and social interaction.
In addition to regularly offered language and cultural immersion programs, Augustana faculty have developed and continue to develop new short-term opportunities for students to spend up to 3 weeks in Latin America on service learning programs. Each year groups of Biology majors spend time working on medical service programs in Nicaragua, either during Spring Break or during the summer. Students in Pscychology will also be traveling to Central America on a program in Child Development to include service learning in Guatemala. For more information on these or other developing short-term programs, contact the Office of International Programs.
Augustana's fall Symposium Day 2024 invited big ideas from any and all disciplines, welcoming presentations from students, faculty and staff, and distinguished guests — including keynote speaker Dr. Roosevelt Montás from Columbia University and Dr. Chris Hedlin '11 from the University of Notre Dame.
High jumper Gabriela Loiz '23 earned All-American status at the NCAA DIII Outdoor National Championships in Rochester, N.Y. She is Augustana's first women's All-American in the high jump since 1997.
Every year, students in Augustana's EDGE Center lay groundwork for the success of the World Family Therapy Congress, held somewhere in the world.
