Avignon, Russian Language Institute, Jordan Program Move Online for Summer '21

Last summer several of the College’s intensive language programs moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This summer the Institut d’Avignon (Avignon Program), the Russian Language Institute (RLI), and the Arabic Language and Interdisciplinary Learning Program (Jordan Program) are continuing in an online/remote learning and teaching environment. The experience gained from remote programming over the last year is being employed to provide educational and cultural opportunities for students to continue to grow and develop their capacity for global learning.

The Institut d’Avignon (Avignon Program), a six-week intensive summer program in French and theater studies, is running online for summer 2021. In addition to four undergraduate courses and three graduate courses taught by visiting faculty members from France and the U.S., the program is offering a weekly cooking workshop and five lectures from guest speakers, including three academics, a playwright, and a filmmaker. Students from several universities and colleges across the U.S. take two courses over the course of the six-week program that provides the opportunity to improve their French language skills. Students who participate in the theater course will perform a remote play at the end of the program. Next year, 2022, will mark the 60th anniversary of the creation of the program by Michel Guggenheim and René Girard.

The Russian Language Institute (RLI), a highly focused eight-week curriculum designed for intensive Russian language learning, will offer second-, third-, and fourth-year Russian courses remotely (via Zoom). The program dates for summer 2021 are June 9 to Aug. 4. Program participants will participate in three hours of classes daily, from Monday to Friday. While RLI cannot offer a full in-country immersion this summer due to the fact that students will not reside on campus, it will retain the majority of its traditional extracurricular activities, such as guest lectures, film screenings, a t-shirt design contest, cooking demonstrations, and the end of program Russian culture event. In addition, each student will meet with a tutor to practice informal conversation and formal presentations, and to master grammar and vocabulary learned in class. All classes, extracurricular activities, and tutoring sessions will be synchronous. In the eight weeks of the program, students will earn credits for two semesters of intensive Russian.

The Arabic Language and Interdisciplinary Learning Program (Jordan Program), rooted in partnership between Bryn Mawr College and Sijal Institute in Amman, is running as a remote language and cultural learning experience for the summer of 2021. Five students, three from Haverford College and two from Bryn Mawr College, are joining a cohort of Arabic language learners from across the globe to participate in online courses where they will advance their knowledge of the Arabic language and their understanding of the Middle East. Students have the option to enroll either in two five-week sessions over the course of the summer or one five-week session and a five-week externship with a local organization based in Jordan accompanied by continued Arabic language learning. The externship component of the program was initiated in 2019 but was put on hiatus due to the pandemic in summer 2020. The remote externship represents exciting growth in the partnership with Sijal Institute. Classes will be held over video conference with 15 hours of language learning and three hours of content courses per week, alongside extra-curricular lectures and cultural activities. Topics for the content courses range from food, to politics, to arts and literature, to archaeology.