A Note from the Director

Greetings, and welcome to Wellesley-in-Aix.

2009-10 marks Wellesley College’s 29th year in France. We’ve designed our program to give you a way of deepening your academic learning with real-time experience in France—in a vibrant, cosmopolitan city located in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Aix-en-Provence is home to a distinguished university and boasts a substantial student culture. It’s also famous in France for its exuberant openness. Aix is small enough to allow you to meet people informally, large enough to give you a measure of anonymity when that’s important.

The Real Thing.The focus of our program is authentic access to French culture. Language is the key, of course. Wellesley-in-Aix energetically supports your efforts to achieve fluency in French, because it’s language that really allows you to enter deeply into the culture. To move within a new frame of cultural reference, to develop routines that integrate you into the rhythm of the city, to have French sounds and songs and bilingual jokes in your head—these are deep intellectual pleasures. They are also highly useful tools in the real world because they foster the ability to see reality from the standpoint of others as well as from your own. In a shrinking world this is a valuable skill—in diplomacy, business, politics, and of course in human relations.

From Paris to Aix. Our program opens in Paris. Participants who begin in the fall start with a four-week orientation including classes in language, literature, and contemporary culture that offer an in-depth introduction to the intellectual and cultural life of France. For students who begin in the spring, the Paris orientation includes a review course in literature, film or civilization. The Paris orientation courses are complemented by excursions in and around town and by a variety of cultural activities. Students find their time in Paris both challenging and stimulating; it prepares them for the experience of studying within the French university system and it familiarizes them with the city, in preparation for their next weekend or vacation visit to the capital. After Paris, the group heads south to Aix, whose rich history, picturesque architecture, and beautiful open-air markets make it a truly extraordinary place to live and study.

The University and the City. At the Université de Provence, participants are directly enrolled in the same courses as French students. While this is true of other study abroad programs in France, ours is the only one whose for-credit courses are taught exclusively by professors from the French university. Our location in Aix-en-Provence reflects similar values of authentic access and contact. Because Aix is a smaller, more intimate city and the rhythm of life is more leisurely there, American students studying in Aix have a far greater chance of meeting French people, speaking French, and becoming integrated, over time, into the culture. Pairs of students live on their own in one of the program’s apartments in the centre ville. (A few homestays with selected families are also available.)

Year, or Semester? If you have the choice, I encourage you to come to Aix for a year. Why? For one thing, you’ll achieve much greater fluency after ten months in France than after five. But more basically, a year is preferable to a semester because study abroad follows a learning curve. You arrive mid-August in Paris, and everything’s new and exciting. After a whirlwind month in the capital, it’s on to Aix, to the beauty of Provence, new courses, a new city, a new apartment or a host family to get to know. October comes and goes. Then sometime around Thanksgiving reality sets in. It’s a little colder. You discover French universities aren’t as user-friendly as American colleges. Meaningful access to a culture that may have seemed charming on the surface turns out to involve hard work, and the new living situation presents its own challenges. So by winter break, you’re ready for hiking in Spain or skiing in Switzerland. Then around March, back in Aix with spring already in bloom, you feel confident in your courses, you’ve made your peace with roommate or family, and France has finally begun to yield its intoxicating secrets. By May, you don’t want to leave. If you’re in Aix for a single semester, the time axis on that learning curve is cut by half: you’ve done all the hard work, but you’re gone before you get to enjoy the rewards.

Intimacy and Freedom. Since the Wellesley-in-Aix program is relatively small, its director and administrative staff are able to give students individualized attention when they need it, whether in selecting the courses best suited to their academic interests and requirements or in adapting to life abroad. We try to ensure that our students enjoy themselves and make the most of their time in Paris and Aix, while pursuing an intellectually challenging course of study and achieving a high degree of fluency—both cultural and linguistic—in French.

If you have further questions about our program, please don’t hesitate to call or get in touch with the Wellesley-in-Aix Office (wia@wellesley.edu).

A bientôt!

 

Sylvaine Egron-Sparrow
Senior Lecturer - French Department
Director, 2009-2010