The World Is My Text
Who could have known that in 1917—when tiny St. Clara College first contemplated taking charge of a small school in the Swiss canton of Fribourg—that in 2007, St. Clara’s descendent, Dominican University, would offer more than a dozen flourishing study-abroad programs?
The programs owe their origin to the reputation of the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa as innovative, rigorous educators. When the lay women who originally ran the Institute of Higher Learning at Fribourg decided to cede control of the institution, Joachim Berthier, OP, a founder of the program, suggested the sisters as perfect replacements. The opportunity to let students experience a foreign culture first-hand, put their French into real-world practice, and learn from professors of the prestigious University of Fribourg all proved irresistible to Mother Superior Samuel Coughlin. “How happy we should be to have…a home of learning for Dominican sisters from many lands, and a safe Catholic atmosphere for our own sisters’ graduate study and later research work,” she wrote. Soon, Rosary became the first Catholic college in the United States to offer study abroad.
It wasn’t an easy start. Fribourg was not so much an extension of the school as a distant outpost. When the first sisters set forth to staff the school, it required a difficult, four-week journey across the war-torn Atlantic and Europe. Their lost trunks arrived five months later.
Don’t call these trips. Our study-abroad programs...enrich and enlighten.”
—Sue Ponrémy, Director of International Studies
Over the decades, the school refined the experience. By the time Patricia Nasharr Tabet ’52 participated, the feel of Rosary-in-Fribourg had changed from that of a convent-like retreat to a bustling, multi-national student center. Although the emphasis remained firmly on academics and culture—students in the year-long program studied French literature (proficiency in French was a prerequisite), Italian, German, Russian, English, theology, philosophy and art history—people from the village, many of them young men, frequented the villa to practice their English with the American students—and to socialize. “We had,” recalls Tabet, still smiling at the memories more than 50 years later, “a vivid social life,” despite the fact that at 10:30 every night the sisters locked the gate and turned off all the lights. It was by all accounts a magical time. Long-lasting romances and friendships flourished. On New Year’s Eve, some of the local young men escorted the Rosary women—and their chaperone—to a small village high in the Alps. “The horse-drawn sleighs came right to our door to pick us up,” recalls Tabet.
The growing financial and academic success of Fribourg encouraged Rosary to add study-abroad opportunities. In 1934, Sr. Catherine Wall, OP of the art department discovered a photo of a beautiful 16th-century Florentine villa devoted to the study and appreciation of the arts. She wrote to its owner, Myron Taylor, an American financier and arts patron, asking whether he knew of any small villas for sale that could accommodate 20 to 30 young women who might wish to study abroad. The correspondence blossomed, and when Wall died in 1938, her Mother Superior continued the relationship. Finally, in 1941, Taylor gave Villa Schifanoia to Pope Pius XII with the proviso that Rosary College could use it for a graduate program for women in the arts. It took six years before the details were finalized.
Students in the MFA program at Villa Schifanoia were immersed in music, art and literature. The villa had its own library with 3,500 books and 4,000 slides, its own art gallery, lounge and salon. Famous artists and dignitaries often paid visits. The tenor Tito Gobbi taught an opera workshop. In the year that Eleanor Caluori Venables ’56 studied, Meredith Willson (creator of The Music Man) and Harry Truman stopped by. Venables played the piano for the former President. “It was such gracious living,” she recalls. “You could go to the chapel for Mass every morning right in your own house.” She practiced piano in the garden piano room surrounded by the smell of jasmine. Some days she strolled up a road to the top of a hill to the “riposa del vescovo”—a bench where bishops rested during the Renaissance.
Eventually, the combination of the devalued American dollar and the high cost of maintaining historic buildings outpaced the revenue from tuition at Fribourg and Schifanoia. As more American universities developed their own study-abroad programs, enrollment declined. (Students from other colleges had attended the international Rosary programs). Patricia Tabet’s daughter, VeronicaTabet ’80, attended during Fribourg’s final year. Coming from River Forest, just a mile from Ernest Hemingway’s birthplace, she recalls the irony of attending a literature class in which her Swiss teacher lectured in French about him. But her most vivid impression of Fribourg echoes her mother’s. “It was,” she says, “like a fairy-tale land.”
In a letter to the university community, Sr. Jean Murray, OP, former director of Fribourg and member of the committee that recommended its closing, wrote, “This enforced change has stimulated us to rethink the purpose of our foreign study program, assess its strengths, and…plan creatively for the years ahead.”
That’s exactly what Dominican has done. The university regularly refines its semester-in-London program, keeping it fresh for more than three decades. A six-week summer program in Florence has proved popular for more than 25 years. Today’s students have more options than prior generations; programs may be condensed into as little as two weeks or extended to a full year, and the choice of destinations includes Africa, Asia, Europe, and Central and South America.
One thing all the programs have in common—with each other and with Fribourg and Schifanoia—is their academic rigor. “Don’t call these trips,” warns Sue Ponrémy, director of international studies. “Our study-abroad programs are intended to broaden, enrich and enlighten.” Each program goes through a two-year approval process and must demonstrate a comprehensive plan to develop students. “For a university our size,” she adds, “we have an unusually high number of programs.” And the list is growing.
The newest study-abroad destination is Ghana. When Nkuzi Nnam, director of African and African-American Studies, led the program this year, students stood at the “door of no return” in a fort near the edge of the sea where millions of captured Africans were marched onto slave ships. “You can study about slavery all your life,” says Nnam, “but when you stand at the door of no return, something happens inside your heart.”
That thought illuminates the core of Dominican University’s study-abroad programs, in place since the school’s efforts to provide students with international learning began nine decades ago. What you learn is stored in your memory. What you live is stored in your heart.
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