These types of experiences are not a dime-a-dozen. Our students remarked, later, on the profound ways that integrating travel into a course affected them. Caroline Elser designed a senior honors thesis project that will examine the common soldiers’ perceptions of the battle of the Somme, comparing that to the way the generals viewed the war. Her research will take her back to the Imperial War Museum in London, where they archive diaries and have a vast collection of soldiers’ recordings. The Nanovic Institute awarded her the R. Stephen and Ruth Barrett Prize for her project. Caitlin Fennelly was struck by how each museum told different, often conflicting stories. She took this knowledge and designed a senior honors thesis for her degree in the Program of Liberal Studies, which will examine how the history of the Risorgimento has been told and retold after the Unification of Italy in 1861. These are just two students whose entire undergraduate trajectory has been changed as a result of this travel.
But there have been other, equally fundamental, manifestations of the success of the experience of travel and a deeper, more meaningful educational experience. Our “Great War and Modern Memory” class has not met—officially—since December 2019. But, with the mandate of social distancing and the scattering of our students to the ends of the earth, our class met this spring—online—for Friday night get-togethers. They have become friends because of their shared experiences. It is these types of experiences that are so hard to quantify and, at the same time, so worthwhile, that have convinced me that Notre Dame succeeds most when we do what we’re best at: engaging students as whole persons, educating their mind and spirit, challenging them to exist as critically-thinking moral creatures, and joining them on their journey as fellow travelers. Students long for this type of education— it is what brings them to us in the first place.
The Nanovic Institute for European Studies
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