Study Abroad

Women in World War II

Twenty-three French, history, and honor students travelled to Paris and Normandy with professors Kerry Wynn, Courtney Sullivan, and Hélène Perriguey-Keene in March of 2022 as part of the travel component of the Women in WWII course they took last spring. While they visited some of the classic historical monuments such as the Louvre and Orsay museums, the Eiffel Tower, and the Mont St. Michel in Normandy, they focused on visiting the sites they had studied about in their course. In Normandy, they visited the American Cemetery, the Mémorial de Caen, the Arromanches Landing Museum, Sainte-Mère Église, the Airborne Museum, Utah and Omaha Beaches and the Pointe du Hoc Memorial. Students relished visits to off-the-beaten path sites related to the class. In and about Paris, students visited the Deportation Memorial, the Shoah Memorial and the Holocaust Center in the Marais and the Drancy Shoah Memorial in a northeastern suburb of Paris as well as the Leclerc Memorial and Liberation of Paris – Jean Moulin Museum. The memorial plaques in the Marais commemorating the lost lives of Jewish children deported during the Occupation as well as a park marking the deportation of children during the notorious Vélodrome d’Hiver round-up just minutes away from the hotel, moved the students.

A Historian and a French professor, Doctors Wynn and Sullivan decided to collaborate on a course that would expose students to the diverse histories of women during WWII, a period in which women’s lives tend to fade into the background of a popular culture our students know and love. Twelve years ago they began teaching the course, “Women in WWII: Agents of Change or Victims of Circumstance?,” to explore the history and myth of women’s roles during WWII in French and American fiction, film, autobiography, and history. This last spring, they realized their dream of teaching a travel-study course that would bring the history alive to students.

Students enjoyed their time in France and reported being greatly transformed. As one remarked: “This study abroad experience has impacted me by having me see and experience a different culture and country. This was my first time going to another country and I am very grateful of the experience and opportunity. This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I never thought I would have and I learned and experienced so much about French culture.”

Phi Beta Delta (PBD)

- Honors Society for International Scholars, was established in 1987 at the California State University – Long Beach, to recognize the achievement and contribution of faculty and staff, who are involved in international scholarship and / or activities. In 2022, five scholars were inducted into Beta Phi, Washburn’s PBD Chapter.

Phi Beta Delta: Reflections of a Retiree

By Russell E. Smith, Professor Emeritus

My international activities pre-date my arrival at Washburn in the fall of 1984. The best example is my 1976, mostly overland, trip through Latin America to Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city in the world. The trip started with an intensive course in Spanish at CIELO, a language school in Chiapas, Mexico, followed by travel down the Amazon River by local river transportation from Leticia, Colombia to Belem, Brazil near the mouth of the Amazon. After several months in Brazil, I continued across Paraguay, Bolivia, and Chile to the last boat trip, crossing the Straits of Magellan by ferry and arriving in Ushuaia. The return trip was mostly by air to Buenos Aires for a month and then home from Bolivia. Another foundational experience was six years of doctoral study in economics which included two years of field work in Brazil. In 1978, influenced by professors and graduate students I met during my travels, I entered the Ph.D. program at the University of Illinois at Urbana. I was supported in the program with a fellowship for language study in Portuguese for four semesters (1979-1981). My interest in Brazil was reenforced by the excitement for Brazil shown by the Brazilian students in the Ph.D. program. I completed my course work in 1981 and was successful in obtaining competitive external funding for the field work (1981-1983).

My 38 years at Washburn can be seen as 16 years of mostly faculty duties of teaching, research, and service (1984-2000) followed by 22 years (2000-2022) as Associate Dean with primary duties in curriculum management which included professional development and participation in AACSB (from 1996) and HLC (from 2002) accreditation efforts, both of which included international travel. From 1996 to 2002 I served as Director of the MBA program, which was highly formative as I learned about analysis of foreign and domestic transfer credit. This served me well after 2000 when my duties included the undergraduate transfer students.

During the first 16 years, I was able to continue field work in Brazil and later in Argentina during summer and winter breaks. Eventually, I won a Fulbright Senior Research Award (1988-1989) for travel to Brazil and Argentina for research on wages and stabilization policy. In the 1990s during the implementation of the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), John French, a Latin Americanist labor historian at Duke University, and I organized a multi-national group of labor scholars for a project on “Labor, Free Trade, and Integration in the Americas” with funding from the North-South Center at the University of Miami (19931994). I used Sweet Summer Sabbaticals for travel to Brazil in 1997, 1999, and 2007.

During the 2000s there was greater university interest in international activities beyond simple student exchange. This interest resulted in official institutional partnerships. I was instrumental in Washburn joining in 2002 the Magellan Exchange, a multi-lateral student exchange alliance among schools; a bi-lateral student exchange with Fachhochschule Osnabruck in 2003; and a multi-component partnership with the Wuhan University of Science and Technology (WUST) in 2005.

Taken together these four elements: travel and cultural exposure, educational foundation, organizational experience, and institutional support provide the basis for a professional life of contribution and satisfaction.

O ce of International Programs

Brown Bag International Lectures

The Brown Bag International Lecture series is a forum where the Washburn and Topeka Communities come together to share international experiences and perspectives. During 2022, the following presentations were produced:

Linsey Moddelmog (Political Science), Kris Ailslieger (Political Science), and Tom Prasch (History) - What’s at Stake in Ukraine: A Forum

Martin Nekola (Czech Republic) - History of the Czechs in Kansas and Elsewhere in the Midwest

Tom Prasch - A Hindu or Secular India: The Debate over the Citizenship Amendment Bill

Kerry Wynn – In the Land of Sulfur and Salt: Imagining Life and Labor in Early 20th-Century Sicily

Steve Lerner – Strangers in Town

Linsey Moddelmog - Cuba: An Update

Tom Prasch - Thinking about the Alhambra: From Owen Jones to Now

Tony Silvestri - Seisún, Story, and Song--a month in the west of Ireland

Susie Hoffman and Rugena Hall - Portugal and the Douro River Valley

Sangyoub Park - Multicultural neighborhoods in Korea

Ken Gimple, MD - Orthopedic Surgery and Socialism in Ukraine 1994-2006

Deborah Altus - A Look at Intentional Communities in Denmark