Michael Olmert's Students Blog Their Summer Study-Abroad Experience
July 10, 2012
Professor Michael Olmert's popular "Study Abroad in London and East Anglia" summer-term course is an intensive examination of British culture, and its participants have blogged every step of their journey.
An online collection of essays examining the history, literature, drama, architecture, art and archeology of London and nearby environs, the blog is called BritainLondonEastAnglia - An Education Abroad Blog from the University of Maryland, and can be read here. Each student designed a reading list particular to their own interests, and supplemented their experience of the texts with visits to the London ambits of Keats, Dickens, Shakespeare, Orwell, Orton, Lamb, Coleridge, Woolfe, Eliot, and many others. For the fourth time in as many years, course participants maintained an online journal recounting their experiences of historic and literary sites in London and throughout the United Kingdom, including the Museum of London, the British Museum, the V&A, the two Tates, Sir John Soane's Museum, and the National Portrait Gallery. Special behind-the-scenes visits to the Linnean Society, Westminster Abbey, Parliament, and the Herbarium and the Joseph Banks Project at the Natural History Museum were followed by out-of-town visits to Oxford, Canterbury, and Charles Darwin's Down House.
This year's course ran from Sunday, May 20 though Saturday, June 9, and coincided with two major events. The Diamond Jubilee celebration of Queen Elizabeth II featured a number of events during an extended weekend running from June 2 to June 5, which the students were fortunate to experience firsthand. And as the country moves rapidly to complete plans for the Olympic, an internationalist flavor is beginning to mark many of London's premier tourist destinations.
Professor Olmert's course is just one of 45 summer programs offered to University of Maryland students for 2012. University President Dr. Wallace Loh wants every Maryland student to have an education abroad experience – whether one or two semesters, or a summer or winter term trip. It’s all about pushing our students to “Think Outside Your Borders.”
DID YOU KNOW? More than 2,000 University of Maryland students participate annually in more than 100 study abroad programs and exchanges through the University of Maryland Education Abroad program, which was recently ranked #17 for overall participation and #9 for short-term program participation among doctoral institutions.