MU| F e a t u r e s
“ L
anguage and intercultural
experience is 24/7, 360
degrees,” says Janina
Traxler ’73 (pictured at
left), French professor
and chair of Manchester’s Modern Languages
Department. “A language teacher is never just
teaching language. When we’re doing our job
well, we are teaching how to understand the
other, how to develop strategies to say things
you don’t know the words for.”
The art of finding alternative routes around a
particular idea, or circumlocution, represents
just one of the many facets and joys found in
language study. “The skills learned through
studying language are broadly transferrable
across a lot of different careers,” says Traxler.
“Problem-solving, troubleshooting, embracing
diversity, figuring out stuff when you don’t
know all the rules.”
Manchester currently offers three languages,
French, Spanish and German. It recently added
a multi-language major, allowing for strength in
one language and lesser preparation in another.
Peter Shepherd ’18, a junior sales major with
a German minor, is one student who’s been
excited to study German. His grandmother lived
in Lübeck, Germany, and he studied last fall in
Marburg. Peter encourages other students to try
the language and, in fact, recent enrollment in
Elementary German has been strong.
Peter thinks of language study as if he had two
brains, one for English and one for German.
“When I want to say something, and I know
how to say it in German, but I can’t quite
structure it, it’s really frustrating. But by working
through that frustration, I realize both [brains]
work together.”
Peter loves language study, but most Americans
don’t seem to share his view. “The United
States is the only culture I know of that
assumes language study is an elective,” says
Traxler. “Most of the rest of the world
understands language study as a critical piece
of an education. This is a huge contribution
to how you see the world and allows you to
think in ways that are subtle, sophisticated
and acknowledge differences instead of just
rejecting the other.”
Adds Peter, “Language forces you to evaluate
yourself and evaluate what you really want to
get out of this whole educational experience.”
At Manchester, study abroad is a requirement
for a language major. But Thelma Rohrer ’84
will help any students, regardless of major,
go abroad if they want to. Rohrer, dean of
the College of Arts and Humanities and
the director of Manchester’s study abroad
program, is passionate about helping students
broaden their horizons. “If you have the
interest to do it,” she says, “we will help you
fit it in to your four-year plan.”
For students who can’t study abroad for a
semester or a year, January Session study
tours are a great alternative and a hallmark
of Manchester since 1970. “Every school
advertises study abroad,” says Rohrer, but
“we actually embed study abroad into our
academic programs and into the fabric of our
lives. It’s a challenge for us, but we’re grateful
we can do it for students. I am forever
grateful to donors who make this possible
from one generation to the next.”
By Jacob Ray ’16
To help students afford study abroad,
Manchester offers tuition substitution, which
allows students up to two semesters abroad
for the cost of Manchester’s tuition, as well as
transferring all institutionally offered financial
aid to help cover expenses with it. As a result,
more students can focus on an experience
that Traxler calls “profoundly transformative”
rather than worrying about a sharp increase in
their student debt.
Traxler, who also teaches a course on
Arthurian legend, likens studying abroad to
tempering a sword: “The sword is made of
metal, but it is not a good instrument until
it is tempered – it will break. The tempering
process involves heating it up as hot as
you can, pounding it thoroughly, and then
plunging that still-hot object into water that
cools.”
“It actually rearranges the molecules inside
the metal,” added Traxler, “but the result
of that tempering process is that the object
bends instead of breaks and that long term
abroad tempers one in that same way. You
learn how to bend instead of break.”
Peter Shepherd ’18 poses in Berlin, Germany, last fall
while he was studying abroad in Marburg. Peter is a
sales major with a minor in German.
VIDEO
See the video at
magazine.manchester.edu
Manchester | 23