| AU
Hosts Summer Institutes Galore
 One
might think campus is quiet over the summer while most of the usual students
are home, traveling, working, and/or playing. But AU has been far from
static since May when many students left D.C. for other adventures. In
addition to several regular summer sessions, AU hosts more than a dozen
special programs every summer, from computer, athletics, and performing
arts camps for local high school students, to advanced seminars for graduate
students from the U.S. and abroad.
The School of Communication’s “Discover
the World of Communication” program was established nine years
ago as a single film class. Yet this year’s summer seminar offered
more than 100 high school students hands-on experience in filmmaking,
screenwriting, journalism, video production, photography, and public speaking
this year. They interacted with USA Today and Washington Post editors,
Smithsonian and Newseum staff, and a former White House press secretary.
“We treat them like professionals,” explained Sarah Menke-Fish,
the program's director. “They learn from a lot of the same faculty
and use the same equipment that our graduate students do. In fact, the
computers they're using in the filmmaking class right now are brand new,
just out of the box, so these students are actually using them before
our graduate students even will.”
Another long-time summer institute staple is the Civil
War Institute. If you left AU’s campus without taking a class
from American Studies professor Ed Smith, you missed out, plain and simple.
But there’s still time to make up for lost time with this walking
encyclopedia of Washington history. Smith and equally well-loved history
professor Alan Kraut celebrated their 10th anniversary of teaching the
Civil War Institute together this year, taking their 33 students from
mind-challenging morning lectures to afternoon tours that challenged their
feet. (One student's pedometer apparently showed she and her classmates
had walked 4.5 miles of history one afternoon.)
This
year’s group ranged from typical graduate and undergraduate students,
to public school teachers, and a 10-year old girl who just wanted to take
the class for fun. Together, they stood in the room where, in 1861, Robert
E. Lee accepted his post in the Confederate Army. They followed the footsteps
of Abraham Lincoln to the telegraph office where he waited for war news.
And they strolled the same hills of Antietam that, on a single day in
1862, were covered with the fallen bodies of 23,000 men.
The institute is designed to question assumptions, deepen knowledge, and
spark the historical imagination. “I want the experience to wash
over them,” said Kraut. “I want them to put everything else
aside and just bathe themselves in the Civil War for a week.”
A relative newcomer to AU’s summer offerings was the second annual
“Discovering
North America Summer Institute,” hosted by the Center for North
American Studies (CNAS). The seven-week program recently brought together
23 American, Canadian, and Mexican students, “to encourage a new
generation of students from Canada, Mexico, and the United States to extend
their imaginations to the entire continent and to think seriously about
new ways to address North America's problems and opportunities,”
as AU's vice president of international affairs Robert Pastor described.
To help students navigate these issues, the institute combined seminars
led by AU faculty and guest experts, such as the Canadian Embassy's first
secretary of trade and economic policy, with internships in organizations
actively engaged in North American issues, such as the International Trade
Commission. Offering students a practical outlet for their new-found knowledge,
the institute culminated with a reception at the Mexican Cultural Center
that gathered senior American, Canadian, and Mexican policy makers to
whom students presented innovative solutions to problems plaguing North
American trade, immigration, education, and communication.
To
see a list of the many summer programs available, visit: http://www.summer.american.edu
-Compiled from articles by Matt Getty and Sally Acharya previously published
in American
Weekly
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