Students Find Summer Language Abroad Program Transformative

Whether they camped with Bedouins in the Jordanian desert, visited ancient temples in Japan, hiked around the Black Forest of Germany, or took a road trip to the beaches of Ecuador, the alumni of the University of Notre Dame’s Summer Language Abroad (SLA) grant program agree on one thing: their experience was completely transformative.

“There’s a lot of stuff that you really can’t get out of the textbooks,” says senior Owen Cox, an SLA grant recipient who spent summer 2012 improving his Arabic language skills in Amman, Jordan. “You can stay at Notre Dame for four years and study the language but there are some things that really are just going to slip by if you don’t get over there.”

A program of the College of Arts and Letters’ Center for the Study of Languages and Cultures (CSLC), SLA offers students grants of up to $5,500 to complete an intensive curriculum in their chosen country, coupled with real-life language use and structured opportunities for community engagement.