Paris, France

More information is available at the Official Program site

The Vassar-Wesleyan Program in Paris (VWPP) is based on a comprehensive or whole-life approach to study abroad, and has three goals. It seeks, first, to bring students’ command of the French language as close as possible to fluency. It also permits students to study all aspects of French civilization—politics, art, literature, cinema, history—while simultaneously making regular progress towards the completion of their majors. Finally, the program brings students into direct contact with French and European life over an extended period, heightening their awareness and understanding of French society and thought, as well as increasing their understanding of the United States in relation to other countries and cultures.

In order to make their experience in Paris as rich and valuable as possible, we encourage students to focus on the comprehensive endeavor of observing life and learning to live in France, and to seize the opportunities to improve their language skills and learn about French life that are offered to them at every moment of every day. The various components of the program—taking courses about French culture and with French students, living in French homes, participating in extracurricular activities with French people, and visiting various sites in Paris and France—are intended to bring them into contact with contemporary French life. We also expect students to speak only French throughout the semester or year, and to find their own ways of contributing to the program and to the French experience of their fellow students.

Students may participate in the program for either one semester (fall or spring) or two semesters (fall and spring, or spring and fall).

Academics

Orientation

The program begins with a two-week intensive language session at the Alliance Française in Bordeaux. In addition to an intensive grammar review, classes at the Alliance Française emphasize spoken French and contemporary culture. Students participate in morning language classes and two afternoon workshops: an Atelier expressions orales in which students learn the art of reading various types of texts, and an Atelier conversation that develops students’ communication skills and enhances their ability to use French in daily activities and exchanges. Bordeaux offers students the opportunity to discover a lively provincial city (pop. 250,000) before going to Paris. Students will be housed with local families and will have the opportunity to participate in visits to the French Basque country, the Dordogne region, nearby Atlantic coast beaches, and vineyards.

The orientation process continues for a third week in Paris, with visits to major historical monuments and museums, and a series of meetings devoted to matters like getting around Paris, discovering the various “arrondissements” by bus and on foot with French students, French customs and intercultural interactions, the organization of the French university system, the French press, and so on. We also will challenge students to think about why they have gone to France and what they want to accomplish during their time there. During this week, students lodge in an international youth hostel.

The Academic Program

Our academic program is designed to achieve three objectives. First, because we want students from all disciplines, whether they are majors in biology, history, literature, or any other field, to be able to spend a year or a semester in Paris, we have devised a broad academic program offering courses in a variety of fields. Students should discuss their projected program with their advisor before they leave the United States, but they probably can take at least one course in Paris that will count towards their major(s).

Second, because we think students can learn a great deal about French people and the French educational system from taking courses at a French university, we encourage students to take at least one university course, and have agreements with a number of Parisian institutions to enable our students to do so. These courses are valuable not only for their academic content, but also for the opportunity they afford students to participate in a different educational system. University courses likewise offer students an opportunity to meet French people of their age.

Third, because American students of French often prefer seminar-size classes to some of the larger classes they might find in the French university system, and because French universities do not offer some of the kinds of courses on French civilization and culture that American students want to take while in Paris, we organize seminars each semester on French politics, history, art history, film, literature, and theater. Taught by outstanding French professors, these seminars are conducted entirely in French and provide students with the kind of close student-teacher contact associated with a Vassar or Wesleyan education. Many of these seminars include on-site lectures at museums and monuments, and visits to governmental institutions, concerts, films, opera, and theater performances.

Students enroll in five courses during their first semester in Paris: four regular courses (French university courses or seminars organized by the program) and the Writing Workshop, a semester-long continuation of the language program begun in Bordeaux. The workshop consists of a weekly class and a weekly tutorial.

Students staying in Paris for a second semester take four regular courses. With the resident director’s approval, they also may apply for a part-time internship related to their academic interests through an agreement with Internships in Francophone Europe. These internships typically require a commitment of two and a half days per week, and students are required to complete a research paper in connection with them. Students who complete the internship and the research paper successfully are awarded two course credits.

Students plan their academic program in consultation with the resident director, who is a member of the Vassar or Wesleyan faculty and serves as the academic advisor for all students during their time in Paris.

Grades and Credit

All program seminars and most courses at the universities of Paris and Sciences Po are the equivalent of a full-semester course at Vassar or Wesleyan. Grades from French university courses will be translated into American equivalents by the program. The program will provide transcripts of grades and evaluations to the registrar at the student’s home institution. Students who wish courses to be counted as part of the requirements for their major should consult with the relevant department before leaving for France.

Courses

Up until 1968, there was a single Parisian university, commonly known as the Sorbonne. After 1968, in response to student demands, the university of Paris was split up into a number of separate universities, of which there are currently twelve, each with its own set of programs. Paris II, for example, is the law school; Paris V is the medical school. In order to provide students with a comprehensive set of course choices, the VWPP has agreements with three of these twelve universities—Paris IV (La Sorbonne), Paris VII (Jussieu-Denis-Diderot), and Paris XII (Créteil-Val de Marne)—and with the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (IEP or Sciences Po), all of which permit full-year and second-semester students to take courses there.

Students who are interested in taking courses at Sciences Po must apply to do so during the semester before they plan to study in France through the Office of International Studies at Wesleyan or the Office of International Programs at Vassar.

The European Community member countries have agreed to streamline their higher educational systems’ diploma equivalencies, degree requirements, and university calendars in order to achieve a cohesive European educational environment, facilitate and encourage student mobility, and, ultimately, increase employment opportunities for citizens of European countries. This “réforme” was implemented in the Parisian universities in 2005, bringing with it some new types of courses, and more semester (rather than year-long) courses, as well as calendar and schedule changes that will take effect over the next few years.

Each French university can decide independently how to implement the “réforme” and determine its academic calendar. Information on the new French university calendar, and its repercussions for the VWPP, will be made available as soon as possible.

As of this writing, students who are in Paris for the fall semester only and need to return to the United States before early- to mid-January will not be able to complete first-semester courses at French universities in the regular way. In order to provide students who are in Paris for only the fall semester the opportunity to experience French university courses, the VWPP organizes several “cours mixtes.” Students who register for one of these courses are enrolled in it as regular students and attend all meetings of the course at the French university until they leave Paris. They also are required to attend four to six supplementary sessions for just the VWPP students enrolled in the course. These extra sessions are taught by the professor of the course.

French universities issue a new curriculum every year; an exact listing will be available to students when they arrive in Paris.

Housing

The best way for students to have regular, long-term contact with Parisians is to live with them. Students’ housing situations can offer them a unique means to encounter, observe, and imitate French behaviors and take part in everyday Parisian life.

Students are housed in the homes of Parisians. The room and board fee covers the price of their room, continental breakfast every day, and two or three dinners per week with the host family. Exceptions to this arrangement may be made only in the case of students who wish to live with a relative living in Paris. In such cases, students must indicate this on the housing form and contact the Director of International Studies (Wesleyan) or the Director of International Programs (Vassar ) for permission. The cost of room and board will be deducted from the program fee in such cases. Students may not live together in an independent apartment. Full year students may be granted permission to arrange housing on their own for the second semester provided the student lives with native French speakers.

We ask students to fill out a detailed housing questionnaire before they leave for Paris, and the program’s assistant director reserves a housing situation for them based on their answers. When students arrive in Paris from Bordeaux, they spend their first week in a student hostel. During this week, there will be a general meeting about housing, and students will have individual interviews with the assistant director to discuss and confirm their housing preferences. They also will have the opportunity to visit the housing situation we have reserved for them before they make a final decision. We monitor all the housing situations carefully and reevaluate them every semester.

Cultural and Extracurricular Activities

The program organizes numerous activities and visits both to introduce students to the great monuments of French culture and to help them understand the working realities of everyday France. Visits to a bakery and a cheese shop (followed by a cheese tasting), a champagne tasting, and a cooking class in a French home provide an introduction to French “gastronomie.” We organize guided visits to major exhibits, evenings at the ballet, opera, or shows, and dinners and receptions at Parisian restaurants, Reid Hall, or in the director’s home to which French students and professors are invited. Excursions outside of Paris to such places as Chartres, Rouen, Giverny, Vaux-le-Vicomte, Fontainebleau, Milly la Forêt, Barbizon, and Reims and Epernay, as well as weekend trips to more distant areas such as the chateaux of the Loire Valley, Mont St. Michel, the Berry, and Burgundy are an integral part of the program. Such excursions typically involve picnics, visits to vineyards and wine tastings, guided tours, and meals featuring regional specialties. Students who wish to participate in these day and weekend excursions are asked to pay a minimal fee; the program pays most of the costs.

Because it is easier to become acquainted with people who share one’s interests, we encourage students to integrate themselves into French society by participating in some regularly scheduled extracurricular activity: they should join an athletic team, a choir, or a hiking club, for example, or take dance or art classes. We help students find these groups and opportunities and get in touch with them. We also provide a stipend to help pay for such activities.

Students also may participate in an Intensive Immersion Project during vacations or long weekends. Hiking, horseback riding, canoe-kayaking, windsurfing, intensive yoga classes, master classes in dance or music, archeological digs, and stays in “chambers d’hôtes” in a specific region of France are just some of the programs in which VWPP students have participated during the last few years by enrolling in “stages” organized by associations like l’UCPA, Rempart, Chevalvacances, and Gîtes de France. The main requirement is that the student be immersed in an exclusively francophone environment. Students find that they discover another region of France, speak exclusively French, and make friends on these “stages.” We help students find programs of interest to them; students then apply for a grant and complete a report (often in the form of a Web site/page or photo journal) when they return. Students who are interested in an Intensive Immersion Project should contact the VWPP early on to discuss the possibilities and should plan to spend part or all of a vacation (Toussaint, winter or spring) participating in the “stage.”

Through the Centre Régional de Documentation Pédagogique (CRDP), an agency of the French Ministry of Education, students may volunteer to do a stage (internship) as English-language teaching assistants in Parisian primary or secondary schools, working with teachers and conducting small conversation groups. This gives students the opportunity to learn firsthand about the French school system and to meet young French people and their teachers. Wesleyan and Vassar students may receive one-half credit for this stage if they receive a satisfactory evaluation from the host instructor and write a report about their experience. Students from other schools should ask their schools about the possibility of getting credit for this stage.

Opportunities to volunteer in Paris are provided through the “Centre du Bénévolat.” Working in French nonprofit organizations, students usually are placed in positions where they tutor schoolchildren in local, after-school programs on a regular basis. Other possibilities include working with AIDS patients and volunteering to help with local nonprofit events.

Health Insurance

All students must be covered by health insurance while they are abroad. All students must also purchase the International Student Identity Card, which provides additional insurance coverage as well as other benefits.

Vassar students will be billed for Vassar insurance while studying abroad. They should contact the Bursar’s Office if they desire an insurance waiver.

Admission

The Vassar-Wesleyan Program in Paris is open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors from any accredited American college or university. It is committed to high academic standards and to the furthering of studies of the humanities, social sciences, and sciences in Paris. Students may apply to the program for either one or two semesters and elect to spend one or two semesters of study in the program.

The program offers courses in French literature and language, government, social, political and intellectual history, theater, art, cinema, anthropology, economics, psychology, and other areas available in French universities during the 2006–07 and 2007–08 academic years. These courses are taught both at Reid Hall, where the program’s offices and classrooms are located, and at the universities of Paris IV (La Sorbonne), Paris VII (Jussieu) (Denis-Diderot), Paris XII (Créteil-Val de Marne), and Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po). The greater comprehension students acquire of the language, customs, and cultures of France by being immersed in the academic and social life of Paris and France is an important contribution to their general education in its broadest sense, heightening awareness and understanding of French life and thought, as well, perhaps, as a better understanding of the United States in relation to other countries and cultures.

Vassar students should consult the Office of International Programs about participation in the program. All applications, whether for fall, spring, or full year, are due in early December of the academic year preceding the academic year in which students wish to participate in the program. Vassar students should discuss prerequisite courses and grade-point-average requirements with a member of the French Department.

Wesleyan students must have an overall academic average of at least a “B” and have completed at least FREN 215 with a “B” or better before leaving for Paris. Applications for the fall semester or the academic year are due in the Office of International Studies, 105 Fisk Hall, by March 1; applications for the spring semester are due in the Office of International Studies by October 1.

Students from other institutions should have an overall academic average of at least a “B” and have completed at least one semester of a third-year college French course with a “B” or better before leaving for Paris. Students from other institutions should send applications for 2008–2009 to Wesleyan, and applications for 2009–2010 to Vassar. Applications for the fall semester or the academic year must arrive by March 1, applications for the spring semester by October 1.

Fees and Expenses

The comprehensive program fees for 2009–2010 have not yet been set, but the fees for 2008–2009 are as follows:

Fall semester $22,938
Spring semester $22,938

The fee covers tuition, room and partial board, round-trip airfare from New York, two week orientation in Bordeaux and the cultural excursions organized by the program. Students are responsible for additional expenses, such as books, personal expenses, and travel while abroad.

Contact

Professor Patricia Célérier, Chair: Department of French; 124 Raymond Avenue Box 367
Poughkeepsie, NY 12604-0251; Tel: (845) 437-5793; E-mail: pacelerier@vassar.edu

Susan Correll: Director of International Programs; Office of International Programs; 124 Raymond Avenue Box 730
Poughkeepsie, NY 12604-0005; Tel: (845) 437-5260; Fax: (845) 437-7744; E-mail: correll@vassar.edu

Office of International Programs

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