Ole Miss students seeking to earn college credit while traveling the country this summer have plenty of options available through the university.
The Study USA program gives students the opportunity to take short-term domestic travel classes during the upcoming May Intersession, Summer I and II and August Intersession terms.
Kevin Gates, Study USA coordinator, said these courses are not part of an exchange program but are led by UM faculty. The courses are treated like any other classes on campus, but they are held in another location and usually last for only a short time.
“Most are short duration, lasting around two weeks,” Gates said. “We do have an anthropology field camp taking place at a mound site that will last for a full month.”
Gates said each travel course is proposed and developed by its respective professor. Study USA works in coordination with these professors to sort out the logistics and determine a price for the course, which can take quite a while.
“We request the faculty get us course proposals six to nine months out from when the course will be,” Gates said. “For example, the deadline for faculty to propose courses for Wintersession 2019 is mid-April, so that’s right at eight months.”
Gates said these aren’t eight solid months of planning but that it does take time to meet with the faculty members to see what they want students to do and gain from the course. The university also has to prepare transportation and housing for students before creating quotes for the course cost.
Study USA courses allow students to go out and learn from firsthand experience.
“The best example of that would be the archaeology field camp, where students are actually going out and doing work,” Gates said. “They’re going to an actual archaeology dig and unearthing, tagging and preserving artifacts they find.”
Students learn about many techniques in class, but they usually don’t have the opportunity to practice until they go out and do it, according to Gates.
Other examples of courses are the Bridges of New York class, which offers students the chance to visit New York City and its famous bridges and analyze other landmarks from a civil engineering perspective, and the Corporate Applications of IMC class will be visiting the Coca-Cola Company headquarters in Atlanta to learn from marketing and advertising professionals there.
Gates said students can apply for available $500 Study USA-specific scholarships. These scholarships can be used for each Study USA course a student takes, so if he or she earned one for May Intersession and one for Summer II, the student would receive a total of $1,000.
Applicants seeking a scholarship must have FAFSA on file with the university and can apply through myOleMiss.
“We have plenty of money for that,” Gates said. “We have never given away all of the scholarships, so I would love for students to apply.”
The deadline for students to sign up for all four summer terms is April 5.
There are more than 15 courses offered this summer in various cities across the USA, including major cities like Atlanta, New York City, Chicago and Nashville and in states such as Maine, Colorado, Oklahoma and Arizona, among others.
