January 25, 2007
Copenhagen is program’s classroom
A small group of Renaissance men and women are needed for a month of study this summer in Denmark. The program is called the Copenhagen Classroom, and though it’s directed by a Scandinavian Studies professor, the curriculum is very eclectic. Students will spend one week each on translation studies, Danish cinema, sustainable mobility and architecture and urban space. Oh, and although the classes will be taught in English, students will also receive 60 hours of study in the Danish language.
Best of all, because the program is supported by a grant from the Scan Design by Inger and Jens Bruun Foundation, the tuition is only $1,200 for the month.
“Jens Bruun, who founded the Scan Design Company in Seattle, was a Dane, and when he died, the Scan Design foundation was founded to support Danish-American relations, as well as pain research,” said Program Director Marianne Stecher-Hansen. “I’ve been working with the foundation board to create new programs which encourage UW students to study in Denmark.”
Stecher-Hansen said the subject areas were chosen to reflect fields in which the Danes are experts and/or pioneers. “The idea was to attract students from across campus — not just cross-disciplinary but across the whole University,” she added. “No need to stay within Arts and Sciences.”
Last summer was the first for the Copenhagen Classroom, and seven students took the plunge. One was a graduate student in sociology, and another was an undergraduate in anthropology and Scandinavian studies. The rest were from Architecture and Urban Planning — a mix of undergraduates and graduates. Also along as a non-matriculated student was Doug Machle, assistant to the chair in the Classics Department.
Asked why he went, Machle said, “I thought the program sounded intriguing (in his evaluation he said it was ‘not for the incurious’), and the trip also allowed me to pursue a couple of my side interests. I’ve been interested in an open air museum in Copenhagen ever since I bought a guide to it at a library sale when I was a kid, and I’m probably the only North American member of a windmill museum there. I got to visit both of those while we were in Copenhagen.” Machle, who has a master’s in Germanics, is married to a Dutch woman and so speaks both German and Dutch. Learning to read Danish was thus easy for him, though he says speaking was a different matter.
This year, Stecher-Hansen said, 10 to 15 students will be accepted for the summer program.
There’s a reason the program is called the Copenhagen Classroom. Although students sometimes meet at the University of Copenhagen, for much of the time they’re out and about. Sarah Valdez, one of last year’s students, commented on this in her evaluation: “The quality of the instruction was very high. We spoke to professionals and experts in the fields we studied. For instance, while studying literature we visited the Danish Literature Center and spoke with the director, and while learning about transportation, we visited the Danish Transportation Research Institute and met with senior researchers.” The group also travels to Lund, in Sweden, to study its sustainable transportation system.
This year the Scan Design Foundation nearly tripled its contribution to the Department of Scandinavian Studies — from $40,000 to $110,500 — which made a lower tuition rate possible. The foundation is also financing a separate program, called the Scan Design Fellowship Program. Five UW students just departed for Denmark, where they will study for the spring semester, which runs from Feb. 1 to June 1. One is pursuing film and media studies at the University of Copenhagen, one will study political science at the University of Aarhus, one will study urban design and planning at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and two are pursuing Nordic languages and literature at the University of Copenhagen. In addition to those fields, fellows may study sustainable energy planning and management at Aalborg University.
The fellowships are open to graduate and advanced undergraduate students, and only the Nordic languages and literature fellowship requires advanced proficiency in Danish.
The program is now recruiting for the 2007 Copenhagen Classroom, which runs from Aug. 1–31, and for the 2008 Scan Design Fellowships. Deadline for the former is April 2 and for the latter, April 15. Information on the Copenhagen Classroom can be found at http://depts.washington.edu/scand/copenhagenclassroom/, and information for the Scan Design Fellowships can be found at http://depts.washington.edu/scand/studyindenmark/index.html.
