Global Communication class studies in Switzerland

Crispin Thurlow has just returned from Switzerland where he and Communication graduate student Kris Mroczek led an exploration seminar with 16 UW undergraduate students. Under the title "Making Place: Tourism, Culture and Global Communication," the seminar was designed to help students understand some of the human consequences of globalization by focusing on the role communication plays in a global cultural industry like tourism.

As the birth place of modern tourism, Switzerland is a country that embodies all the challenges and successes of multilingualism, multiculturalism and multinationalism. Students spent four weeks living in Swiss homestays in and around Interlaken. During this time, they traveled the length and breadth of the country, undertaking field trips to major cities like Zurich, Geneva and Basel, as well as to Bern (the Swiss capital), Lugano (in Italian-speaking Switzerland) and Glarus.

Regular classes were scheduled in the local high school as well as at the universities of Bern and Basel. With support from Interlaken Tourism and the International Friendship Association Interlaken, students were also able to travel to the "Top of Europe," the famous Jungfraujoch that rises above Interlaken.

Perhaps the experience is best summed up by one Communication major who participated in the seminar: "I had no idea how much I would change and grow as a person from just one month in Switzerland. This trip, the class and the experience I had on it will stay with me the rest of my life and I know they have changed me and made me a better person because of it."