FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: Thursday, August 24, 2006
CONTACT: Ronnie Hess, Director of Communications, Division of International Studies, UW-Madison, (608) 262-5590, rlhess@wisc.edu; Courtney Skare, Director of Marketing/Communications, International Academic Programs, UW-Madison, (608) 261-1020, caskare@bascom.wisc.edu
EXHIBIT OF UW-MADISON STUDENTS’ PHOTOS CELEBRATES
STUDY ABROAD, TRAVELING THE WORLD
Madison, WI – Two dozen photographs from around the world will be on exhibit during the month of September at the Madison Public Library’s Main Branch, 201 West Mifflin Street, Madison (click here for map and hours).
EXHIBIT TRAVELS TO COLLEGE LIBRARY, 600 N. PARK ST., BEGINNING NOVEMBER 1, 2006 THROUGH JANUARY 2007.
The pictures are part of an exhibit entitled “Around the World: UW-Madison Celebrates 2006 Year of Study Abroad” featuring photographs taken by University of Wisconsin-Madison students during time spent studying abroad. Click here to see the images.
The images are exuberant, colorful, introspective and revelatory. They offer glimpses of worlds far away and underscore the special opportunities a study abroad educational experience can bring. Students participating in study-abroad programs consistently say the experience is transformative. It can encourage independence and personal growth, affect students’ choice of career, expand their world view and promote a better understanding of not just other cultures but their own. Often, students return with insights and skills that can be of special benefit to the State and nation. Study abroad plays a crucial role in training students for the challenges of a “globalized” economy and an increasingly interconnected and multi-cultural world.
The pictures not only highlight the wealth of study-abroad opportunities at UW-Madison, they also call attention to the U.S. Senate resolution marking 2006 as the year of study abroad. The resolution, passed unanimously by the Senate in November, 2005, calls on schools, colleges, businesses, governments and the general public to encourage, promote and expand study-abroad opportunities.
Among the photographs in the exhibit is Hadley Phelps Lord’s image, “Stairway Around the World,” looking down along the Great Wall of China, the country’s ancient landmark strangely and powerfully absent of visitors, alone as it were in time. Lord studied abroad in Beijing in summer 2005. In Blaire Bergman’s photo, “View from the Top,” taken in Aix-en-Provence in southern France, a student surveys a varied landscape of rivers and fields hundreds of feet below. Bergman studied in Aix in the 2004-2005 academic year. Emily Sauter’s photo, “Sunrise at Dune 45,” from Namibia, Africa, shows a jubilant study-abroad student wearing Badger red, sitting on a sienna-colored sand dune, reveling in the day. Sauter, who studied at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, in fall 2005, had awakened at 3:00 a.m. to get to the spot by dawn. “Climbing up the sand dune was undoubtedly the most difficult physical task I have ever done, “ she wrote, “but the view once I got up there was worth all of the effort.”
The UW-Madison’s International Academic Programs sponsors a photo contest yearly. The contest, which is the source for most of the photos in this exhibit, was open to all UW-Madison students who participated in a UW-Madison-sponsored study abroad program in spring, summer or fall 2005, the 2004-2005 academic year or 2005-2006 winter interim. Submissions were accepted in four categories, including people, Badgers abroad, architecture and nature scenes.
About 1,600 students from UW-Madison study abroad each year on every continent except Antarctica. Programs vary considerably offering a wide range of educational experiences to students. UW-Madison ranks eighth nationally among research institutions in numbers of study abroad participants and is recognized for its excellence in this field.
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