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Lessons from Afar
Drury architecture students participate travel to China in a study abroad experience
By: Cherlyn Feldkamp, University Communications
Five students from Drury University traveled to China this past summer as part of a study abroad program. Four of the students were from the Hammons School of Architecture.
Since 1984, it has been a graduate requirement for Drury architecture students to participate in a study abroad experience. “The focus is to develop a heightened cultural awareness of another culture. To look at that culture from the social standpoints, the arts, physical manifestations of a culture, which would be its laws, its government, its architecture and its city planning. It is an understanding of language and how that relates to the culture,” says Jay Garrott, professor at Hammons School of Architecture. The course is broken into two parts: seminars that focus on the relationship between the culture and place, and field research and field observations to physically experience the places. Students develop a very broad understanding of culture and how that influences the physical expression of that cultural thought poetry and art to government and physical landmarks. “What is very important is that when they come and they start to look at their own culture back here it provides and very new and heightened understanding of their own culture,” said Garrott.
The students enjoyed a six-week trip in China. The first four weeks were spent in Beijing, where the students took classes every morning at Tsing Hua University. The students heard lectures and toured the regional area. Five days of those four weeks were spent in Chengdu, where students toured the summer villa of the emperor and walked sections of the Great Wall. During the fifth week the students were required to tour China on their own and the sixth week was spent in Hong Kong.
Architecture student Tyler Barnard not only learned about the different forms of architecture in China but he learned a few personal lessons as well. “The sense of the caring of the people in China was overwhelming. I saw a need of reflection in my own way of life to search out the needs of others. I really learned the value of the gift of time,” he said. Barnard, along with Drury architecture major Darci Thomas spent an extra six weeks in China serving in an internship at a firm in Dongguan.
Garrott hopes the study abroad program will grow. He would like to expand the trips to include more than just architecture students at Drury and perhaps students from other institutions.
Related Links:
Hammon's School of Architecture
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