Oberlin College offers over one hundred different study-away programs. Most are in partnership with other universities or organizations, however, the college has also curated a host of Oberlin-specific options for experiencing a global education, such as certain Winter Term projects and Oberlin-in-London. The College added to this catalog when it created the June Language and Culture Intensives in 2023 and Oberlin-in-Paris in 2025.
This summer will mark the third year of the June Language and Culture Intensives, a month-long opportunity for Oberlin faculty to lead students abroad, offering class credit while facilitating immersion in another country.
“I was a little surprised at the number of students who couldn’t study away,” Greggor Mattson, chair of Sociology, said. “They’re like, ‘I’m a two-season athlete, so going away for a semester wasn’t an option,’ or ‘I have to work in the summer, or ‘I couldn’t take out my work study and go abroad.’ So I think for those students, [the June Intensives are] a really unique opportunity to go study abroad with the structure of a class.”
Mattson will be leading SOCI 266: The Happiest Country? Finland and its Welfare State, with Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics Amanda Zadorian this summer.
“We will make that happen so that they can see their full holistic liberal arts selves even while abroad,” Mattson said, a sentiment that was shared by many others who were interviewed.
In 2023, the first summer that the Summer Block program ran, Vladimir Ivantsov, assistant professor of Russian, East European Studies, and Eurasian Studies and Oleysa Ivantsova, lecturer in German and Russian and program director of the German House accompanied a group of students to Georgia.
“When you work at Oberlin, you kind of get used to how creative people here are, how creative students are, and how important it is for them to be able to express, artistically, their individuality,” Invantsova said. “I think that, specifically, participating in a study abroad course like our Georgian course can be something that really can inspire their creativity even more because they come into contact with this culture, which is new for them.”
Significant aspect of these programs are the professors who organize them, their hopes and plans for the program, and their reasons for leading them.
“For me, it’s an opportunity to share a place that I love with Oberlin students,” Mattson said. “Because I’m a professor of American students, it gives us license to contact offices and say, ‘would you meet with us?’ So, I am hoping we get to meet with the tax office. We will ask for someone from the education ministry, and those are things I don’t do when I’m there. This, selfishly, is an opportunity for me to get to see under the hood of Finnish society in a way that I would never get to if I didn’t have the excuse of having sixteen talented and curious Oberlin students with me.”
With support from Dominic Toscano, assistant professor of Chinese, Senior Lecturers in Chinese Li Kai and Lui Fang are leading another June Block titled EAST 105: Chinese Language and Culture in Beijing. According to Lui, Li, who is from Beijing and graduated from Beijing Normal University, plans to use his knowledge of the city and university to teach students about the city and China as a whole.
Ann Cooper Albright, professor of Dance, has been at Oberlin for 35 years. In the fall of 2025, Albright will be leading the inaugural semester of Oberlin-in-Paris with Grace An, chair of the French and Italian Departments and associate professor of French and Cinema and Media.
This September, Albright was in France for the European Contact and Improvisation Teachers Exchange, and found herself in Paris, not for the first time. She traveled to Paris as a third-year in college and has gone back every year since. She described how studying abroad could change a student’s perspective and provide them with a unique experience.
“Living in another culture can give you an incredible perspective on what your life is at the ripe age of twenty,” Albright said. “It’s just a really great experience.”
Oberlin’s faculty are working hard to provide students with an opportunity to experience Oberlin away from Oberlin.
“I think the benefit of this is really the ability for Oberlin teachers, Oberlin professors, Oberlin instructors, taking Oberlin students, traipsing across the globe and learning incredible things along the way,” Toscano said. “I think it’s a really nice way of opening up new topics, new horizons to students with this simultaneous opportunity for we faculty [members] to be a part of that learning, many times in person, by actually going with you guys overseas.”
