Last week, I shared some selections from the first Interim catalogue, from January 1968, when Wofford became one of the first colleges in the South, and apparently the first in the Carolinas, to move to the 4-1-4 schedule. The projects varied from those that focused on the classroom to those that used the world as their classroom.
Today, I want to share a little more about some of the projects. The first Interim featured three international travel projects. Professor Constance Armitage Antonsen took a group of eighteen students to Italy, where they studied Renaissance art in Florence, Milan, and Rome, with side trips to many of the towns in between Florence and Rome. The trip concluded with a stop in Madrid on the way home. Most of the students had already taken the introductory art history course, so the trip reinforced what many of them had seen in the classroom. Professor Antonsen told the Old Gold and Black after the trip that they had seen “virtually every important piece of Italian art.” Students chose a particular phase of Italian art for more intensive study.
Professor Jacques Forbes took a group of eighteen students to Switzerland. On their fifteen-day trip, students visited Zurich, Lucerne, Berne, Lausanne, St. Moritz, and Geneva, and saw sights ranging from the headquarters of the International Red Cross and the League of Nations. Students researched Swiss culture and prepared papers on various subjects.
A third travel project saw sixty students and four professors travel to Mexico, where the students stayed in private homes with Mexican families. Each student had assigned tasks, and they met as a group every other day. The project was led by Professors Paul Lofton, Joe Lesesne, Joaquin Develasco, and Richard Remirez. The group spent two weeks on campus before traveling to Mexico, concentrating on Mexican history and government. They spent much of their time in and around Mexico City.
Other on-campus projects involved students examining problems of air pollution in the Spartanburg area, atomic energy, and Great Decisions, 1968. The Great Decisions project brought a number of regional speakers to campus for discussion and presentations, including former Southern Regional Council president James McBride Dabbs, journalist William D. Workman, attorney and future federal judge Matthew Perry, and a State Department official to talk about Mexico.
These projects took students to other parts of the world and brought the world to Wofford.
Photos (above) – students and Professor Forbes in Switzerland. (Below) – students and Professor Parker studying nuclear energy at Oak Ridge, TN.
