- Monday, February 13th SWBA (Swarthmore Buenos Aires), Idaes, Paraná 145, 1st. floor: Arrival/Reception
- Tuesday, February 14th Orientation/Spanish level exam
- Wednesday, February 15th Orientation/Spanish level exam
- Thursday, February 16th Orientation/Spanish level exam
- Monday, February 20 st SWBA: classes begin
- April 2th – 6th Spanish mid-term exams
:: SPANISH LANGUAGE PLAN
The program aims at satisfying the needs of beginning, intermediate and relatively advanced language students. The Swarthmore College (SC) Spanish section will make a placement recommendation for all students participating in the SPBA. For those who are relatively advanced (Advanced Spanish Track), the Program fits into the list of courses offered by the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. As established by the SC Spanish section, students participating in this program should be conversant in Spanish at the 4th semester level or its equivalent, which means successful completion (with a minimun grade of B) of Spanish 4B or its equivalent. These students will take classes entirely in Spanish and all coursework will be done in Spanish.
Except for beginners, all students will participate in a 3 to 5 hours a week program of conversations with tutors and Argentinean students. This will be a one-on-one experience, at a flexible location and with an informal, but carefully planned work agenda. It addition to the obvious linguistic and cultural benefits, the program will build relationships between Swarthmore and Argentinean university students.
For those with very limited Spanish language skills, the program would be heavily geared towards the basics (Lower Level Spanish Track). Students will join group language classes offered at Buenos Aires universities and participate in small groups planned conversations with tutors.
:: ACADEMIC PLAN
The academic plan varies according to the interests, desires, and language ability of the individual student. The preliminary definition of the academic plan begins at Swarthmore with the support of SC professors. All prospective program students will participate in a two-day workshop aimed at providing an intensive immersion into historic and contemporary Buenos Aires, its cultural and intellectual scene, and basic lifestyle issues. Each student will meet with the SC-based SPBA coordinator, and both will produce a tentative academic agenda for his/her individual studies in Buenos Aires. At this point the Buenos Aires-based SPBA coordinator will comment on the feasibility of the plan.
Once in Buenos Aires, no matter what their language abilities are, all students will participate in two types of academic experiences defined as individual mentorship or group learning.
Mentorships consist of individual weekly encounters with professors specialized in topics and issues defined by the student as his/her focus in the personalized portion of the curriculum. SPBA has developed a “mentors bank” in order to accommodate a wide range of personal academic interests. Mentors are specialists with long research and teaching experience at the undergraduate and graduate levels. They all have excellent academic credentials and include Guggenheim fellows, former members of national cabinets, human rights activists and full-time professors with vast international experience. Together they can address a broad range of interests, from molecular biology and environmental studies—participating in laboratory activities or field research trips— to an intensive discussion of the historical, political, cultural, and social issues of Argentina.
The SPBA aims at offering students the opportunity to work intensely on any field represented in the Swarthmore curriculum through all its departments and programs. In each discipline the way of facilitating the learning experience of SC students may differ—directed readings and discussion under a mentor’s supervision, getting involved in a theater group, participating in community work, doing an internship at a museum or cultural institution, etc. In the case of the social sciences and the humanities a probable scenario will be weekly meetings between mentor—an expert in the field—and students.
In addition, the coordinator of the SPBA will pair Swarthmore and Buenos Aires students interested in the same topic. Each intensive mentorship will have an expert interlocutor—a scholar or scholars—and peer interlocutors in one or two local students. SPBA will recruit and select local students and involve them in a Swarthmore Fellowship. Another scenario, best suited to applied sciences, is an internship in a laboratory or in field research trips.
The personalized academic experience may count towards a major or minor in Spanish, Latin American Studies, Environmental Studies, or other departmental or interdisciplinary programs. SC students must work with their departments in order to secure college credit. This is especially important for students majoring in science. But even in cases when students are not able to receive academic credit in science, they may still consider the SPBA a valuable opportunity to work with internationally-recognized scientists and science students in the laboratories of a major city in the non-industrialized world.
The language of mentorships or other individualized learning experiences may be English or Spanish. All mentors are Spanish/English speakers, so all directed readings, discussions and laboratory work will be done in the language that will permit the richest intellectual experience.
Group learning. The personalized part will be complemented with open courses at universities that will fit well in the study program already defined by the student. For those in the Advanced Spanish Track, these courses would most likely be selected from academic courses at the various universities in Buenos Aires, and the student will receive Swarthmore credit for them. An alternative to this path is to combine university courses with more intense individualized work focused on a project or internship. To receive credit for either of these academic, but non-classroom based pursuits, the student must receive written agreement from their SC departments.
Students in the Lower Level Spanish Track will receive instruction in Spanish as a second language. In addition, their academic study will focus on an internship and/or an individual research project. The language will be mainly English.
:: INSTITUTIONAL FRAME
SPBA will develop agreements with various institutions, private and public, while remaining independent. SPBA offers SC students the possibility of experiencing different academic, social, and political environments. Many institutions have already shown strong interest in the project, among them the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Universidad Di Tella, Universidad Maimónides, Dirección General de Parques Nacionales (Federal National Parks Bureau), Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (Latin American Museum of Latin American Art), Centro de Derechos Humanos (Center for Human Rights), Escuela Argentina de Tango (Argentine School of Tango), and Laboratorio de Fisiología y Biología Molecular (Laboratory of Physiology and Molecular Biology). We have signed agreements with the Universidad Nacional de San Martín and the Instituto de Altos Estudios Sociales (IDAES)