A sunny Mediterranean resort town between Cannes and Nice on the French Côte d’Azur; a former colony of Marseille and Ancient Roman settlement featuring aqueducts, theatres, amphitheatres, and stone villas; the Picasso Museum and the Naval Museum of Napoléon; parks and gardens; vineyards; summer festivals; the restaurants, cafés, and Marchés de Provence with their fresh fruits, vegetables, and seafood and their potteries, soaps, and perfumes; and last but not least, the beaches of Antibes. “What’s not to love – or fall in love with?”, we thought as we decided to go here for our honeymoon in-between our American and French weddings. Flash forward 15 years, and boy were we pleasantly surprised to be finding ourselves co-directing an ISU Colleges of Engineering and Liberal Arts and Sciences intensive summer language immersion study abroad program unexpectedly in the same town!
“ISU on the French Riviera” fills a gap in the number of study abroad options for students wanting to study French language and culture in an immersion environment. Typical ISU study abroad options in France require a semester or full academic year. However, “ISU on the French Riviera” offers 4 weeks and 4 credits of intensive language immersion, a little longer than a global seminar but not as long as a full semester or academic year. For some students, this is a perfect fit. Working with Cultural Exchanges Abroad, a third-party, ISU-sanctioned provider, we have put together a “custom package” for ISU students that includes four credits of language from the Centre International d’Antibes (CIA), a leading language school in France that specializes in teaching French to international students. Housed in a renovated stone villa located in the heart of Antibes’ old, historic part of the town (and only a few blocks from the beach!), CIA, nicknamed “Le Château School,” offers a wide variety of French language classes for true beginners all the way to advanced language learners.
But, “ISU on the French Riviera” isn’t all about keeping the participants in the classroom! We want our students to fall in-love with Antibes, France, and the experience of discovering new places, peoples, and ways of life. To support these experiential learning goals, the program also includes a number of planned cultural activities (such as an introduction to oenology, that is the study of wine) as well as day trips to nearby sites of historical and cultural importance (such as a train ride to Monaco and a hiking trip through the French Alps) and other cultural excursions in Antibes. We are eager for you to tomber amoureux du Sud de la France. Come join us!
For more information contact:
Dr. Stacey Weber-Fève (sweber@iastate.edu), Associate Professor of French
Mr. Sébastien Fève (sfeve@iastate.edu), Sr. Lecturer of Mechanical Engineering
Image by Freebird on Flickr.