LANGUAGE STUDIES
Opportunities
Hands-On Opportunities
- Several opportunities for Spanish-English interpretation are available in the community.
- Students Without Borders club allows students to interact with and enjoy contact with their peers from other cultures.
- On Sundays, some students visit and participate in Amistad Cristiana, a Spanish-speaking church in Sioux Center, where their skills grow as they speak with congregation members.
Off-Campus Opportunities
- Dutch Culture and Reformed Worldview is offered in even years. This three-week summer program focuses on early Dutch culture through World War II and its aftermath, including the development of a Reformed worldview through the work of Abraham Kuyper. Field trips to locations in and around the Netherlands are part of the program.
- Central America: Language, Culture, and Society will give you time to practice your Spanish language skills while living with in Puerto Rico. For three weeks in the summer you'll experience first-hand how the local people live and worship, and you'll travel around the island. The program is offered in even years.
- On SPICE (Study Program in Contemporary Europe), you will spend a semester in the city of Zwolle in the Netherlands. This 15-week program begins with a 12-week session in which you'll take a Dutch language course along with three courses such as art and architecture, history, philosophy, or psychology. During the final three weeks, you'll take an intensive cross-disciplinary course. Most students travel throughout Europe during their breaks and free weekends.
- SPIN (Studies Program in Nicaragua) allows you to spend a fall semester studying in Nicaragua with the Nehemiah Center in Managua. You will be immersed in Nicaraguan life and come to better understand that culture by living with a host family and interacting with Nicaraguans daily. Your studies will focus on the Spanish language as well as on Central American culture, history, and contemporary society.
- French minors study French abroad in France with Chez Vous, a six-week summer program in Normandy that immerses you in the language and lifestyle of the French people. You will learn more about the Reformed heritage and about opportunities for ministry within the French-speaking world.
- Spanish majors or minors can spend a semester in Spain or Honduras through cooperative arrangements with both Calvin College and Trinity Christian College. The Latin American Studies Program of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) also offers an opportunity to study the language and culture in Costa Rica.
