By Caleb Wheeler | Staff Writer
As the semester draws to a close, students are planning their summers — and so are professors. From studying abroad to working their farms, they are staying active over the break.
Dr. Jennifer Good, division director for German and Russian, will be leading a summer abroad in Germany from May to June. During that time, she said students will do excursions and tours, museum visits and more.
“[The study abroad] is a language-oriented program,” Good said. “So we’ll do 10 days of travel and then three weeks of concentrated language learning at an international school in Germany.”
Good has been leading study abroad in Germany since 2005, and she’s led around 12 classes during her time. She said her motivation for leading study abroad comes from her own experience studying abroad when she was a teenager.
“I studied abroad when I was just out of high school, and then again in college, I did my junior year,” Good said. “I found it really exciting, and it really turned me into the person that I am today. And so I’m always looking for reasons why students should go and experience something different from their everyday life, [to] see whether maybe they’ll be changed as well.”
Good said the study abroad is intended to further students’ educations, but beyond that, she hopes students will allow themselves to be vulnerable to new cultures and experiences and grow because of them.
While Good will be traveling to Germany, Dr. Scott Moore, associate director of University Scholars and associate professor of philosophy and Great Texts, will be enjoying the break at home with his family — hopefully with visits from his six grandchildren.
“I’ll be helping in some sense with student orientation … and hopefully working on my garden and on our farm,” Moore said.
Moore will be working on Benedict Farms, his 27-acre farm.
“A ‘benedictio’ is a blessing. A ‘benedictus’ is a good word, and we want the farm to be a blessing,” Moore said. “And it’s also the practices of Saint Benedict — prayer, work, study and renewal — that we seek to practice at the farm. So we’re Baptists, but we take inspiration from Saint Benedict.”
Moore said the garden and farm are more fun than anything else, and they make for great summer vegetables.
“The truth of the matter is we give away lots of vegetables and lots of eggs, and we sell [the eggs] at the church, but mostly it’s just a source of great enjoyment — and homegrown tomatoes are the best there are,” Moore said.
Apart from the garden and farm, Moore will be traveling to England in September to speak at a conference, so he will be preparing for that as well as hopefully sending a book on Iris Murdoch to the publisher.
Moore summed up his summer as “some university work, some research work and some time with the family.”
