Mount Holyoke will sponsor a junior year abroad program in Montpellier, France, starting in the 1999-2000 academic year. Dean of International Affairs Christopher Rivers says the program will "incorporate the best features of existing junior year in France programs and tailor them to Mount Holyoke students." This means that the College will have "total input about academic questions" and that students can apply any financial aid they receive to the Montpellier program.
Participants will complete a September intensive language program, then enroll at the prestigious Universite Paul Valery in this up-and-coming city of 300,000. Rivers says Montpellier is one of France's oldest and most important university cities, and serves as an important technological center as well. It is the capital of the Languedoc-Roussillon region of Southern France.
Montpellier program students will also get a three-day Paris stay, and can participate in a weekend host family program, learn French cooking, and take weekend excursions with the group.
The program is currently open only to MHC women, and will accept no more than twelve participants a year. Rivers said a campus meeting last spring offering preliminary information about the Montpellier program drew considerable student interest.
Although Rivers is always looking to expand study-abroad opportunities, he says the College wasn't looking for a program in southern France particularly. The Montpellier program is the brainchild of Rivers's former student Amy Gosselin Loth '94, who studied in Montpellier and now teaches English at the medical school there. "She gave us a proposal that was so detailed we could tell from the beginning that this was a sound idea," Rivers said. "She has done an amazingly meticulous job of working out the details of the program's start-up, and will work beautifully with the students too." Loth will be the program's on-site director, providing academic advising, coordinating housing (in apartments or in French families' homes) for MHC students, and holding biweekly get-togethers in her apartment.
Although MHC women can participate in many programs throughout the world that are affiliated with or approved by Mount Holyoke, the College sponsors only two study-abroad programs: Montpellier and one in Senegal. The College has also recently established several one-to-one student exchange programs (at Hong Kong University, the University of Leipzig, and the Parisian political science institute known as "Sciences Po"), and has formalized ties with Japan Women's University in Tokyo.
For more information about the Montpellier program, contact Rivers at x2072 or crivers@mtholyoke.edu.
![[Index]](../index3.gif){kind=small}