Prof. Joanna Woronkowicz answers questions about the new summer program, Switzerland.
Why should students study abroad?
Until you spend time in another country, relating to people who come from different backgrounds and learning about a different culture, you don’t realize how small your immediate world is and how much more you can learn (and enjoy) when you expand it. Studying overseas is the perfect situation to help expand your world especially in a topic you already are interested in or care deeply about. It not only will help you learn more about a subject that you might want to develop a career in, but will give you a structure for embedding yourself in a different culture, including a new network of people that you have common interests with. Also, studying abroad while you’re a student is the ideal time to have this experience, before many students have full-time jobs and families to care for, and many other responsibilities that make it harder to travel.
What are you most excited about for the Switzerland program?
I am most excited to introduce students from IU to the people in Switzerland at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) whom I’ve been working with for several years in the area of cultural and creative industries. This course is a pilot for a joint program between the O’Neill School and ZHdK that would include this course as a ‘module’ in ZHdK’s new cultural policy minor. Beginning in summer 2025, the students in this course will hopefully be studying alongside students at ZHdK. I’m also excited to show students – especially those who have never left the United States – how beautiful Switzerland is. I had the good fortune of doing a Fulbright in Switzerland in 2019 and being able to discover the beautiful landscape. I also really enjoyed seeing how sustainable the Swiss way of living is from seeing everyone there primarily rely on public transportation, biking, and walking, and how they use different methods for controlling their natural resource usage.
What is the course itself about? What will students spend their time focused on?
The course is about how creative products are produced and consumed in the market. By creative products, I mean music, television, film, and other forms of art and creativity. We’ll learn about how people and firms operate with the cultural and creative industries (CCI), and how governments approach CCI policy. Since the CCI is a term that is more commonly used outside of the United States, we’ll focus on learning about them in other countries, especially Switzerland and Western and Northern Europe where CCI policy and practice is relatively sophisticated. We’ll have the pleasure of studying and learning about this topic at the Zurich Center for Creative Economies and hearing from experts working in both policy and practice in and around Switzerland.
What’s something surprising students may encounter on this program?
While Switzerland is probably best known for its chocolate and its cheese, and the beautiful snowy rocky landscape of the Alps, the country is also one of the top producers of design in the world. Students in this course will get the opportunity to visit and see the archives in the Museum fur Gestaltung Zurich, a leading Swiss museum for design and visual communication. There students will see original designs of many products that they’ve probably never thought of as being Swiss – Logitech products, Sigg water bottles, Freitag bags, and of course luxury Swiss watches!
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