Real Stories

World Wide Whittier

Name:
Alison Billroth-MacLurg (Class of 2007)
Major:
Biology
Involvement at Whittier:
Cross Country team, Study Abroad: DIS-Copenhagen program

"I didn't know the slightest bit of Danish when I started, but after taking the program's language course for a year, I now speak almost fluently," says recent grad Alison Billroth-MacLurg, who spent her junior year studying abroad in Copenhagen. "The Danes are incredibly good at speaking English, but they seemed very supportive of my 'Danglish'—what I called my mix of English and Danish."

Paramount to Whittier's core academic mission is to prepare students for leadership and success in a global economy. And, while the majority of that preparation takes place in Whittier's classrooms and through local fieldwork or research opportunities, the option to study abroad—whether a semester or yearlong program, a January Interim class, or summer course through Whittier Law School—and experience both cultural immersion and foreign perspective on an academic discipline is highly encouraged. Currently, Whittier students can select from a range of 90 different programs in 24 countries, including our most popular destination—Copenhagen, Denmark—where Whittier holds a more than 50-year partnership with the Danish Institute for Study Abroad (DIS).

"In the DIS program, there's a designated week for travel to another country to explore your field of study," recalls Billroth-MacLurg. "My group went to Finland, where I collected marine biology samples, and to Poland, where I visited hospitals and watched an autopsy. But later, with friends and just for fun, I also traveled to Sweden, Norway, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, France, Belgium, and Russia."

"The people I met while abroad not only taught me a lot about myself, but also the rest of the world's perspective on the U.S. They opened my horizons and heart to new cultures and beliefs that I would never have known otherwise."