Last Thursday, Sept. 19, a group of exchange students from Konstanz, Germany, arrived on campus for a three-day program associated with associate professor of economics Dr. Sanjay Paul, and were hosted by Elizabethtown College students (including the writer of this article).
The exchange program started through the trip to Geneva, Switzerland, that Paul runs in May to have students learn about international organizations. Dr. Jan-Dirk Rosche, who teaches at Hochschule Konstanz, also brought a group of students to Geneva. Afterwards, the Etown students headed to Konstanz, where the German students hosted them and put together a program for them.
“We thought we could reciprocate by inviting them to Etown for three days while they’re in the U.S,” Paul said.
This year, there were 15 students visiting from Germany. Their program for their time at Etown included a tour of the Bowers Center for Sports, Fitness and Well-being and talks with Director of the Bowers Center Whitney Jones and Head Soccer Coach Arthur Roderick (nicknamed Coach Skip). In addition to learning about the events and programming at the Bowers Center and Etown’s men’s soccer team, the students also discussed ideas of health and well-being, leadership and motivation.
Friday, Sept. 20, the group attended a lecture at the Young Center for Anabaptist & Pietist Studies on the Amish and the Anabaptist movement by Director of the Young Center Religious Studies Dr. Jeffery Bach. They then visited two Amish businesses: ELS, a business that makes farm implements adapted for using horsepower, and DS Stoves and Machine Shop, which makes, among other things, wood stoves. They also had lunch at an Amish home and got to talk with the family there.
“I asked her [Sally Esh, an Amish woman] if there was something I could tell non-Amish people about Amish people,” senior political science and legal studies major Kory Trout, who went on the trip with his Konstanz guest Yannik Böhringer, said. “She said, ‘We’re not perfect people.’ They don’t pretend to be perfect; they live their modest lives and go about their day to day business.”
Many of the exchange students found the visit with the Amish to be particularly impactful. During the discussion afterwards, both students from Konstanz and from Etown brought up the main ideas shared with them of being happy with very little, and focusing on how you live rather than how you die.
“I was impressed by how much strength the Amish have from their faith,” exchange student Markus Waldmann said.
Their final events on campus included an alumni panel featuring alumni who had themselves participated in the Geneva/Konstanz exchange, including Erick Blank, Clay Kaier, Ryan Mulcahey and Adam Saubel. Saturday morning they attended the Peace Symposium hosted by the college.
Some of the major benefits of the exchange program come not from the formal meetings and lectures but from the informal interactions between the students, according to Paul. One benefit for the German students is they get to see what college life is like for American students.
“They get to experience American college life in dormitories, engage in in a lot of activities on campus,” Paul said. “It’s very eye-opening to most of them.”
Both the Konstanz group and the Etown students can talk about a variety of different issues and hear new perspectives they might not otherwise encounter while making new connections and friends that can last far longer than the three-day trip itself.
“I hear later that the Germans travel back to America and visit Etown and their host again, or about Americans going to Germany and meeting with their counterparts there,” Paul said. “The relationships that come out of this program are something great to hear about.”
