Kicking off Season 2 of the college’s hit web series Ask the College Experts is Associate Dean and Director for Global Education Darren Gallant, who offers tips for students looking to get the most out of study abroad.

included tips on writing a good college application essay and what to expect from the interview.

Here’s Gallant’s advice:

• Study abroad is a means to an end: learning about a place. “It’s not a vacation or trip or travel opportunity,” he says.
• While you will have lots of support as you plan your studies, you’re in the driver’s seat. “You’re the one who makes the decision of when you go, how you go, and where you go.”
• Expect an academically different semester, “steeped in learning a new culture, society and way of life.”
• Expect the need to be flexible.
• Expect to learn things about yourself that you’d never thought you’d learn.
• And finally: “Pack less! You don’t need as much as you think you need when you study abroad.”

Created to support ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ admission goals, Ask the (College) Experts won a Grand Gold award last year from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, the preeminent organization for higher education communications and advancement professionals.

Martha Schnee ’15 in a self-portrait in Marfa, Texas.

In the end, it all worked out fine. Better than fine, even.

Martha Schnee ’15, back at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

But around 8:30 a.m. on New Year’s Day 2015, as a sleep-deprived Martha Schnee ’15 was climbing into the pickup truck of a rancher she did not know in Marfa, Texas, she had some doubts.

“This guy’s wearing a cowboy hat and a bandanna and he’s 30-something. And he says, ‘All right, we’re going to my ranch,'” says Schnee. “I look down and there’s a gun two inches from my left foot.

“I was sort of conflicted about it. But I said to myself, ‘All right, I’m just going to do it.’ ”

Ah, the things ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ students will take on for thesis. Schnee (rhymes with “hay”) was doing field work in Marfa for an honors thesis exploring questions of identity — civic, cultural and personal — and representation. The rancher, hearing about her work from a third party, had called out of the blue to invite Schnee on his daily routine.

A high desert town of about 2,000 souls in far western Texas, Marfa’s wider claim to fame is its unlikely status as a center for Minimalist art, thanks to the three-decade presence of the late artist Donald Judd.

“You’re driving through the desert for hours and then you just happen upon this tiny one-stop-light town — and there are contemporary art galleries lining the streets mixed with dilapidated buildings,” says Schnee, an American cultural studies major from Newton, Mass.

Workers on a rooftop in Marfa. (Martha Schnee ’15)

Schnee had spent 24 hours in Marfa during a cross-country drive early in 2014, and came away captivated. It seemed to say something about Marfa that, right off the bat during that first visit, she met poet CAConrad, a favorite of hers, and ended up having lunch with him.

(In typical small-ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝-world fashion, Conrad later turned up at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ to read from his work, invited by English professor Eden Osucha — at the time Schnee’s thesis adviser. With Osucha on leave, Melinda Plastas of the women and gender studies program is now Schnee’s adviser, with guidance on ethnographic research coming from anthropologist Josh Rubin.)

A photographer and writer, Schnee is weaving her thesis from images, interviews with 13 diverse Marfa residents and creative nonfiction writing. If the mythology of the Old West is part of the context, Schnee is hewing closer to a more recent scholarly movement known as New Western History. She’s using the town as a case study in how, as stories of place are told, attitudes about race, class, gender and the environment determine whose voices prevail.

The thesis, she explains, examines past and present Marfa narratives for what, and who, they do and don’t represent. “What don’t we normally see in depictions of the place? Whose voices can we hear more loudly, more clearly? Whose voices are quieter?”

Get along, little doggie. (Martha Schnee ’15)

And one of the identities at play in Schnee’s Marfa project is her own, as she explores the dynamic role of self in her perceptions and in others’ perceptions of her. “I’m not ignoring the fact that it’s a very subjective project,” she says.

“I felt strange about my place as a researcher in this space that already seems constantly scrutinized. I felt that I was adding to a problem in some ways, and that was a really strange position to be in.” Social scientists describe it as reflexivity: the mutual influence exercised by the researcher and the researched.

Photographing Marfa residents was especially fraught for Schnee, who is acutely aware of the power dynamics that a lens can generate. Whose image is it, anyhow? “One woman told me there’s a zoo animal kind of feel for the people that live there,” she says, “and after I heard that, I rethought a lot of what I was doing.”

Ultimately, she says, “I was just trying to come in with an open mind, and not just take these people and use them for my own work. A lot of the idea behind American cultural studies, and my project itself, is to ideally make something that I can give back to the community. It’s about uncovering hidden power structures, connecting those back to history and then trying to figure out a way to give something back through making the invisible more visible.”

Carpenters put up a wall frame in Marfa, Texas. (Martha Schnee ’15)

Despite her misgivings about appropriating Marfa’s identity, even as she was investigating how such things happen, Schnee left the little town “blown away,” as she says, by the human kindness she encountered.

“Nearly everybody I encountered was willing to help me,” she says. That generosity even included a resident’s invitation to stay in his home during his absence.

And, of course, the invitation to witness a few hours of a rancher’s life. (We’ll call the rancher Sam, as ethnographic researchers are obliged to protect their subjects’ anonymity.) The five-hour tour of Sam’s operation outside of Marfa, says Schnee, “just, of course, ended up being the most amazing experience.” The rancher fed his hundreds of cattle, checked their whereabouts and broke the ice crusting their water supplies so they could drink.

Early on, Sam pointed out a group of cows on a hill acting standoffish, which told him that there were new calves. “It’s New Year’s Day and I’m seeing these calves being born into the world, surrounded by desert and distant mountains, and the sky is enormous,” Schnee recalls. “And I remembered how afraid I was at first, and smiled at the situation, at the niceness of this complete stranger.”

Martha Schnee ’15 captures a self-portrait reflected in the facade of a Marfa art gallery.

Sounds dreamy or at least cinematic, but in terms of her thesis, the encounter with the rancher was a definitive episode during Schnee’s three weeks in Marfa. Sam personified a key conflict of identity in Marfa: Traditional Texas, with all the attendant realities and myths, vs. the international art destination.

“He talked a lot about art and not understanding it, and the experiences of meeting all these people coming through town,” says Schnee.

Sam told her, “I want to show you what my life is like so you don’t have this misperception of what I do. If you see it, you can go back to the East Coast and talk about actually experiencing what I do,” Schnee recalls.

“And I thought, what could be better? This immersive experience in another reality was exactly what I wanted. And all it took was sacrificing a few hours of sleep and being OK with getting into a stranger’s truck.”

For the four ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ juniors who took part in a private audience with the Dalai Lama in October, it was like “history happening in front of my eyes,” said Natalie Silver of Bennington, Vt.

The four were among 20 American college students now studying in Kathmandu on a School for International Training program that explores Tibetan and Himalayan cultures.

The SIT program is one of myriad programs around the world offered by ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ through the college’s Off-Campus Study Office.

“It was incredible,” says Silver, a history major, “to study Tibetan history and culture and its conflict with China, and then actually to meet the Dalai Lama and speak with him about those things.”

Silver’s fellow ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ students were Ruth Baker of Minneapolis, Kristen Kelliher  of Norwich, Vt., and Jacob Nemeroff of Doylestown, Pa.

The students met with the Dalai Lama during a trip to Dharamsala, India.

Four ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ juniors were among 20 students who had a private audience with the Dalai Lama: Ruth Baker (far left, middle row) of Minneapolis, Minn., Jacob Nemeroff (next to Baker) of Doylestown, Pa., Kristen Kelliher (seated, with glasses, at center) of Norwich, Vt., and Natalie Silver (far left, seated) of Bennington, Vt. (Photograph courtesy of SIT Study Abroad)

The experience prompted Nemeroff to think about how perilous it is to engage the world in an antagonistic us-vs.-them mindset.

“The Dalai Lama said that you will be a much happier and productive person if you are able to foster feelings of compassion towards others and rid yourself of feelings of anger towards others. ”

While that’s not a novel concept, since Buddhism has been around for 2,500 years, His Holiness made his point with an unlikely analogy.

“He told us that a soldier who harbors feelings of anger towards the enemy is going to compromise his mental state and his physical capacity to shoot accurately,” Nemeroff says.

“If he was going to have the best shot at hitting his enemy, he should relinquish the negative energy from within in order to maintain composure.”

It was a surprising but effective way to explain a Buddhist tenet, says Nemeroff, adding that the ability to let go of anger and resentment is a handy tool.

Take college life, for example.

“ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ is a small physical space,” he says. “Inevitably, there’s tension between friends, and tension between professors and students.”

So, like Otis Redding sang, why not try a little tenderness? Why not let it go — whether anger over a bad grade, resentment that crops up during a group project or tension between roommates.

“Relinquishing anger from within is something that I and other ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ students can do to enrich our academic and social experience,” Nemeroff says. “Exercising compassion in all aspects of our lives widens our own perspectives and allows us to embrace the perspectives of those around us.”

The annual Barlow Off-Campus Photography Exhibition does more than give students the chance to share cool photos from their far-off and far-out study-abroad locales.

Mounted in Perry Atrium during the annual Mount David Summit, “the exhibition is part of how we help returning students reconnect to the ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ community,” says David Das, assistant director of off-campus study programs and curator of the annual exhibition.

David Das is assistant director of Off-Campus Study at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

By the time they graduate, about 60 percent of ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ students have received credit for off-campus study.

Among students, study-abroad experiences instill greater awareness of critical global issues.

In turn, that awareness influences all that comes later, from senior thesis to success in winning post-ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ fellowships and grants.

In 2013, anthropology major Devin Tatro ’14 of Haverhill, Mass., studied abroad in Kampala, Uganda. The experience inspired her honors thesis on “tribal trademarking” by Uganda’s Sebei people — that is, how the Sebei have begun to market their culture to tourists and international aid organizations.

ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ is a “top producer” of postgraduate Fulbright U.S. Student grants, and Robert Strong, the college’s graduate fellowship adviser, points to off-campus study as a key indicator.

“Almost every fellowship out there these days is interested in the same qualities: They want leaders, they want people engaged in their communities, they want people who have a global and intercultural awareness.”

And now, on to the photographs!

Granada, Spain

“Fuente de las Batallas was bustling and lively on my way to school every morning, but completely empty during lunch and the siesta that follows. The mantra of Granadiños is ‘No pasa nada,’ which essentially translates to ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff.’ The no pasa nada lifestyle manifests itself in all parts of Granadan culture and is exemplified in this man taking a moment to relax in front of this fountain.” — Helen Chyz ’14 of Seattle, Wash., whose major is psychology with a concentration in Latin American studies

Kathmandu, Nepal

“A young boy lights butter lamps at Boudhanath stupa, a daily event during morning prayers as Buddhists perform Kora, literally ‘to circumambulate.’ Boudhanath has become the center of the Tibetan exile community in Nepal and the site of one of the most recent Tibetan self-immolations, in August 2013.” — Evan Cooper ’15 of Unionville, Conn., whose major is politics with a concentration in children, adolescents and school

Beijing, China

“As I cut onto a small sidewalk around the outskirts of the Forbidden City and turned a corner, I saw this man and was instantly put at ease. He was a breath of fresh air (metaphorically speaking, due to the smog). In the city of everlasting noise, smog and confusion, this man, calmly fishing in the moat of the Forbidden City, inadvertently opened a window onto life in Beijing before rapid modernization.” — Ned Donaldson ’15 of Lincoln, Mass., whose major is politics with a concentration in government and conflict

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

“Vietnam has a distinctive ‘moto’ culture; motorbikes have become so ingrained in everyday life that people eat, sleep and dream on their motorbikes. In Ho Chi Minh city, operators of motorbike taxis, or xe oms‘, like this man, spend their days hanging out on street corners, awaiting business from locals and tourists.” — Olivia Kronemeyer ’14 of Southampton, N.Y., whose major is psychology with concentrations in French in Nantes, and culture and meaning

Jerusalem, Israel

“The Kotel, or the Western Wall, is one of the holiest sites in Judaism. On holidays, it transforms into a place where everyone is family, and dancing and singing are required. This picture was taken at end of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The day is serious and solemn. After fasting for 24 hours, this group of Orthodox men celebrated the breakfast by dancing throughout the Kotel plaza and getting other men to join.” — Emma Kate Lindsay ’15 of Harrison, N.Y., whose major is history and religious studies, with a concentration in the latter

Capri, Italy

“To get to the Grotta Azzurra (the Blue Grotto), we were piled in a dinghy that was thrust through the small entrance of the cave by the flowing tide. We were told to lie down as flat as possible so we would not hit our heads on the cave walls. Once inside, the whole cave was illuminated with a dazzling bright blue from the reflection of sunlight passing through the seawater.” — Erin Milligan ’15 of Rumford, Maine, whose major is economics with a concentration in philosophy and psychology

Ankara, Turkey

“This photo was taken at the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal AtatĂĽrk. ‘AtatĂĽrk’ means ‘Father of the Turks,’ a name given to Mustafa Kemal by the Turkish people, and he is celebrated today as the nation’s founder. After playing a key role in the War of Independence, AtatĂĽrk went on to be the nation’s first president and implemented many reforms to modernize. He has been immortalized as a symbolic pillar of the Turkish spirit.” — Julia Ofman ’15 of Brooklyn, N.Y., whose major is religious studies with concentrations in French and Francophone studies and in children, adolescents and school.

Khok Si, Thailand

It took a lot of convincing, in broken Thai and hand gestures, to get my host father to let me help plant rice. He thought that I wouldn’t like getting dirty or waking up early, but I told him that I wanted to do everything that the rest of the family did.” — Jackie Ordemann ’15 of Groton, Mass., whose major is biological chemistry with a concentration in the geosphere

Dubrovnik, Croatia

“A group of ‘Cats met up for a few days in the historic city of Dubrovnik, Croatia. On the last day, we stumbled upon a large cliff outside the city walls. Looking out onto the Adriatic Sea, we decided to end our trip on a high note, and this is Jonathan Strain leading the way.” — Conor Henrie ’15 of Lexington, Mass., whose major is economics and politics with a concentration in globalization

Helsinki, Finland

“Braving the Maine-like winter conditions, I walked to the harbor at the edge of the city. Impressively, the Finns take advantage of their historic proximity to the Baltic Sea as a means of trade and transportation during all seasons.” — Fiona Stuart ’14 of Havertown, Pa., whose major is psychology with a concentration in public health

La Isla del Sol, Bolivia

“One day for lunch, we all brought food to share with the rest of the students on my program and their families. From my family, we brought fish that my brother and I caught and prepared only an hour prior. We sat, exhausted from work (my tiny host brother, Wilmer, was about 100 times as effective as I was in the fields). We laughed and we ate. Reciprocity is an integral part of Bolivian culture, and I find myself missing this type of warmth every day.” — Shana Wallace ’15 of Pleasantville, N.Y., whose major is environmental studies with a concentration in the environment and human culture

Merzouga, Morocco

“The most peaceful place I have ever been is the sand dunes of Merzouga. Here, friends are relaxing in the zween (beautiful) desert after a sunset camel ride. The cheesiest and most touristy part of my abroad experience ended up resulting in an opportunity for reflection that I never could have anticipated.” — Hally Bert ’14 of Tacoma, Wash., whose major is politics with a concentration in Law and Society

Frieda Esther Lopatka, grandmother of Rachel Baumann.

ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ senior Rachel Baumann discusses her grandparents’ travails during the Holocaust, and offers insights into both wartime history and the importance of humanity and faith, in a talk at 4:15 p.m. Friday, Nov. 15, Room G65, Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road.

Titled Why My Grandmother Converted to Judaism in Nazi Germany During 1936, the talk is sponsored by the Multifaith Chaplaincy. Admission is free and open to the public. For more information, please email hbalcomb@bates.edu.

Baumann, of Fairfield, Conn., traveled to Europe last summer on the strength of a Phillips Fellowship from ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ to retrace her Jewish grandparents’ steps through Berlin, Warsaw and the surrounding suburbs where they sought refuge as Jews during Nazi rule.

Her grandmother had converted to Judaism — perhaps for the sake of being in love, perhaps because she was simply moved by the faith — at the same time that Nazis began their persecution of the Jews.

Baumann also studied today’s Jewish community in Berlin and spent time at the Jewish Museum Berlin to get an understanding of the contemporary identity and climate for Jews in Germany.

Through studying how Berlin actively remembers the atrocities of World War Two, from large memorials to individual stones in the street, Baumann was able to piece together both her family’s missing narrative and a greater story of how a country broken by war and hatred can self-consciously rebuild a narrative of peace and remembrance.

Baumann is the same age that her grandparents were when the Nazis rose to power in Germany. Though they were able to survive their trials in Europe and emigrate to America, until this summer their young adulthood was a mystery to Baumann and her family.

ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College’s other 2013 Phillips Fellow, Asha Mohamud ’15 of Lewiston, spent her summer in Tanzania working for an HIV/AIDS clinic and learning about community-driven public health initiatives.

The Phillips Student Fellowship is a summer research grant given to two ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ students every year, allowing them to explore another culture, conduct immersive research, and grow personally and intellectually through their unique experiences.

In the same cafe as the the one with waiter serving tea (previous slide)ÂŽ, a woman begs with her children. Despite her desperate condition, I noticed that no one paid attention to her plight. Phillip Dube '16/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College.

A waiter serving Turkish tea at a cafeÂŽ in Urfa, southeast Turkey. Cafes are places to socialize, play games and have some beverages. Phillip Dube '16/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College.

Rooftop soccer: A ball belonging to a group of boys falls off the rooftop as they play soccer, a common sport in most parts we visited. A lack of flat spaces in this area leads them to play the game on a rooftop. Phillip Dube '16/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College.

Road construction in Mardin, a city in southeast Turkey. With the economic boom in Turkey, many cities across the country are investing in infrastructure projects. Sometimes these projects inconvenience people, as the workers here piled paving stones on the sidewalk while they worked on the road. Phillip Dube '16/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College.

A typical Turkish breakfast with generous spreads of cheese, cold meats, olives, bread, etc. Most Turks usually have breakfast with tea in these wasp-waisted glasses. And they drink it throughout the day over conversation or with meals. Phillip Dube '16/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College.

Short Term can be the best time of the academic year at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝, and one reason is that it allows students in a course to travel together.

This past Short Term, I took the course “Turkey: From Empire to State” with Assistant Professor of Politics Senem Aslan. The class explored the ethnic and religious diversity of the country and current developments in Turkish politics. For part of the course, we ventured forth to Turkey to engage in conversation with different groups of people there, and to visit the historic mosques and Gobeike Tepe, a stone structure built 11,000 years ago for, it’s believed, religious purposes.

After two weeks in Turkey we had acquired vast first-hand knowledge and taken a lot of photographs. This slideshow documents our experience in Turkey.

Isabel Makman ’14 at the Peterhof Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia.

A ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ junior studying in St. Petersburg, Russia, is among the first recipients of a new scholarship offered by CIEE, an organization based in Portland, Maine, that provides international education and exchange programs.

Isabel Makman of Kalispell, Mont., is one of 13 recipients of CIEE’s Language Intensive Focus Track (LIFT) scholarship, and is the only one attending a Maine college.

The scholarship supports Makman’s goal of staying in St. Petersburg through spring 2013. A Russian major and Spanish minor, she’s studying the Russian language through a CIEE program, as well as literature and culture.

“I was very honored to hear that I would be one of the first recipients of this scholarship,” she said.

“My experience in Russia has been wonderful so far. I have been living with a host family, attending classes at St. Petersburg State University, volunteering as an English teacher and interning at an English-language newspaper.”

She adds, “Russia has certainly changed the way I think about the world. For example, there are people in Russia who seem to think communism was not such a bad thing, contrary to what I’ve always been taught. This new perspective has certainly been interesting and enlightening.”

CIEE’s goal for the LIFT program is to enable serious, academically focused students to pursue deep language acquisition. The inaugural LIFT scholars were chosen from a highly competitive pool of current CIEE students pursuing intensive language development in Arabic, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese or Portuguese, in addition to Russian.

“The caliber of students who applied for a LIFT scholarship is truly remarkable,” said CIEE President and CEO James P. Pellow. “Each recipient is clearly dedicated to internationalizing their education.

“It is our privilege to be able to provide these impressive students with important financial assistance that will allow them to continue to pursue their personal and professional passions in another country.”

Beginning in fall 2013, LIFT scholarships will be available to students on all year-long CIEE language programs. .

A nonprofit, nongovernmental organization, CIEE is a world leader in international study and exchange programs.

An image from the 2009 ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ visit to Rwanda for the course “Learning with the Orphans of the Rwanda Genocide.”

In its story about teaching genocide, International Educator features the ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ course “Learning with Orphans of the Rwandan Genocide,” taught by Associate Professor of French Alex Dauge-Roth.

Writer Dana Wilkie frames the challenge of teaching genocide this way: “How does a university program…address the power of political regimes and demagogues bent on inciting the sort of hatred that leads one people to commit atrocities against another?”

Dauge-Roth, who conducts ongoing research in Rwanda and directs the nonprofit , offers an answer by first noting that “we all have defenses that allow us to intellectualize” horrific acts like genocide.

“But when there’s more intimate proximity with the human effects of genocide, the way you relate to such events shifts radically,” he says.

In the case of Dauge-Roth’s course, he and students travel to Rwanda, where students partner with orphans of the 1994 genocide to create oral histories and other documentary resources.

Achieving this kind of “intimate proximity” (which is the title of the article), creates “ways to move on and to create connections and dialogues” to prevent future genocide.

• View story about Dauge-Roth’s course in ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ Magazine, Fall 2009.

In his letter to The New York Times, Dana Professor of Anthropology Loring Danforth takes issue with comments journalist Karen Elliott House makes in her book On Saudi Arabia.

Anthropology major Devin Tatro ’14 talks with Saudi men at a desert farm in the Eastern Province during a Short Term trip last spring to Saudi Arabia led by Dana Professor of Anthropology Loring Danforth. This was a rare moment in Saudi society: women talking with men publicly, and not asked to wear the abaya. Photo: Ana Bisaillon ’12.

Danforth’s letter is in response to a of On Saudi Arabia published in the Times. Danforth takes issue with Totten’s review for not criticizing “House’s portrayal of Saudis as passive, somnolent, undereducated, docile and unquestioningly obedient. These generalizations oversimplify what is in fact a very complex, diverse and rapidly changing society.”