Grinnell-in-London Celebrates 40 Years

During the fall semester of 1974, 17 Grinnell students went to London with program organizers Vic Verrette, then professor of French, and Doug Caulkins, then associate professor of anthropology. Nearly 1,400 students have participated in the Grinnell-in-London program since.

To mark the 40th anniversary, the program hosted an event in London on Nov. 21, 2014, at which longtime resident director Donna Vinter, adjunct professor of English literature, was recognized for her many years of service. She began teaching in the program in 1980 and became resident director in 1982. During her tenure, she has skillfully managed changes in the program that have come, in part, from the ever-shifting field of off-campus study.

There is significantly more competition now in study-abroad programs in the United Kingdom, Europe, and around the world. Also, students look closely at how the program aligns with their academic and career goals. Standards continue to rise for managing potential risks and crises. In response, the College has experimented with and made several modifications to the Grinnell-in-London program’s structure.

When the program began, for example, the focus was on courses. In the early 1990s, the program began placing a few students in parliamentary internships — one of Vinter’s initiatives. One student interned in 1992 with then-Member of Parliament Tony Blair. After a few years of experimenting with a wider array of internships in a separate spring program during the early 2000s, the College decided in 2005 to fold internships into the fall program, a feature that continues to this day.

For fall 2014, the College initiated another three-year experiment. Before 2014, Grinnell-in-London has been an “island” program. Grinnell students took courses only from within the College’s own curriculum.

This year marks a significant departure from the island approach. With support from IES Abroad, which helps with internship placements and supports student services, Grinnell is partnering with Queen Mary University of London so that some students may take a course at a British university.

“This innovation widens the pool of topics that students can study in London,” Vinter says.

A hallmark of Grinnell-in-London has been the creative use of the city as a place of study by the Grinnell faculty as well as the London-based adjunct faculty. Some of these courses have included:

• Jerry Lalonde’s Classical Archaeology and Art in British Museums.
• Charles Cunningham’s Bridges, Towers, and Skyscrapers.
• Elizabeth Prevost’s Experiencing Postcolonial London: Locating the World City in Social, Political, and Cultural Performances.
• Donna Vinter’s The London Stage.

“I hope and trust that the program will continue to be guided by its original vision: To find creative ways to marry the best of the small-campus, academically rigorous, liberal arts Grinnell ethos with the wide-open, three-dimensional encyclopedia of human culture, politics, and history that is London — in other words, Grinnell-in-London,” Vinter says.