April 26, 2010
Tina Chen, Ph.D., still draws on her own undergraduate
study-abroad experience in Bordeaux, France, to help her as she
teaches her students at St. John’s University’s Paris campus.
“I totally understand the thrill of discovering a new place and its
culture,” she says. “As one of the few American professors at the
Paris campus, I can share that ‘American in Paris’ perspective
with the students.”
Dr. Chen, who has lived in Paris for eight years, teaches
Art and Architecture in France in St. John’s acclaimed
Discover the World and
Paris semester programs. She uses the city as her classroom,
taking advantage of the fantastic wealth of art in Paris as much as
possible. “We’ve visited Notre-Dame
Cathedral,
Sainte Chapelle, the Louvre,
Musee d'Orsay,
the Rodin
Museum, and the
Pompidou Centre.”
Sophomore Jackie Bloom ‘12C took the Art and Architecture
course in Discover the World. She says “everyone should take the
opportunity to do DTW” and calls the excursions “valuable learning
experiences. Dr. Chen is amazing; it was like having our own
tour guide and it was much easier to remember the material at exam
time because we had actually seen and experienced those
places.”
Recently, Dr. Chen took on two additional courses — Contemporary
France and French conversation — and is using field trips as
teaching tools in those, too. Her students have already visited a
French market and attended a presentation at the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development.
Although she frequently takes students off-campus, Dr. Chen, who
earned her undergraduate and doctoral degrees at UC Berkeley,
praises the Paris campus as a place to live and learn. “The
facilities are really nice, the classrooms are too and the location
is terrific—right in the center of Paris!