Faculty Leader

Dr. Marta Hernández Salván, UCR Associate Professor of Spanish

Classes

Note: Classes are taught in Spanish. If you speak Spanish at a high intermediate or advanced level, you are welcome to apply! Please email the professor if you haven't completed the prerequisites below.

• SPN 122B: Spanish Transatlantic Cultural Studies (4 units)
• SPN 103: Spanish Culture and Civilization (4 units)

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Dr. Covadonga Lamar Prieto, a different UCR professor, ran a very similar FLEAP before. Here is media coverage about that program:

• StoryMap (2021)
• YouTube Video (2021)

Apply Here: Madrid, Spain: Interculturalism in the Crossroads

Note: The updated 2025 flyer and program costs will be posted in October 2024.

Faculty Leader

Dr. Huda Aljord, UCR Lecturer of Arabic

Classes

The Arabic study abroad program in Spain is designed to offer a comprehensive exploration of the Arabic language and culture. The curriculum is carefully crafted to cover the following subject matter:

1. Language Proficiency: Intensive Arabic language courses catering to different proficiency levels (beginner, intermediate, advanced), focusing on listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills.
2. Cultural Studies: In-depth exploration of Arab history, literature, art, and customs to provide students with a holistic understanding of the cultural context in which the language is embedded.
3. Contemporary Issues: Discussion of current events, social issues, and trends in the Arab world to provide students with a real-world understanding of the language's relevance in today's global context.

The program is designed to achieve the following learning outcomes:

1. Arabic Language Proficiency: Attain a higher level of proficiency in Arabic language skills, enabling effective communication in both academic and everyday settings.
2. Cultural Competence: Develop cultural competence by understanding the historical, social, and cultural aspects of the Arab world, fostering respect and appreciation for diversity.
3. Global Perspective: Gain a global perspective by exploring the intersection of Arabic and Spanish cultures, preparing students for international collaboration and engagement.
4. Practical Application: Apply language skills in real-life situations through language exchanges, cultural activities, and interactions with local communities.

Location in Spain:
The program will be located in Granada, a strategically chosen city in Spain, selected for its historical significance, cultural vibrancy, and conducive environment for language learning. The chosen location provides:

1. Historical Context: Opportunities to explore remnants of Arab influence in architecture, art, and history, offering a unique backdrop for learning.
2. Cultural Diversity: Exposure to diverse regional cultures within Spain, enriching the overall experience and fostering a deeper understanding of cross-cultural dynamics.
3. Supportive Infrastructure: Well-established language schools and institutions, ensuring a high standard of education and support for students throughout the program.
4. Arabic-Speaking Communities: Access to local Arabic-speaking communities, facilitating language exchange and authentic cultural interactions outside the classroom.

Experiential Activities:
The program includes a range of experiential activities to enhance learning and cultural immersion:

1. Language Exchanges: Opportunities for students to practice Arabic with native speakers in informal settings, promoting practical language application.
2. Cultural Workshops: Interactive sessions covering literature, music, art, and traditions, providing hands-on experiences to deepen cultural understanding.
3. Field Trips: Visits to cultural and historical sites, museums, and events related to the Arab world, reinforcing language learning in real-world contexts.
4. Guest Speakers: Invitations to experts in relevant fields to share insights and experiences, connecting theoretical knowledge with practical applications.

The combination of subject matter, learning outcomes, location, and experiential activities ensures a well-rounded and immersive Arabic study abroad program in Spain, providing students with a transformative educational experience.

Apply Here: Granada, Spain: Arabic Culture and Civilization

Note: The 2025 flyer and program costs will be posted in October 2024.

Faculty Leaders

• Dr. Brian Crites
• Dr. Jeffrey McDaniel

Classes

• CS 110: Principles of Web Development (4 units)
• CS 175: Entrepreneurship in Computing (4 units)

This program will integrate two upper-division courses Web Development (CS110) and Entrepreneurship in Computing (CS175) to create a program introducing students to what it's like to create or work at an early-stage startup. Web Development (CS110) is primarily concerned with methods to create well-crafted, tested, and documented websites and services that can be easily extended and scaled to meet future needs. The students will learn about everything necessary to create and deploy modern websites and services including tools, frameworks, patterns, and methods. Additionally, they learn industry-standard project management tools such as GitHub and Kanban boards to track their groups' progress through feature identification and specification, development, testing, and deployment as well as bug identification, tracking, and patching.

Entrepreneurship in Computing (CS175) focuses on teaching the skills necessary to create a technology business such as ideation strategies, business model canvas generation, customer discovery, market validation, development of a minimum viable product (MVP), and product-market validation. The business side of this course teaches the students how to use customer discovery to identify their customers and the features that they truly need so the team is able to develop a product that solves a problem for their target customers. This process includes speaking with potential customers, "failing" rapidly, and learning from those "failures" to develop a better product. These skills are essential for any good manager as well as any good engineer. In addition to the business side of the course, the students form teams and develop an MVP, as identified by their customer discovery process. The final deliverable of the course is a mock investor pitch and a demo of their MVP and the associated documentation.

The program proposed here will retain some of the lab components of CS110, but will focus primarily on an open-ended group project that will be proposed by the students to satisfy both the CS110 assignments and the CS175 MVP project. The students will form their own "startup" groups and propose a web-based system or service prior to arriving in the country and will then build an MVP for their proposed business. They will learn how to formulate user stories to describe/specify features during the first few days abroad and utilize these skills to set up milestones for their project. This integration of the two courses will reinforce the lessons from CS110 as students will see these methods applied to their own real-life project that has "customers" and a business prospect. While it will still be a "smaller project" as far as real-world web systems are concerned, because it is an MVP with a real-world application, the students will be able to see how the foundation in modern web development and software practices sets a framework for maintainable and extensible systems. In addition to the integration of the two courses discussed above, teaching this course abroad provides additional opportunities to enhance student learning experiences. Costa Rica has been hailed as the "Silicon Valley of Latin America" and boasts a number of large technology companies opening offices in San Jose. One of the top technology universities in Latin America (Costa Rica Institute of Technology) is just outside San Jose, and the city has been developing the technology sector as one of the fastest-growing technology economies.

Finally, we hope to partner with the entrepreneurial ecosystems both abroad in San Jose and locally in Riverside. In San Jose, we will have speakers from the local startup ecosystem give talks about their own startup journey. Back in Riverside, we hope to partner with local resources such as 3 UCR's own ExCITE incubator, to provide students with the opportunity to continue with their projects after the program has ended if they choose to or to simply continue their journey in the exciting world of startups.

This program has closed as of March 2024 and is no longer taking applications. Please stay posted for this program in Summer 2025, to South Korea.

Download high-resolution poster for this course

Faculty Leader

• Dr. Fuson Wang, UCR Associate Professor of English

Classes

• ENGL 128J Jane Austen (4 units)
• ENGL 166T Topics in Romantic Literature (4 units) 

"Austen and the City" offers students the opportunity to experience the cultural transformation of Romantic-era revolutions by connecting the groundbreaking works of authors like Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, William Blake, Anna Letitia Barbauld, Felicia Hemans, Letitia Landon, Percy Shelley, Friedrich Engels, and more to the places that inspired them. Students will learn how these authors were awed, disgusted, amused, or motivated by the people and places around them.

Bath was a holiday town where fashionable society came to mingle, and Jane Austen was right there to document their human foibles with acerbic wit and moving characterizations, especially in Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. Although we'll be based in London, we will take a trip to Bath to see how the landed gentry lived it up in the southern English countryside, away from the urban noise of London. With walking tours, a visit to the Jane Austen Centre, and a bus trip to Chawton House, students will see how an industrializing empire tried hard to maintain fictions of gentility, picturesque gardens, and bucolic bliss. In addition to English 128J's focus on Jane Austen, students will also experience in English 166T the darker urbanity of Romantic literature with the work of someone like William Blake. There will be a hands-on tutorial on Blake's unique printmaking process that allowed him to meld visual and verbal art into idiosyncratic expression and revolutionary mythmaking. Michael Phillips has recreated Blake's copper plates, ink blends, and even his star press so that students can experience first-hand how Blake had to create his own printing process to do justice to his anti-industrial, anti-capitalist, and anti-establishment verse.

This program exposes students to these generative contradictions of Romantic-era England to show how this era dealt with issues that we're still grappling with today. In the ruptures of these contradictions, these authors dared to envision a world without perpetual war, the abolition of the slave trade, the flourishing of professional women writers, and the world-shaking agency of the human imagination.

Apply Here: Austen and the City in London

Note: The updated 2025 flyer and program costs will be posted in October 2024.

See a recording of our 02/02/24 virtual info session (Zoom; 17 minutes).

Faculty Leader

• Dr. Randol Contreras, UCR Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies

Classes

• MCS 160 Race, State Violence, and Incarceration in the United States (4 units)
• MCS 190 Special Studies: Drug Policy (4 units)

This program compares the crime policies of the United States and Spain. Starting in the 1970s, the United States applied harsh policing and punishment to non-violent drug crimes in minority communities. This resulted in the mass incarceration of Black and Brown people, which has had negative generational impacts on minorities. Spain, in contrast, began a public health approach in the early 2000s, which decriminalized personal drug use and reduced drug-related harms. Despite its more compassionate approach, Spain's violent crime averages are at least three times (sometimes nine times) less than in the US. And according to the 2021 Global Peace Index, Spain is the 31st safest and peaceful country in the world, whereas the US is ranked 122. However, like in the US, Spain has problems with racism. Its population, in general, holds negative attitudes toward the Moroccan, Latino/a, and Romani communities. Racist policing, hate, and derision run rampant, which has led marginalized young people of color to develop an oppositional identity toward white racism.

All the above will be covered across two courses, MCS 160 Race, State Violence, and Incarceration in the United States and MCS 190 Special Studies (Drug Policy). The course, MCS 190 (Drug Policy), introduces students to drug policies in both Spain and the United States. The course, MCS 160, covers how mass incarceration developed in the US, and how it compares to Spain's approach general approach to crime. To supplement both courses, guest lecturers will teach students about Spain's history, government, drug policies, and laws. In all, students will get a global understanding of the links between racism, drug policy, incarceration by comparing Spain and the US.

To ease adjustment to Spain and decrease student costs, I will hold the program's first two weeks at UCR. This ensures that the students develop a solid knowledge base without the distractions of being in a country for the first time. Also, it decreases the overall costs for students since they will be abroad for only three weeks rather than five weeks.

This program has filled as of March 2024 and is no longer taking applications. Please stay posted for this program in Summer 2025.

Faculty Leader

• Dr. Setsu Shigematsu, Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies

Classes

• MCS 184 / ASN 184 / JPN 184 Japanese Media & Cultural Studies (4 units)
• MCS 120 Major Figures in Film & Media (4 units)

This program provides students the unique experience of studying modern Japanese history, culture and film while being immersed in contemporary Japanese society. This four-week study abroad program teaches students about Japan's modernization through Japanese film and media (including literature and anime), with a focus on Japan's relationship with the United States. Students will study the history of World War II, the transformative impact of the U.S. occupation of Japan and the history of social movements during the 1960s and 1970s. Students will also have the opportunity to train in martial arts and gain the experience of traveling in Japan, visit Hiroshima and Miyajima, and meeting some of Japan's leading social movement activists.

Apply Here: Media and Cultural Studies in Chiba, Japan

Note: The updated 2025 flyer and program costs will be posted in October 2024.

Faculty Leader

• Dr. Kyle Ingram, UCR Assistant Professor of Teaching in Management

Classes

• BUS 145 Designing and Leading Teams (4 units)
• BUS 190 Special Studies (4 units)

The Brazilian Leadership Experience encourages students to engage in a deeper understanding of human behavior within organizations. The program works on the idea that behavior is a function of a person in his/her environment (i.e., the way in which we behave is largely dependent on who we are and the various contexts we find ourselves in.

Both courses encourage students to form a deeper understanding of who they are and how they are already primed for successful leadership and teamwork. Delivering these two courses in the international context will highlight new challenges that students should be ready to face in an increasingly globalized world. The courses are designed to take students out of their comfort zone to inspire personal development and growth.

Studying theories of leadership and international management amongst top academics and practitioners in Brazil will only further expand the knowledge and perspective gained through these courses. Special Studies (BUS 190), in particular, will offer students the opportunity to earn academic credit by participating in independent study or group research to further explore the business practices, of Brazilian business leaders, particularly around the concept of sustainable leadership. Under faculty supervision, students will observe how business practices vary and align across our two national cultures (see potential topics under course syllabi).

Understanding various cultures and backgrounds will help students develop universal messages, appreciate various perspectives, and examine how businesses can reach a diverse range of people through understanding and respecting these differences. International management is invaluable to students wishing to increase their presence in a global economy, and the trip will provide students with the opportunity to see, first hand, sustainability efforts in Brazil.

This program has run before in London, so here is media coverage about it:

• "Study abroad program grows in popularity" (2024)
• "London is Waiting" (2021) 
• StoryMap (2021) 
• YouTube video (2020)

Apply Here: The Rio de Janeiro Leadership Experience

Note: The updated 2025 flyer and program costs will be posted in October 2024.

Faculty Leader

• Dr. Muhamad Ali, UCR Associate Professor of Religious Studies

Classes

• SEA 149: Southeast Asian Religions (4 units)
• RLST 190: Independent Study (4 units)

The program is aimed at introducing students to Southeast Asian through Indonesian cultures and religious traditions, practices, and institutions.

The learning outcomes are:

1. Students are able to use secondary sources as well as primary sources, including observations, visits, and interviews of local people in carrying on research in religious studies.
2. Students demonstrate effective writing and speaking skills in communicating their knowledge about the elite and popular religions, the normative and practical life. 
3. Students demonstrate an ability to record videos about religions and religious peoples, and communicate them to the class as well as to the public via social media.
4. Students will demonstrate an understanding of world and local religions, particularly indigenous religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism/Chinese religions, Protestant Christianity, Roman Catholicism, and Islam.

Apply Here: Bali, Indonesia: Culture, Nature, and Religion

Note: The updated 2025 flyer and program costs will be posted in October 2024.

Faculty Leader

• Dr. Tabassum "Ruhi" Khan, UCR Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies

Classes

• MCS 110J: Post-War Cinema - Heritage Dramas and British National Identity (4 units)
• MCS 132: Examining Intersections of Media and Popular Culture and How They Shape Our Political-Economic Contexts (4 units) 

Join Media and Cultural Studies’ Faculty Lead Summer Abroad program to London and learn how our pleasurable past times are not frivolous activities after all. Come to London to learn how our supposedly insignificant engagements are a significant influence in the organization of production in society, determination of avenues for employment, and ultimately regulation of our lives. Participate in exploratory and experiential learning in the capital city of the former British Empire to learn how ideological domination replaces military might; and how British Period dramas or ‘hat and frock shows’ like Downton Abbey have become Britain’s most important cultural export as well as cultural manifestation of globally ascendant neoliberal political economic policies which underline current sharp socio-economic inequalities. Soak in the ambiance of this exciting city and address a simple but meaningful query—how do some elements of popular culture support hierarchies and what are the others that challenge them?

Take courses MCS 110 J on Post World War II cinema focusing on period dramas and MCS 132 examining intersections of media and popular culture and how they shape our political-economic contexts.

This program has closed as of February 2024 and is no longer taking applications. Please stay posted for this program in Summer 2025.