CIIS Summer Courses 2025
What better way is there to spend the summer than gaining critical, hands-on experience across the globe through one of our CIIS Off-Campus study course offerings? This past summer, students joined members of St. Lawrence University faculty and local experts as they were guided through discourse and research in a variety of fields. These programs are an excellent way for in-depth engagement with fascinating topics while earning credit towards your degree. Here, we highlight some of the incredible experiences our students had this past summer.
To immerse themselves in global discourse and current events, students journeyed to Germany, France and Luxembourg for Dr. Mert Kartal’s course: The European Union: Past, Present and Future. This program brought students to the European Union, enriching their familiarity with inter-state cooperation, policy-making and contemporary issues such as the Russia-Ukraine war, the rise of right-wing populism and refugee flows. Students also got the opportunity to try local cuisine and explore historical landmarks.
Students interested in global studies and public health gained critical knowledge and experience studying the effects of rapid urbanization and historical North/South power dynamics in Accra, Ghana. Dr. Madeleine Wong and Dr. Joseph Braimah challenged participants to examine a complex array of environmental and systematic threats to human safety and wellbeing and to propose sustainable solutions to ameliorate these issues as part of Urban Environments and Public Health in the Global South. Students immersed themselves in local culture by visiting various urban neighborhoods, local markets and gardens, representatives of NGOs, and much more.
For an anthropological investigation of medicinal and culinary uses of spices and tea native to the broadly defined Chinese and Indian cultural zones, Laurentians joined Dr. Aswini Pai and Dr. Yanqui Zheng in Sri Lanka and Hong Kong for Matcha to Masala Chai: Indo-Chinese Connections and Eco-Historical Perspectives. Appealing to students in a variety of disciplines, this program introduced participants to the multifaceted cultural, historical, economic and environmental implications of the plants and spices that connect East and South Asia. Combined with illustrious readings, the students visited ports, markets, plantations and traditional medicine hospitals to gain a better understanding of how these products shape climate, trade and intercultural interactions.
Memory and Place in Ireland and Northern Ireland, led by Dr. Val Lehr, was both a highly anticipated and enjoyed course this past summer. Students spent two-and-a-half weeks learning about popular memory, revisionist historiography and geography as contexts for the stories they hear and the texts they read about. Visits to Belfast and Derry divulged the nuances of life amongst Christian European peoples in both the Republic and Northern Ireland. The course also explored both the division and cooperation of these distinct cultural regions, and how they envision the future of Irish culture.
One of CIIS’s recurring summer programs, The Neuroscience of Fear, took biology and psychology students to London to examine how the threats of modernity differ from those of many centuries ago. Dr. Adam Fox explored the evolutionary foundations of emotions and what role they play in the development of treatments for psychological disorders. This gripping program shed light on the cerebral functions that unite mankind with birds, mammals and reptiles.
There are no restrictions on the number of summer courses you can take, even if you have spent a semester or more off-campus, provided you meet the prerequisites for the program. For more details about upcoming summer course offerings, visit the CIIS website. The Summer 2026 course application is due Dec. 6, 2025, in Studio Abroad. Be sure to visit our Off-Campus Study Fair on Thursday, Oct. 9 to learn more about our programs.