Challenging Students to Immerse Themselves

Lifelong educators, Doug and Marilyn Cardwell '61 are on a mission. They want to make it possible for Pioneers to immerse themselves in language and culture. They know from their own experience that spending a full academic year in a country is profoundly different from one semester abroad.

They believe in studying abroad so strongly that they have created the Douglas and Marilyn Cardwell French Scholarship and included a provision for it in their estate plans.

After growing up in the Congo, where his parents were missionaries, Doug was well versed in the local Congolese language and became immersed in French during these formative years prior to coming to Transylvania and meeting Marilyn. She first studied French as a student at Transylvania.

Shortly after their marriage, they enjoyed a year of study in Paris for Doug's research on French playwright Augustin Eugène Scribe, courtesy of the French government. In Paris, Marilyn threw herself into the immersion experience, studying at the Sorbonne, attending gatherings and at first teetering on the social precipice of being in the middle of a sentence without knowing the next word.

"When we thought about what we might do for Transylvania," Marilyn explains, "we wanted to be able to promote language development and a richer foreign study experience." She sees the resulting depth of understanding other cultures as a step "toward the world we like to envision. It isn't enough to have other nationalities come to us. And being a tourist doesn't do it."

"There's a kind of personal growth that results from that experience that is just as valuable as the linguistic progress you make," Doug describes. "It's a broadening experience that makes you much more appreciative of the variety of human experience. And that's something we very badly need in this country."

To learn ways you can create a scholarship to support your favorite campus program or project, contact Diana McKenzie at (859) 233-8801 or legacygiving@transy.edu.