Cheryl Golden, Ph.D., Newman University professor of history and director of international studies, has been selected as one of 20 faculty members in the U.S. who will travel to Greece to participate in the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) Center for Hellenic Studies seminar led by Professors Gregory Nagy and Kenneth Scott Morrell, June 17–25, 2018.
Golden and members of the CIC will be visiting Olympia, Mycenae, Nafplion, Delphi, and Athens. All five locations are important to Greece and hold special meanings. The group will be visiting approximately 10 different sites, going from place to place. They will travel to the sites early in the morning, break for lunch, then attend a seminar-style class where each member is able to bring their experiences gathered by all the readings done before the trip.
The purpose of the trip is to allow high school and college teachers the opportunity to gain more research and first-hand experience of the places they teach about.
Nagy and Morrell, who specialize in the history of theology, will teach the classes throughout the trip.
“Both Morrell and Nagy are first-rate pioneers in online courses in humanities,” said Golden. “Morrell is the first to do it out of Harvard. His class is made up of more than 50,000 students. They are dealing with some of the oldest history in the world as well as the newest technology in the world to bring online learning to students.”
Golden said the trip comes with much preparation — a lot of work went into getting ready for the seminar. But she said she really can’t count it as work because she is enjoying every minute of it.
“It’s wonderful – I have all this reading to do,” exclaimed Golden. “I have the itinerary to memorize, need to be alert and ready to participate. It’s going to be a whole lot of fun to be the student in this case. But to prepare, other than reading, it’s going to be a sort of surprise when we get there, it may hold a certain theme each day.”
Golden said there is much that she hopes to walk away with from the adventure, such as bringing the amazing experiences she will have back into her classroom and maybe even coming up with inspiration for a future conference presentation.
But something she’s most excited about diving into is learning how she can bring a new experience to the ever-growing study abroad opportunities for Newman students.
“Often times in the humanities area (at Newman) — history, theology and philosophy — we’ve often talked about trying to pull together a Greece experience relating to St. Paul,” said Golden. “I’m hoping I have the opportunity to visit with professionals at the American School at Athens while I’m there.”
