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International Educational Exchange Print E-mail
Meeting Ground for Future World Citizens: The Vienna/Bradley Model

bridges vol. 23, October 2009 / Feature Articles

By Timothy Conley , Astrid M. Fellner , and Klaus Heissenberger


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Every year, a large number of US students travel to Austria and other European countries to experience international cultural exchange.  However, many of them bring their own faculty and never actually get to interact with local students. This means that both sides miss out on opportunities to learn from each other, reduce prejudice, and have a truly cross-cultural experience.

When Professor Timothy Conley from Bradley University had a Fulbright grant to the University of Vienna in the mid-90s, the first contacts were made between these two universities. In the ensuing years, closer collaboration was established between faculty of the English departments of Vienna and Bradley Universities.  Eventually, this cooperation resulted in a series of academic excursions in the United States and in a unique program of study in Vienna.

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2003 Route 66 and the Desert Southwest classes and road trips. Click image to visit the course trip site.
To begin with, faculty and students from Vienna and Bradley joined in the US for two-month-long trips along the Mississippi River (2001) and Route 66 (2003). In 2001, Professor Conley and the late Professor Kurt Mayer and twenty students from Bradley and Vienna devoted three weeks to an intensive study of the cultures of the Mississippi River. In 2003, with Professor Conley's assistance, Professor Astrid Fellner brought fifteen students from the University of Vienna to Bradley to begin her 4,000-mile course following the trail of US highway 66 through Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

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