Spencer Thomas | editor-in-chief

Many students imagine studying abroad to be a time of joy — full of seeing new places and trying new food. However, Duquesne psychology professor Leswin Laubscher is studying what other elements make a study abroad program life-changing.

For the last 10 years, he taught a biennial course called “Science, Psychology and the Holocaust,” and on Wednesday afternoon, he and Joseph DeCrosta, head of the Center for Global Engagement, presented a study they conducted on the class.

The spring break-away course only carries a handful of students.

After months of preparing in class on campus, Laubscher took them across the pond for a week-long learning experience. Laubscher described the trip, split between Vienna and Krakow. It included stops at the home of Sigmund Freud before the Auschwitz concentration camp. That sudden change in tone was very intentional, he said. As they learned in interviews conducted with students before the trip, many were most interested in the Austrian leg. They were excited to tour what is considered one of the most attractive cities in the word, with less interest on the genocide they would be learning about.

Overnight, they took a train on the same tracks that led victims of the Holocaust to their deaths. They walked through gas chambers, and were left speechless by the shocking experience.

DeCrosta began his portion of the presentation, which was given to around a dozen people in the Student Union, explaining the importance of studying abroad. He cited research saying students who do it are more likely to graduate on time and land a job right out of college.

Their post-trip interviews could not have been more different. In his presentation, Laubscher referred to students as being overcome by the bleak and heavy atmosphere at the site of one of humanity’s greatest tragedies. He noted one student who said to him, “I feel like I understand less, even though I experienced more.”

Laubscher had already taught the course four times and decided that it was the right moment to examine the concept even closer. Their final product is a series of three papers on their research. One practical, one theoretical and one that focused on the students’ final projects for the class, asking them to capture their key learning moments.

His psychological expertise combined with DeCrosta’s knowledge of communication created a unique outlook on the key college experience of studying abroad.

While DeCrosta was focused on the broader curriculum, Laubscher showed his passion for psychology as he talked about the trip’s effect on the limbic system and other psychological topics that are rarely used in reference to spring courses in the Alps.

“I understand what he’s saying,” DeCrosta said with a laugh. “I just don’t articulate it in the same way.”

He noted how Laubscher’s product wound up being so much more emotionally charged than a typical break-away.

“In a way, I’m a student like all of the others,” DeCrosta said.

He wants to spread these lessons across his department, so students in all the programs get impactful experiences. After their research is done, Decrosta wants to create a handbook to show faculty members who may be pitching courses like Laubscher’s and get them to consider how to make the greatest impact on their students.

“I think no matter what you’re studying, you can really design it in a way that stays with the student in sort of this embodied sense,” he said.

Much of his work involves advocating for study abroad programs, and DeCrosta plans to use this research to show how when the programs are done right, they are life-changing.

“I think working on this with Leshwin has helped me articulate ways in which I could describe that transformation to people, even through a short-term program like this,” he said. “Where there are sort of these palpable, tangible concepts that emerge from that experience of being there.”

Laubscher said afterward that one recommendation he will be making to teachers who are leading similar classes is to prepare students for an experience they called “out of body.” He compared it to the subconscious of a dream.

“For us to say beforehand, you know, listen to your body. Give in to some of it. You know, don’t resist it, because there’s learning there…” he said. “Keep in mind the totality that learning happens with all modalities, you know, the head, the heart, feeling and to try and find ways to solicit learning from all of those.”

One of the students attending was Isabella Villareal, who is getting her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Duquesne and helped with some transcribing of the students’ interviews.

“It was interesting to see how since it was such an experience for them, it wasn’t so easy to dictate, as if they were giving you a summary of a class or something,” she said. “…a lot of the times you learn, but in this case, it was almost like the learning happened to you.”