You reached this page through the archive. Click here to return to the archive.

Note: This article is over a year old and information contained in it may no longer be accurate. Please use the contact information in the lower-left corner to verify any information in this article.

Ole students write for international bilingual magazine

By Anne Timmer '05
April 11, 2007

When Katie Hellen '08 left to study abroad in Seville, Spain, last August, she probably never thought she would witness a group of blind students viewing Picasso's Guernica for the first time.

Hellen's experience was the result of her enrollment in a program offered by the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE), an organization offering study abroad programs in 33 countries.

Since the 1970s, when Professor of Spanish Leon Narvaez started to work with the CIEE, many other St. Olaf students, including Stephen Gunvalson '07 and Brian Jacobson '07, have become veterans of the Seville program.

Gunvalson says that in addition to course offerings, the CIEE also has a lot of extracurricular activities available. Gunvalson, Jacobson and Hellen each wrote articles for Mas + Menos, a bilingual magazine published each semester featuring articles written by students and professors.

"The custom is for our student to work with a Spaniard who edits the Spanish version of what the American writes, while our student edits the Spaniard's English version," Narvaez says.

Hellen, whose article appears in the fall 2006 issue of Mas + Menos, wrote about her journey with a group of blind students to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (MNCARS) and the ONCE Tiflologico Museum.

As she explains in her article, MNCARS features tactile representations of Picasso's Guernica, and the ONCE Tiflologico Museum -- an "immersion of the blind in the artistic world" -- displays scaled models of famous buildings around the world, allowing blind students to feel the details on the buildings.

This experience ignited Hellen's interest in the rights of the disabled and her appreciation for programs that allow them to experience art and other parts of society that most people take for granted.

MAS + MENOS
Narvaez is grateful that Hellen was able to be part of such a special project. "I think Mas + Menos is a wonderful collaboration, especially in Katie's case, where she was both writing and working with blind students in the community," he says.

Gunvalson also chose Mas + Menos as his extracurricular activity and wrote two articles for the spring 2006 issue: an interview with Cuban poet Raul Rivero, written in Spanish, and an English piece about emigration.

Narvaez is impressed by the work of his students, and he is not the only one to notice their talents. "When I was in Seville in March of 2005 to review the program, the CIEE administrators showed me the results of some placement tests and explained that St. Olaf students consistently earn among the best test scores in the applicant pool."

Narvaez believes this is the result of excellent preparation. "We expect students to have the equivalent of six semesters of Spanish. Consistently, our students are some of the very best prepared in terms of language, culture and writing capabilities."

There is no doubt that the Seville program offers once-in-a-lifetime experiences through Mas + Menos. "It was one of my most rewarding experiences abroad." Gunvalson says. "I probably spent as much time researching and writing for the magazine as I did on my homework!"

Contact David Gonnerman at 507-786-3315 or gonnermd@stolaf.edu.