PUC Provides Summer Courses

It is summertime at Pacific Union College once again. The hustle and bustle of the regular school year has died down as many students have left to study abroad, visit family at home, work at summer camps and gain valuable experience through internships. Although much of the PUC family has dispersed, the school has a wide variety of academic goings on every summer—from very unique learning opportunities to general and continued education courses.

The flexibility of the summer schedule allows for a number of exciting classes that would not be possible to hold during the year. Many of these are among students’ most memorable educational experiences.

“Ashland is the perfect atmosphere to fall in love with Shakespeare,” says English professor Cynthia Westerbeck. That is why she is excited to take her Shakespeare in Performance class to Ashland, Oregon to enjoy three days of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. This year’s class will watch “Twelfth Night,” “Hamlet,” Part I of “Henry IV,” and “Throne of Blood” (a Japanese adaptation of “Macbeth”).

PUC held a two-week painting class at its Albion Field Station, a perfect location for artistic inspiration. Fine arts and graphic design major Amador Jaojoco comments that “A painting a day is a lot to ask,” but he says it is possible at Albion because “you’re surrounded with natural beauty.”

Students also enjoy courses that require them to travel internationally. Beauty, an Honors class in which students venture to Florence, Italy, for five weeks to study the philosophy of aesthetics, is one such class. Other students enrolled in International Documentary Experience will visit China, where they will encounter a cultural exchange as they participate in the production of Chinese documentaries.

General education courses such as Energy and Climate Change, Paul and His Letters and History of World Civilizations are readily available to students who are willing to spend part of their summer on campus. Many see a practical benefit of summer school. To junior music major and pre-med student Benjamin Tan, summer means a chance to get ahead. He says of his General Physics class, “It’s intense… We’re condensing a quarter’s work into thirteen days.” The effort is well worth it, because it means he will not need to double-up on science classes this coming year.

PUC demonstrates its dedication to educating educators by offering nearly 30 education courses geared toward educators in need of refreshing and credentialing. A few of these include Exceptional Children in the Classroom, Lego Robotics, and Leadership in Education.

Every summer, PUC enables a diverse group of individuals to reach their academic goals. This summer is no exception as more than 350 undergraduate and post-graduate students benefit from our course offerings.