SUSSEX TO CARONA AN ENGLISH UNIVERSITY CROSSES THE CHANNEL

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31027, 5 April 1966, Page 16

SUSSEX TO CARONA AN ENGLISH UNIVERSITY CROSSES THE CHANNEL

IB V

EPIC SILVER

in the "Guardian.'' Manchester I

(Reprinted by arrangement]

The University of Sussex, not content with abolishing departments and trusting its students to look after their own sex lives, is rapidly chipping its way out of the shell of English-speaking unionism that has constricted higher education in this country for the best part of a centuiy. Its latest project, in collaboration with the universities of Mainz and Zurich, is a study centre to educate undergraduates for the integrated Europe into which even the Labour Party is likely to lead us in the next decade.

The study centre will be set up near the Swiss village of Carona, close to the shores of Lake Lugano, on the slopes of San Salvatore. Its aim is to give students from different European countries an opportunity to study together, so that they will become conversant with the problems of individual nations and appreciate how European co-opera-tion could be achieved. For Undergraduates The emphasis has been placed on undergraduates because it is felt that this is the stage when new ideas are best savoured and digested. Courses will be available to students of all faculties, and will be recognised as an integral part of their studies. They will normally last three months. Shorter courses will also be organised at Carona during vacations to enable different professional groups to discuss European problems whose solutions depend on their joint efforts.

The centre is the brainchild of a Swiss woman, Mrs Celestina D’Orsa Zschokke, who has given it a nine-acre estate, it will be administered by the specially-established Celestina Foundation under the patronage of the Council of Europe. It is planned to have about six professors from different countries for each of the two terms a year. Three will be provided by Sussex and its two partners, and others by universities at Berlin, Nancy, and Milan. The Council of Europe will also invite specialists in economic, cultural, and political affairs, and senior officials of international organisations to lecture at the.centre. Teaching will be in English, French, German and Italian, with facilities available for simultaneous translation. The estate is at present simply an irregular patch of meadowland and chestnut woods. Until the foundation has raised the money to build the centre, courses will be held in a house in Carona. which is expected to be ready for occupation this autumn. Programmes Drafted Programmes have already been drafted for the first two terms, which will be devoted to the political aspect of European integration, and the economic aspects. Secondary lecture courses will also be given in the idea of freedom and the growth of modern scientific thought as com-

ponents of Europe’s common heritage. At the start the centre will accommodate about 25 students a term. This will rise eventually to about 50. Most of them will tend to come from the three sponsoring universities, but the possibility that students from other institutions, in Britain and elsewhere, will attend courses there has not been excluded. It is estimated that the foundation will need to raise about £250.000 to build the centre and substantially more to endow it. Carona is one token of Sussex's growing internationalism. Another is the recent decision by its School of European Studies, embracing most of what are normally classified as the arts faculties, that all students will be required to Spend at least one month on the Continent before taking their first degrees. They will be encouraged to stay for a year, the period already mandatory for modern language students. A student’s programme will have to be approved by the university, but need not necessarily include a formal course. The idea, again, is that his stay in Europe should

contribute tangibly to his Studies. Sussex University's School of African and Asian Studies is exploring the possibility of establishing a variety of working links with universities in Africa and India. Some scientists from Sussex (and London) are already involved in a scheme with the University of Ife in Nigeria. A temporary lecturer in geography from India has taken the place of a Sussex lecturer working on a soil survey in Malaysia. Various projects are also being studied for exchanges of academic staff with universities in East and Central Africa. There is a possibility, too, of joint appointments, with lecturers spending periods at Sussex and an African university. Similar proposals have been mooted for the West Indies, where Sussex already has a link through its research unit for the study of multi-racial societies. Sussex is also to provide a home for the Ministry of Overseas Development’s Institute for Development Studies, which will cater for administrators who have already had experience in developing countries.