75 Years of the Junior Year in Munich

Not only has the US Senate designated 2006 the Year of Study Abroad; the year also marks the anniversary of a distinguished tradition of study abroad that reaches back 75 years. Founded in 1931, suspended during the war years, and re-opened in 1953 by Wayne State University, the JuniorYear in Munich is America's oldest study abroad program in Germany.The history of the Junior Year in Mu nich (JYM) dates back to a tradition first developed in the early 1920s when, as an effort to promote in ternational peace and understanding in the after math of World War I, a new form of international education was conceived for American undergrad uates: the Junior Year Abroad. Shortly after the First World War, Prof. Ray mond W. Kirkbride (1892-1929), a young instruc tor in the Modern Languages Department at the University of Delaware and a World War I veteran, successfully promoted an idea that would soon be come known as the Delaware Foreign Study Plan, or Junior Year Abroad. (Hullihen, Dougherty, The Foreign StudyPlan, Munroe.) Unlike previous study abroad opportunities which were limited to the exchange of individual graduate students, the Del aware Plan was unique in that it was designed as a foreign study plan for supervised groups of under graduates. In 1923 the Junior Year Abroad tradi tion began with the establishment of an intercolle giate program for undergraduate students at the Sorbonne in Paris. As described later: "The Univer sity of Delaware organized in 1923 a plan whereby students in the Junior class might pursue a carefully developed group of studies at the Sorbonne in lieu of those pursued in the Junior year at home and receive equal creditfor the work done abroad." (In stitute, 14th Report, 23) The Delaware Plan would have a great impact on the expansion of study abroad for American un dergraduate students in the years following the First World War, and it soon caught the attention of the Institute of Intemational Education (IIE) in New York. Founded 1919, IIE had started to organize student, faculty, and teacher exchanges in Europe in the early 1920s. Because of its experience with administering fellowships, IIE was asked to form a committee to help administer the University of Del aware's Junior Year Abroad in Paris. In 1927, as the prospect for additional so-called "junior year plans" in France began to emerge, IIE subsequenfly organized a Committee on the Junior Year Abroad composed of modern language de partments and leading colleges with the goal of promoting intercollegiate cooperation in the devel opment of future junior year plans in other coun tries. By 1931 an extension of a "junior year plan" to Germany was agreed upon by IIE and the DeutscherAkademischerAustauschdienst (DAAD), and a special committee for the "American Junior Year" was established at the Ludwig-Maximilians Universitat Munchen.1 This pre-war JYM program is variously referred to in IIE and German Quarterly publications as the German JuniorYear Group, the Junior-Year-Plan, the Munich Junior Year, or the Junior Year in Munich. Designed along the lines of the Delaware Plan, IIE agreed to accept applica tions and administer scholarships, while the pro gram itself was supervised in Munich by Professor Camillo von Klenze (1865-1943). By the end of the year IIE was able to report: