University wins trio of Telly awards for film on study abroad

The University of South Carolina has won three Telly awards for a documentary film that explores the study-abroad experience of 22 undergraduates who traveled across China for two weeks last summer.

The film, “Beyond the Classroom: China,” was directed and edited by Laura Kissel, associate professor of media arts. The 30-minute film won a Silver Telly, the highest award category, and two Bronze Tellys in the Videography/Cinematography and Travel/Tourism categories. In its 29th year, the Telly awards honor excellence in local, regional and cable TV commercials and programs and non-broadcast video.

Patricia Willer, assistant vice provost for international programs, approached Kissel about the documentary to highlight the importance of international travel in education.

“Our goal was to capture the active learning that students engage in when studying abroad,” said Willer, the film’s executive producer. “Professor Kissel’s film does that beautifully. By using the students’ voices, she has crafted a powerful measure of learning outcomes. She and the students help us, as viewers, to know more about contemporary China and to appreciate the power of international study.”

“Beyond the Classroom: China” depicts historic sites such as Beijing and Tiananmen Square, The Great Wall, Shanghai, the Buddhist holy site of Wutaishan and a foreign-language school in Xi’an and social issues such as pollution, economic growth, trade and tourism through the eyes of the students, all of whom are Capstone scholars. The trip was led by history professor Dr. Karl Gerth, now a lecturer in modern history at Oxford University.

A clip of the film is available for viewing online at www.sa.sc.edu/clips/USCInChina2.mov. Faculty members are invited to view the film at noon Thursday, April 17, in Thomas Cooper Library, Room 511, and hear from Willer and Kissel about the value and process of including a study-abroad experience as part of an academic course. Students viewed the film in February.

Kissel, whose work focuses on culture, memory and the representation of history, said she agreed to the project because it gave her the opportunity to show how the direct experience of another culture can impact a person’s life.

“The students are the narrators of the video and their voices drive the story,” Kissel said. “It captures how they experienced China’s culture and environment and assimilated it into their understanding of the world.”

Study abroad has increasingly become an important facet of the college academic experience, and student interest in overseas study has soared in recent years. Last year, the University of South Carolina had nearly 750 students study abroad, a 27-percent increase from the previous year.

The university has programs in nearly 40 countries that span six continents. Programs include study and internship experiences for a semester or an academic year, as well as ones for May and summer sessions. New programs for 2007 – 08 include programs for Capstone scholars in Greece and Japan; university exchange programs at Groningen University in the Netherlands and Ming Chuan University in Taiwan; and a new affiliate program at Deakin University in Australia.

For more information on study abroad at the university, visit the Study Abroad Office Web site: http://www.sa.sc.edu/sa/, or call 803-777-7557.