In the distance, it rises mirage-like from the rolling green hills of the rural Lincolnshire countryside. Set amidst the verdant fields of the English midlands, Harlaxton Manor is a palatial Victorian era complex that over the course of nearly two centuries has housed eccentric millionaires, Royal Air Force pilots and pious Jesuit priests.

But on this sunny day in late autumn, scores of American college students wander its ornate halls, filling up elaborate gold-filigreed staterooms for lectures on British culture. Beneath the watchful gaze of ornately carved stone lions, its manicured lawns are more likely to be the site of a pickup game of touch football than a formal afternoon tea.

In this unlikely setting near the English market town of Grantham, England—the birthplace of both Isaac Newton and Maggie Thatcher—William Jewell College’s acclaimed overseas study programs were brought to life 30 years ago.

It was in 1973 that Dr. Gordon Kingsley, then a young English professor at Jewell and later dean and president of the College, made his first trip up the mile-long drive, through the ornate gatehouse, to the stone mansion that was then called the Harlaxton Study Centre.

“I had determined to try and connect William Jewell College and William Jewell students with some college abroad, if colleagues and administrators were willing,” Dr. Kingsley remembers. “I had decided we should begin in England, for as I told my fellow faculty members, ‘English is the foreign language our students can learn most quickly.’ ’’

With the support of President Tom Field, the College began to investigate international study opportunities. “Dr. Kingsley and I put our heads together and I authorized him to contact representatives of the University of Evansville and Oxford and Cambridge universities,” President Emeritus Field recalls. The College was experiencing a period of markedly increased enrollments at the time, and Dr. Field recognized the opportunity for growth that the overseas programs represented.

A new era begins

And so in the fall of 1973, Jewell sent its first group of students and faculty to study in the ornate surroundings of the Centre. Harlaxton was not a typical study-abroad program. It existed then—as it does today—as a place for American students to take a semester of work for credit at their home college. It is not a fullfledged English university, and it does not grant degrees. But it was an important beginning, an opening-up of educational philosophies and mindsets that would find further expression in the College’s distinctive Oxbridge honors program a decade later. “I have seen it again and again,” says Dr. Kingsley, who in January of 2003 became principal at Harlaxton College. “It’s a sudden insight, a moment of ‘aha,’ a sense that all people don’t think in the same ways I think or feel the values I feel. It happens here, year after year. It is a process of learning and of growth—an opening outward and inward—as the student meets good teachers and good books in a place where the beauty and the heritage and the spirit of past and future create a magic that unlocks minds and visions and potentialities. Boys and girls come here, and often men and women return.” Thirty years after the first class arrived, more than 900 Jewell students and 80 faculty members count the Harlaxton experience among their most treasured memories.

“Attending Harlaxton College was a life-changing experience for me,” says Angela Stiffler ’90. “Being able to study art history on field trips to Florence and Paris, visiting Edinburgh for a weekend and becoming friends with students from all over the world are just a few of the unique experiences that I still fondly remember from that amazing semester. When I left for England in 1988, I had no idea the impact it would have on the rest of my life.”

Departing from London’s Paddington Station, where American tourists snap pictures of raincoat-clad stuffed bears displayed on a vendor’s cart, the Thames Trains Express whistles through mile after mile of the capital city’s urban sprawl. The weathered brick of industrial buildings gradually gives way to the mist-shrouded English countryside, where a persistent ray of sunlight pokes through the low-hanging clouds with the promise of a brighter day. The towering spires of Oxford’s Christ Church loom in the background as a group of William Jewell students gather on the church meadow to reflect on their respective experiences at one of the world’s most revered centers of learning. Some are a part of Jewell’s distinctive Oxbridge honors program, established with a gift from the Hall Family Foundation in 1982 and modeled after the tutorial style of learning employed at the great British universities. Others are part of the College’s Oxford Overseas Study Program built around tutorials and small-group study at overseas sites such as the Centre for Renaissance and Medieval Studies based at Oxford’s Keble College. Moving from the meadow to the nearby banks of the River Thames, the group is drawn into a crowd of spectators observing the timehonored traditions of a college rowing competition. Sleekly aerodynamic craft manned by teams from the city’s many colleges slice rhythmically through the icy waters as the American students blend with other spectators that make up the diverse international community of Oxford.

Discovering a new world

“Studying in Oxford has opened my mind to British culture,” says Anthony Shop, a junior International Relations major from Kansas City. “It is amazing how Americans and Britons are simultaneously so alike, and yet so different. William Jewell tries to help students expand their worldviews, and I don’t believe there is a better way to do this than to encourage students to study abroad. William Jewell set me up with, literally, a world of experiences. Studying in Liberty, but having the opportunity to go to Oxford, really has given me a priceless, unique education that I doubt any college could replicate.” This broadening of horizons is a recurring theme among Jewell students who have taken advantage of the overseas experience. The College now counts 21 formal affiliations with study abroad programs. In addition to the British programs at Oxford, Cambridge and Harlaxton, there are opportunities for study in Ireland, Asia, Africa, Australia, France, Germany and Austria, Italy, Spain and Latin America. But the British programs remain the centerpiece of Jewell’s overseas study opportunities. “Growing up in rural Missouri didn’t provide a great deal of culturally diverse opportunities,” says Samantha Shannon, an Oxbridge history major from Hannibal, Mo. “But simply spending the day in Oxford I encounter so many different people from various walks of life it’s as though I’m making up for lost years.”

Going one-on-one

The individual attention of the Oxbridge tutorials provides a way for students to get direct feedback on their work.

“Even in small classes such as those at Jewell, you may not get to ask the questions that you’d like to cover,” Shannon says. “But in a tutorial, if there is a particular interest or concern you could spend the whole period ironing out just one aspect of your topic. It also forces you to be able to support your writing and your ideas, rather than just jotting them down and turning them in.” The academic rigor of the tutorial style of learning is one of the British programs’ great strengths, says Dr. Mark Philpott, Senior Tutor at Oxford’s Centre for Renaissance and Medieval Studies, one of the programs with which Jewell is aligned.

“There is no hiding place,” Dr. Philpott says from a comfortable, book-lined office at the Centre. “You have to take responsibility for your own learning. There’s no sitting in the classroom day after day. You have to manage the learning, and defend it as well. It’s a challenge in a new sort of way.”

Dr. Philpott believes there is a noticeable difference between the students who arrive in Oxford at the beginning of the school year and the scholars who return home in the spring.

“It really helps them with their academic confidence,” Dr. Philpott says. “We do push them hard, but there’s a feeling of ‘If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.’ It’s a genuine pleasure being around students who are so hardworking and motivated. They are all here because they want to be here.” Outside the sedate red brick buildings lining the quadrangle at Homerton College in Cambridge, bicycles outnumber automobiles at least two to one. A bustling student population of scholars from all over the world line up for morning coffee at the “Buttery” (Americans would call it a Snack Bar) inside the comfortable arts and crafts style commons building.

“What we offer is very different from the American university system,” says Dr. Steve Watts, director of the Junior Year Abroad program at Cambridge’s Homerton College. “They are studying one subject in depth from day one, and we encourage them to move toward an area of specialization.”

The spires of Oxford's Christ Church form the backdrop as Jewell students (from left) Jessica Elsbury,Gabriel Sparks,Anthony Shop, Emily Stallman and Sarah Burr reflect on their overseas experience.

Studying at Homerton also gives students full access to the resources of the entire Cambridge academic community, including sports and social clubs, research facilities and libraries. One such facility at Cambridge contains a copy of every book published in Great Britain since the 1840s. “The experience has allowed me to learn about different traditions and ways of thinking,” says Melissa Taylor, an Oxbridge molecular biology major from Bolckow, Mo., who is currently studying at Homerton. “I have seen different teaching and learning styles, and I have developed a more independent style of learning. The lecturer assumes I will do extra work to prepare for the exams.”

Taylor says she will take with her memories of “all-hall” outings and insights from conversations with a diverse student body whose life experiences are vastly different from her own.

“It’s given me a different perspective on life, and greater appreciation for the blessings I have as an American and as a college student.”

Taylor’s words are echoed by Samantha Shannon and others whose eyes have been opened by the overseas study experience that William Jewell has provided.

“I’ve learned that the world is so much bigger than Hannibal and Liberty, Missouri,” Shannon says. “Having lived in England, I now wonder what it’s like to live in Italy or in Spain. This is only the beginning of a lifetime of learning and exploring.” Jewell alum finds new life overseas When Laura Lauer traveled to Oxford in the fall of 1987, she had no idea that she was beginning a brand new chapter in her life. The college junior from Kearney, Mo., was an Oxbridge Institutions and Policy and History major contemplating a career in the legal profession. What she discovered during her year of overseas study was a different professional focus, a personal partner to share her life’s journey and a newly adopted country of residence.

“I found out that law wasn’t for me,” Lauer says from her office in the sleek contemporary complex of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford, a home to scholars from Oxford and abroad who study American history, culture and politics. Lauer now serves as assistant director of the RAI. “I had acquired a real love of history while studying with Elaine Reynolds and Ken Chatlos at Jewell, so I decided to return to that area of study.”

After graduating from William Jewell in 1989, she applied and was accepted to graduate school at Oxford in 1990. In the midst of work on her thesis in 1993, she married Neil Jefferies, a British native she had met during her junior year abroad. She completed her master’s at Oxford in 1997 and taught history at the University of Liverpool. Her volunteer work at a wildlife hospital eventually led to a full-time position in public relations and volunteer coordination for the facility in Buckinghamshire. “I was well-known for being late to work because I would stop to scoop up some injured animal on the road,” Lauer recalls. “I always carried a cardboard box in the back of my car.”

In April of 2001, Lauer’s son Alexander was born, and for the next year she devoted her full energies to the joys and rigors of parenthood. In the spring of 2002 she took a part-time job working for the vice-chancellor at Oxford in the area of planning and resource allocation, a position which eventually led to her current full-time job with the RAI.

“I think William Jewell and the Oxbridge program gave me a hunger and a desire to know more and to do more,” Lauer says. “It also developed in me an interest in meeting people from diverse backgrounds and the ability to do so. But most of all it gave me intellectual confidence. If I hadn’t had the Jewell experience of studying overseas, I wouldn’t have dreamed of applying to graduate school at Oxford.”