Eastern Mennonite University Cross-Cultural Programs

Each academic year, more than 150 EMU students study in diverse cultural contexts in locations from the Shenandoah Valley to other continents across the globe. Why?

EMU’s cross-cultural program is designed to develop cross-cultural understanding and global awareness through an experience of living and learning in a different culture. The focus of the program is to learn from and with others which goes beyond and is more interactive than learning about others. Learning in a cross-cultural setting occurs in a dynamic and cyclical process of orientation - disorientation - reorientation and on again through disorientation - reorientation. The result of this cyclical learning pattern is to see one’s self and the world differently because of the relationships, awareness and understanding which develop through interaction in a different cultural context. The world in which we live, rapidly changing and increasingly smaller, calls for persons who have learned truths and commonalities which lie beyond the boundaries which cultures tend to place on knowing.