EIL Intercultural Learning

About the program:

Each year American University students, studying in Irish universities for a semester, spend a weekend with an Irish host family in host communities across the country. This homestay experience allow for students to be immersed in the daily life of an Irish family and community, and to experience life in Ireland beyond the campus. 

Click on to see the opinions of the 2007 program participants.

Each year, American students at the Department of Government in UCC take part in an academic field trip to Belfast. During their 4 day stay they visit the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont and meet with politicians from all parties. . The objective of the programme is to experience and learn about the changes that have been wrought in this once divided society and the ongoing work at political and community level to maintain and underpin the peace.

Read on to hear some of the feedback from some of the students who participated in the 2007 trip to Belfast through University College Cork.

"I really don't think you can understand the complexity of the situation past and present, in Northern Ireland until you come and talk to the people on all sides and perspectives. This trip has really helped me to see the conflict more from a perspective of what it must have been like to experience it, instead of seeing it more abstractly as a series of political interactions" - University College Cork Student (Certificate in Government) Feb. 2009