Programs in Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. offer students “hands-on” experience in bridging the gap between a liberal arts education and “real life.” The Associated Colleges of the Midwest Urban Studies Program in Chicago and the Philadelphia Center provide participants with course work, which predominantly includes lectures from guest speakers, field trips to areas of study, and internships in which students may apply what they learn. Recent speakers at the Urban Studies Program in Chicago included Senator Barack Obama, musician Dead Prez and author Sandra Cisernos. At the Philadelphia Center, students work four days a week at an internship they choose and apply to themselves.

At both the Urban Studies Program in Chicago and the Philadelphia Center, students live with fellow classmates in apartments. In Chicago, two to four students live in clusters of three to four apartments to better acquaint themselves with their neighborhood and community. In Philadelphia, students are helped by Philadelphia Center staff to find housing. Finding housing is thought to be useful in the students’ growing knowledge of the city and in their own lives.

Whitman junior Hannah Sherrard spent last fall at the Urban Studies Program in Chicago. In choosing an abroad program, Sherrard “wanted something different than what [she] could do at Whitman.” As a sociology major, the program enabled Sherrard to “incorporate everything [she] had learned in [her] classes into real life.” Sherrard said classes did not take place in a classroom, but rather “churches, local organizations, city offices” and the like. She described the program as its brochures do, as “a lot of experiential, hands on learning.”