Pitzer Programs

Each Pitzer Program offers a core course that weaves together lectures, fieldwork, study trips, and reflections on community engagement experiences in order to guide you in your cross-cultural learning and interdisciplinary understanding of the host country context.

The Fieldbook recognizes that writing is one of the deepest and most precise records of experience and an activity that both generates and reflects learning. Demanding of your time and intellect, the Fieldbook asks you to integrate the theoretical and experiential components of the program through a series of writing assignments.

In each program location, Pitzer language instructors use an interactive approach that focuses on facilitating communication with people of your host community and language practice through an extended stay with one or more host families. More than any other aspect of a Pitzer Program, family stays help you understand the host culture and the issues important to their community and country.

Pitzer Programs provide an opportunity for you to carry out a directed independent study project, internship, or service-learning experience focused on a topic of interest or community need. These projects can often fulfill major requirements, and many projects can be used as the foundation for senior thesis work or postgraduate fellowships. In fact, Pitzer’s cultural immersion programs make students strong candidates for Fulbright Fellowships and other prestigious national awards like the Watson and Rotary Scholarships. The majority of Pitzer students winning such fellowships completed a Pitzer Program.