Our Courses and Services

Course Development, Academic Standards and Evaluation

ACI Study Abroad program staff work closely with your international program’s director to design programs, monitor course content and respond to student input. We ensure that your institutional needs are met regarding coursework, grades, and evaluations.

We work with you to design specialized programs that meet your particular objectives, time requirements and budgetary constraints. Recent Study Abroad programs have focused on topics such as Senegalese culture, music and dance; religion and society; archaeology; literature; film; business; international and African politics; health and gender issues and the environment. For more information on specialized lectures and site visits.

Languages

The ACI Baobab Center provides intensive, high-quality language courses in French, Wolof, and English but also in Sereer, Pulaar, Mandinka, Portuguese, Portuguese Creole, Spanish, and Arabic as well as other national languages upon request. Our unique approach to language training is based on 25 years of experience teaching languages in Senegal. We focus on oral/aural language skills - - our goal is to strengthen each student’s ability to speak and understand their target language. Reading and writing are included to support the development of speaking and listening skills. Our experienced instructors provide students with personalized, interactive classes ranging from individual tutorials to small groups (maximum of six students) to rapidly maximize their speaking and comprehension skills. Course content is adapted to respond to the interests and meet the unique needs of each student, regardless of his/her current skill level in the language. For more information on our Language Department, click here

Cross-Cultural Training

ACI prepares students for a rich cross-cultural experience through workshops and trainings, and through placement in a home stay with a Senegalese family. We help students develop their skills as life-long cultural learners through a series of workshops and field trips.

Cultural Exploration Workshop: Exploring Senegalese Cultural Values. Students spend half a day exploring how cultural values form the basis of behavior patterns in Senegal. Students work with local resource people to begin to identify and understand core Senegalese values and how they are manifested in social behavior. The workshop closes with an authentic meal shared among participants practicing local eating etiquette.

Crossing Cultures Workshop: Introduction to cross-cultural communication. Students work through exercises that reveal cultural assumptions and the natural process by which humans assign meaning to behavior. Classroom work is completed with experiential exercises, using the environment as a classroom, bringing back observations and artifacts to the group for a follow-up session focusing on cultural interpretation.

Gender Workshop: Navigating gender realities in Senegal. Students meet with Senegalese counterparts to explore and compare issues of gender and sexuality in both cultures. Students gain knowledge of gender expectations and clues to communicating more clearly with members of the opposite sex.

Focused Exploration: Building Cultural Competency. ACI accompanies the continuing learning of your students with a series of workshops and exercises to help students explore their environment and integrate experiences. ACI considers this course, which is accredited by several universities, to be at the core of the study abroad experience.

Re-Entry Session: Students take stock of how they have changed and grown during their time abroad, what changes have happened back home, and prepare for their transition back to their home country and culture.

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