French

This workshop is for advanced level students (C1-C2). It helps with oral expression and understanding in an academic context. Content focuses on presentations, summaries, and writing academic papers.

This course comprises a thematic and comparative approach to French civilization. It focuses on issues relating to local geography (Bordeaux and it's region), secularism in France, the educational system, and French institutions. Students produce written and oral descriptions of French cultural and economic aspects, explain the cultural differences between their own country and France, and improve their French speaking and writing levels through document analysis.

This course focuses on the study of corporations. Topics include: the structure of productivity and human relations, the business environment, business as a cultural project, and the management of human resources. It provides an introduction to how corporations are set up in France, including an explanation of multiple cultural differences that happen in the French business world compared to the rest of the world.

This intermediate French course focuses on intensive instruction in written and oral French through audio-visual method and group work with an instructor. The oral part of the course studies pronunciation, vocabulary for daily and university life, and simple and more complex sentence structure. Written work includes grammatical review, spelling, and expression. The course includes regular exercises to train comprehension and expression.

This course studies applied cognitive, social, and cultural psychology within the sub concepts of motivation, conflict, diversity, and career. Topics include examining theories about motivation, change and communication within an organization, leadership styles, and social and cultural relations within an organization.

This course examines major historical, social, and artistic movements reflected in representative novels published in France from the 19th Century to the present.

This course reflects on the foundations and modalities of the advent of political modernity in the 19th century. It traces the major stages in the evolution of Europe and its imperial extensions, from the democratic revolutions of the end of the 18th century to the advent of the era of the masses at the beginning of the 20th century. Topics include the emergence of currents of thought such as liberalism, conservatism, and socialism; the changes in the instruments of mobilization, violent (wars, revolutions) or peaceful (civil society, electoral processes); the affirmation of nation states and the persistence of empires. Particular attention is paid to the place claimed and obtained by women in political society. The course also questions the place of Europe in the world and evokes the processes of political modernization (and its limits) on the other continents.

The extensive independent study field research paper produced by the student is both the centerpiece of the intern's professional engagement and the culmination of the academic achievements of the semester. During the preparatory session, IFE teaches the methodological guidelines and principles to which students are expected to adhere in the development of their written research. Students work individually with a research advisor from their field. The first task is to identify a topic, following guidelines established by IFE for research topic choice. The subject must be tied in a useful and complementary way to the student-intern's responsibilities, as well as to the core concerns of the host organization. The research question should be designed to draw as much as possible on resources available to the intern via the internship (data, documents, interviews, observations, seminars and the like). Students begin to focus on this project after the first 2-3 weeks on the internship. Each internship agreement signed with an organization makes explicit mention of this program requirement, and this is the culminating element of their semester. Once the topic is identified, students meet individually, as regularly as they wish, with their IFE research advisor to generate a research question from the topic, develop an outline, identify sources and research methods, and discuss drafts submitted by the student. The research advisor also helps students prepare for the oral defense of their work which takes place a month before the end of the program and the due date of the paper. The purpose of this exercise is to help students evaluate their progress and diagnose the weak points in their outline and arguments. Rather than an extraneous burden added to the intern's other duties, the field research project grows out of the internship through a useful and rewarding synergy of internship and research. The Field Study and Internship model results in well-trained student-interns fully engaged in mission-driven internships in their field, while exploring a critical problem guided by an experienced research advisor.