Day School Sophomore Allison Waller was accepted to the Indiana University Honors Program for Foreign Languages (IUHPFL) this summer. This full-immersion, travel abroad program for Indiana high school students focuses on academic, linguistic, and cultural experiences.  Alli will travel to St. Brieuc, France for six weeks in an immersive program.

While in St. Brieuc, Alli will stay with a host family, attend classes, travel, and have an authentic opportunity to utilize the language she is studying.

Named after a Welsh monk in the sixth century and one of the oldest towns in the program, St. Brieuc is located in the region of Brittany in northwestern France. As the first program site in France, St. Brieuc has been with the IUHPFL program for 52 years. While St. Brieuc is a smaller town with less than 50,000 citizens, it offers all the amenities of much larger cities. Its scenery is breathtaking with ever-changing water views, sandy beaches and amazing rock formations.

St. Brieuc straddles two rivers before emptying into the Bay of St. Brieuc and the English Channel. In 2008 and 2012, the Tour de France raced through this city.

In order to qualify for the highly-selective IUHPFL program, students must complete three levels of a foreign language and attend high school in Indiana. Participants must also demonstrate enthusiasm for study abroad and total language immersion, have high performance in their foreign language classes, show a history of solid academic achievement, and demonstrate good character.

The year-long enrollment process includes registration (September), evaluations (November), acceptance (January), interviews (February), financial aid (February), acceptance materials (February-April), orientation (April), host-family placement (May), departure (June) and post-program presentations and recruitment (August-beyond).

Evansville Day School is proud Alli is following in the footsteps of other EDS alumni who have embarked on this opportunity. Cultural immersion in a foreign country is a tremendous way to enhance future-proof Portrait of a Graduate skills: entrepreneurial learning, global mindedness, resilience, and balance. We are excited to hear about her travels when she returns to school next fall.