NELP offers unique summer to 'U' students

On the first day of his summer experience, Chris McVetty was thrown into a random group of classmates, given an address in New Hampshire and the keys to a van. Getting there was just the first event in an unique English course at the University.

"You just go. No professors are with you, no (graduate student instructors)," said McVetty, an LSA senior, about the trip to the New England campsite.

For 24 years, the University has been operating the New England Literature Program, which groups 40 students and 12 teachers in the backwoods of New Hampshire, where they study poetry and literature in natural seclusion.

"It integrates the New England culture and mental and physical activity," said Director Jackie Livesay, an English senior lecturer. "It's the most wonderful thing I know of, educationally."

The program runs for six weeks, from May 4 to June 19. Livesay will be accepting final applications through tomorrow.

While the students are away, a strict separation from society is enforced. Electricity and running water are available, but no stereos, televisions or telephone calls are allowed.

"You're not dealing with everyday life in Ann Arbor, which can be kind of hectic," explained LSA senior and former NELP participant Erin Galligan. "There are no distractions. When you're without all that stuff, you make your own music and your own entertainment."

A typical day at the camp starts with a required class on literature written by New England authors, Livesay said. Among the readings in the curriculum are works by Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert Frost and Henry David Thoreau.

Afternoons are spent in two elective classes. These classes could include poetry, painting, bird watching and astronomy. Students choose these classes day-to-day, not necessarily attending the same course every day.

Students are required to teach some of these electives. McVetty taught a course on computer imagery. He said that other students in his class taught courses in yoga or on lesser-known poets.

"The distinctions between students and staff fade away," Livesay said.

NELP was founded in part by retired English Prof. Wilson Clark. "I had the rather crass idea that Michigan was a fine University, but that it should be in New Hampshire," he said.

Aside from learning about literature, students are supposed to help integrate social and physical activities into their overall education.

When he started the program in 1974, Clark said students at the University "did not see a connection between learning and cleaning."

"We wanted to take people who were plugged into the television and, let's say, a 'party lifestyle,' and to remove them from that," Clark said. "We wanted students to listen to other students."

A feature that has existed since the beginning is the Get Lost Trip.

A group of four or five students "are taken about eight miles out of the way. They're given a compass and a map, and told to get back," Clark said.

This nontraditional program has gained general acceptance over the years.

"In the early years, NELP was regarded with considerable suspicion," Clark said.

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