L-W grad to study at Oxford

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Courtney Biscan, a Lincoln-Way Central graduate, stands in front of the Villa Diodati in Geneva, Switzerland, during a recent trip. It's the house where Lord Byron, Percey Shelley and Mary Shelley were staying while Mary Shelley wrote "Frankenstein." Biscan was there to produce a student documentary titled “Frankenstein’s Legacies: The Art and Science of Being Human.” | Supplied photo

Updated: February 27, 2012 8:01AM

Lincoln-Way Central High School graduate Courtney Biscan is heading to Oxford.

A sophomore at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., the Manhattan resident will start studies at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom next fall.

Biscan, 19, will study international relations, with a focus on war and the causes of war, for the entire academic year from October to June 2013.

“I’m looking forward to the experience of being able to pick my life up for nine months and move to England,” she said.

Biscan traveled to Switzerland last fall to work on a student-produced documentary, which made her “really, really, want to go study abroad somewhere in Europe.”

Plus, she said, it’s a unique educational experience.

She won’t have classes filled with students, as she might at Notre Dame. Students at Oxford have tutorials, a weekly meeting with a tutor that’s often one-on- one.

Students discuss what they want to study and then write a weekly essay, which they have to defend in their tutorial.

“I’m excited but at the same time really apprehensive about being grilled about things,” Biscan said.

Geraldine Meehan, associate director of the Office of International Studies at Notre Dame, said this method helps students become better public speakers.

“They get extremely good at not just being intelligent, but very good at speaking, very good at defending their point of view,” she said.

The Notre Dame study abroad program has a rigorous application process, Meehan said. Only seven students are selected each year, and all must have a 3.7 grade-point average or higher.

As a political science and peace studies student in the Glynn Family Honors Program, Biscan will be writing a senior thesis when she returns to Notre Dame. She’ll use her year at Oxford to give her a head start on that, she said.

“Notre Dame is kind of a bubble,” Biscan said. “I think it will be interesting to go out and live in the real world.”