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DALLAS TWP. —Yes, brews are ubiquitous. Matt Swanson recounts how he ended up sipping a Guinness with the mayor of Limerick his first day in Ireland. No, they don’t recite incessant five-line verses. Swanson and Michael Simons could barely remember one Limerick during their visits to Limerick. And yes, it was too bawdy to print here.
But you don’t go from Misericordia University to Mary Immaculate College in Limerick to sample stouts or recite rhymes. You go, thanks to a new agreement between the two schools founded by the same religious order, to get a master’s degree in philosophy.
“We took a copy of the agreement over in spring,” recounted Simons, coordinator of Misericordia’s study abroad program, “and we already have three undergraduate and one graduate student going over in fall.”
Under the deal, qualified Misericordia students spend four years on the Dallas Township campus and one in the land of Celtic legends, getting a master’s in five years. They also have the opportunity to continue their education in Ireland, earning a doctorate in philosophy or arts and culture.
They also get a chance to take courses “that we would never teach here,” Simons added, “Celtic religion, Celtic civilization, a variety of philosophy courses they teach there that we don’t teach here.”
They get much more than the degree, though, Simons said. “It will change you in some ways.” He talked of how his own daughter went to London and got into the habit of stopping for tea every morning, a habit hard to satisfy when she went to school in the Bronx, New York City.
The two schools also have a deal that lets some students go to Ireland for one semester in other subjects. Keana Albert, for example, will be heading across the ocean in the fall for a semester in “medical health humanities,” a field of study she said she had to craft herself to match her pre-med studies with what MIC could offer.
“This is my first time out of the country and on an airplane,” Albert confessed.
Is she nervous?
“Oh yes!”
Simmons and Swanson, Misericordia’s philosophy chair, reassured her that the people are “super friendly,” the campus is within walking distance of most needs, and that there is a bicycle shop within five minutes from campus.
Besides, Simons pointed out, the country is smaller than Pennsylvania. “You are two-and-half hours from anywhere.”
Both Misericordia and MIC were founded by the Sisters of Mercy, and both have stuck to teaching “continental” philosophy, which those who went to college decades ago may remember as the only kind, when you read legends like Aristotle and talked about stuff like the purpose of existence.
Many schools on this side of the pond, Swanson said, have shifted to “analytic philosophy” that zeros in on particular aspects of a given field of science. “They want to help scientists do science better,” he said. “Analytic philosophy is the acquisition of knowledge as opposed to the pursuit of wisdom.”
Sound like a lot of blarney? Well, remember, they’re going to Limerick. Blarney is about 90 minutes south.