The Salzburg Semester Curriculum

UPCOMING SALZBURG FACULTY FELLOWS:

• Greg Thorson – Fall 2025
  • SALZ 360: Austrian Social Policy (LAI: S, CPI, QRE)
• Scott Randolph - Spring 2026
  • SALZ 360: Case Studies in Austrian and Central European Business Enterprise: Navigating Competitive Niches within an International Economy (LAI: OC)

REQUIRED:

GERMAN 101s, 201s, 350s INTENSIVE GERMAN 4 Units
This course will introduce you to the basic elements of the German language and grammatical structure while developing a core vocabulary of words and phrases which you may use in daily living activities in Salzburg. Your study in German will include exercises in reading, writing, listening, speaking, and even singing. Differences in learning styles, customs, and traditions between Americans, Austrians, Germans, and other European cultures will be discussed as appropriate to course content.
Students who take German 101 in Salzburg and follow up with German 102 on campus can fulfill the foreign language requirement.

SALZ 240: AUSTRIA IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: CONFRONTING A DIFFICULT PAST: 4 Units, LAI: H
This course introduces students to the history of 20th century Austria, its legacies, and how it is remembered in contemporary society. Emphasis will be placed on historical developments before and during the Nazi period and their impact on post-war Austria. In workshop and reflection-based classes, we will surface implications and engage in meaning-making processes. Excursions to memorial sites will introduce students to site-based learning and self-directed activities that will prepare them for their final project: a student-led tour of Salzburg, discussing their own take on Austria's Nazi past, post-war identity, and remembrance as an example of how best to confront a challenging past.

This course can fulfill a History major elective.

SALZ 230: TRAVELERS AND CITIZENS: 3 Units, LAI: CER and TG
This course integrates the various aspects of the Salzburg Program curriculum through travel and service-learning.  On excursions, experiential assignments draw on students' studies in language, history, art and music.  Community service appointments in Salzburg and the Balkans provide an opportunity to examine institutions and customs for addressing community needs in Austria.

ELECTIVES - CHOOSE TWO
SALZ 251: ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF CENTRAL EUROPE : 3 Units , LAI: ESS
Students engage directly with visual art and its historical development in the European context, and the understanding of architecture as a reflection of the European ideal.  Emphasizes experiential learning by blending museum and site visits in Salzburg, readings and case studies, and excursions to select European cities.
This course can fulfill a Art major elective.

SALZ 360: Music and Mobility: 3 Units , LAI: OC (SPRING ONLY)
This course investigates the role of music in human mobility: in travel (imagined and real), migration, and diaspora communities. We will learn to analyze how sound and music can help construct, represent, and dispute ideas of place, identity, and belonging, from the local to the global. We will draw on live music experiences and 'sound walks' in Salzburg and Central Europe, as well as music from students' own backgrounds, to cultivate close listening and learn to hear how music is a part of the way we move through the world.

This course may fulfill a music major elective.

Salzburg 360: Grimm's Fairy Tales (FALL ONLY)
In this course students will learn about Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm's work in the 19th century Germany through a selection of fairy tales. The course will interrogate the genre "fairy tale": its origin, typical characters, settings, plots, and modern adaptations (e.g. Disney). Different media (film, music, images and text) and local excursion(s) will immerse students in the course's content.

Fall 2025 SPECIAL TOPICS COURSE: Austrian Social Policy: 3 to 4 Unites LAI Cat: S, CPI, QRE
Together we will examine how culture, history, and politics interact to produce social policies within Austria and its surrounding region, with special focus on the areas of immigration, education, health care, poverty, marriage, and incarceration policies. We will examine how these policies vary both within Austria and between Austria and the rest of Europe. The class will also feature field trips to nearby service delivery sites and/or meetings with local and regional policy leaders.

Spring 2026 SPECIAL TOPICS COURSE: Case Studies in Austrian and Central European Business Enterprise: Navigating Competitive Niches within an International Economy: 3 to 4 units LAI Cat: OC
The contemporary European business environment is complicated and diverse. Eureopean firms, by necesity, operate in both a super-national marketplace (the Eureopean Union) and globally. In many ways, European firms have far more experience navigating international borders than is the case for their competitors in the United States and elsewhere, a consequence of post-WW2 efforts that led eventually to the European Union and the Euro.

The course's instructional foundation of this course is a set of business case studies that feature Austrian or central-European firms. Some case studies will ask students examine leadership practices in disruptive business and political environments, others will provide opportunities to examine how venerable organizations such as the Weiner Staatsoper respond to challenges of digital technology and live-streaming; others will ask students to examine change management in firms that glide back and forth between for-profit and social enterprise (non-profit) structures and stakeholder goals; others will aks students to think about the challenges of small, family enterprises as they seek to expand the market in China for artisanal chocolates, another will prsent students with a deep dilemma, how does a nearly 1000-year old Austrian Benedictine monastery act when its principle source of revenue, a lumber mill specializing in high-end flooring is battered by foreign competition, yet the mill is also one of its charities - providing work and training to residents in a poorer region of the country.

MUSP 350s.01 APPLIED MUSIC (CR/NCR only) 4 Units
Music majors can elect to take this course. The music major can enrich their musical experiences in Salzburg by being tutored in their applied lessons by a member or associate of the world famous Mozarteum faculty.
The opportunity to audition for full inclusion in the Mozarteum does exist for the serious music student with appropriate language and music skills and full backing of their University. Admission into the Mozarteum is the sole province of the Mozarteum itself, and can be finalized only in Salzburg by a student satisfying the audition and exam requirements administered by the Mozarteum staff. If accepted, the student would adapt to the calendar and curriculum of the Mozarteum and such involvement would likely come at the expense of involvement in any of the field experiences of the regular Salzburg Semester program.