This year marks the University of Portland’s first fifty years in Salzburg, Austria. On August 30, 1964 the University sent its pioneer group of 30 students and director, Fr. Ambrose Wheeler, C.S.C., to enter a two-semester European adventure. Beginning the University’s oldest and most popular overseas study program.
Since that beginning, between 30-40 undergraduate students pursue their Portland degree each year through classroom study, cultural excursions, and individual travel in Europe. According to student and alumni reports, there is no down-side.
At the all-alumni reunion in June 2014, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the University’s 50 years in Salzburg, friends in Salzburg presented this gift of a statue of St. Ambrose, a pillar of Western learning and patron of our founding director, to reside at the home campus in the Clark Library. With summer sessions also hosted in the Merianstrasse site since the 1990s, nearly 2000 University of Portland alumni can claim the City of Mozart as part of their college curriculum.
For more Salzburg study abroad photos from the University Archives and Museum, click on this link:
https://sites.up.edu/museum/salzburg-trips/
There were 32 students in the first Salzburg group, not the 30 stated above. Count them in the picture. And I was and am happy to call them all friends and fellow Salzburgers.
I’m so excited to begin my studies this year in Salzburg in the fiftieth year of the program! What a fantastic time it will be!
Stephen fr ambrose wheeler was my first cousin