Stanford in Paris
The Stanford Program in Paris hosts around 100 Stanford undergraduate students every year. While students’ specializations vary greatly, the academic objective of the program is to offer all students an essential tool for understanding the underpinnings of French culture, language, politics and society.
Participants in the program come to terms with both the myth and the reality of France today, through participation in courses offered in French, in internships, and through ongoing research in French centers of higher learning.
Discover official program page
During their stay, students explore and make good use of all the exceptionally rich resources Paris has to offer.
Among these are the privileged contacts they may cultivate with the fellow alumni of our Stanford Clubs in Paris (Stanford Club of France and Stanford Business Club).
Over the years these contacts have come to represent one of the highlights of their stay in France
Please find hereafter the letter of Estelle Halevi, Program Director
Dear Friends and Alumni,
Are you looking for a meaningful way to keep up contacts with Stanford? Are you curious to know what Stanford students are doing today in France? Then you may want to consider becoming a Mentor for the Stanford Program in Paris. This project, launched twenty years ago upon the suggestion of one of our students, as met with considerable success ever since. Many of our students appreciate the informal support and welcome Stanford overseas alumni have to give. Alumni like the fact that they can offer as much time as they think reasonable and manageable for themselves. Even one lunch or coffee break in the quarter can be a wonderful experience for students. Often, it is over time that relations are created, and we find some students continue writing to their mentors for years, once they return to the States.
To understand how the program works, you should know that Stanford undergraduates (19-21 years old) spend either one, two or three quarters studying at the Stanford Center in Paris. (30-40 students each quarter) It is up to the alumni to decide the manner in which they can best contribute to the students’ experience in Paris.
To help us organize the program effectively, simply fill out The Stanford In Paris Mentor Program – Personal Information Form, which focuses not only on your personal interests and profile, but also on the areas in which you would like to devote a bit of time to the students. We will keep this form for our records. Please return it to us at your convenience. Every year, at the beginning of the academic year (September), we will contact you to update your information: your availability, how many students you would like to mentor for the year and during which quarters, your preferred student profiles, etc.
In this way, when the students come to Paris, we can direct them to an available mentor best suited to them.
This project has become one of the highlights of the students’ experience in France, and we hope the exchange will be just as rewarding for you as it is for us.
Estelle Halévi
Program Director
Estelle.halevi@stanford.edu
