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| Vol. 19, No. 5 | Sept. 30, 1999 |
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| Vol. 19, No. 5 | Sept. 30, 1999 |
The experience of a lifetime has resulted in a substantial gift to the University of Delaware.
Seventy years ago, 19-year-old Ann Nields of Wilmington set sail for France where she and 66 other college students from across America spent their junior year studying in Paris through the University's acclaimed Delaware Foreign Study Plan.
It was a formative journey in which the young woman-who later married Geoffrey S. Garstin-made lifelong friends and developed a lasting attachment to the University. Throughout her lifetime, Mrs. Garstin provided generous support to the institution as a member of the Delaware Diamonds Society and the Legacy Society.
When she died last year at age 88, Mrs. Garstin made one last gift to the University, a bequest of nearly $10 million to the John P. Nields Scholarship Fund, which was established in memory of her father, a former judge of the U.S. District Court.
In announcing the gift today, President David P. Roselle said, "This wonderful and generous gesture speaks volumes about the impact that education can have on an individual. The establishment of this scholarship fund is truly an ideal way to kindle similarly rewarding experiences for future generations of students. I am most appreciative of this special gift."
The gift supports the five-year, $225 million Campaign for Delaware, the first comprehensive fund-raising effort in the history of the institution.
"We are grateful that Mrs. Garstin chose to leave such a generous gift to the University of Delaware in remembrance of her father," Vice President Robert R. Davis, University development and alumni relations, said. "Her gift speaks to the tradition of excellence at the University and insures that educational opportunities will be available to deserving students for generations to come."
Mrs. Garstin, then a student at Sarah Lawrence College, was admitted to the 1929-30 Foreign Study Group. It was the seventh class in the program, which was developed by Prof. Raymond Watson Kirkbride with the backing of University President Walter Hullihen and the financial support of Pierre S. du Pont.
Prof. Kirkbride, a member of the modern languages faculty, had served in France during World War I. The idea for a foreign study program came to him during postwar studies at the University of Grenoble. The Delaware Foreign Study Plan was duplicated in later years at many colleges and universities and is now usually referred to as the Junior Year Abroad.
Mrs. Garstin was one of 67 students from 41 colleges and universities accepted to travel and study in the 1929-30 program.
In her application, she stated her reason for wanting to study abroad as "general culture" and listed more than 40 French literary works she had read in preparation for the excursion.
She was one of four Delaware residents in the group, joining Elizabeth Bell of Seaford, a student at Randolph-Macon Women's College, and University of Delaware juniors William W. Kirk of Kirkwood and W. Emerson Wilson of Wilmington.
The group enjoyed a gala send-off in New York City, then set sail for France aboard the S.S. Caronia on July 19, 1929. The trans-Atlantic journey was described by one observer as a "lazy, leisurely one filled with deck tennis and dancing, with perfect days and moonlight nights, a glorified house-party."
After landing at Le Havre and spending two days in Paris, the group settled in for several months of studies at the University of Nancy. There, professors laid the groundwork for later work at the Sorbonne, where the Americans would join French students in their regular winter programmed of university studies.
When the freshly drilled Americans arrived in Paris in late October 1929, an observer wrote: "There is certainly a marked difference between the bewildered and excited flock of aspiring globe-trotters that landed in Le Havre and the group of apparently serious and experienced students of French that arrived in Paris."
Before beginning the winter term, Mrs. Garstin and her "two special friends," Louise Howland of Bryn Mawr College and Susan Carson of Mount Holyoke, decided to "motor through Brittany and parts of Normandy with Mrs. Nields."
While studying at the Sorbonne, the students lived with Parisian families, although they spent much of their time at the University's Paris Bureau building.
After a rigorous year of study, the group was honored during a farewell dinner June 28, 1930, at Chez Laurent in Paris, then set sail for New York.
"The end of the year has come," an observer noted, "and to its regret, the Seventh Group has dispersed."
Although the group dispersed, its bonds did not weaken. Mrs. Garstin was among 27 members of the seventh Foreign Study Group who attended a gala 50th reunion banquet sponsored by the University in 1979.
Neither did appreciation for the unique educational value of the University of Delaware's Foreign Study Plan. "For myself," Mrs. Garstin wrote in a 1945 letter to a program official, "the advantages would sound nebulous, though they are not. Actually, my brain was scratched for the first time."
-Neil Thomas
