About

About the program:

VT Camino is a five-week faculty-led summer session study abroad program featuring themed study, experiential learning, and cultural immersion.  The core of the program is a two-week walk along the centuries-old pilgrimage route of the Camino de Santiago and the two weeks of language and culture classes that follow in the city of Santiago de Compostela.

Both along the route and in the city, students have the opportunity to engage in engaging cultural experiences.  There’s something about walking five to six hours every day that slows you down and makes you engage with the Spanish people and Spanish in an intense and organic way.  During the walk, VT students stay in albergues (pilgrim dormitories) and walk through small towns.  During our time in Santiago, students stay in homestays with local families.

There is additional travel before and and after the pilgrimage, including the opportunity for individual travel.  Past destinations have included Madrid, Vigo, Avila, and Barcelona.

For information about the 2020 program, email camino@vt.edu.

About the program leader:

The Camino de Santiago is a natural extension of Annie Hesp’s love of the outdoors and Hispanic studies.  The moment Hesp arrived on the Camino in 1999, she knew immediately that she wanted to return with students.  The Camino is not only her area of academic research, it also serves a tool for learning.  Annie wrote her dissertation on narratives of the contemporary Camino and she regularly teaches a course on the Camino that includes Spain’s history and culture from the middle ages to the present.

Annie’s passionate about sharing the Camino with students because it not only provides an immersion experience with the language and culture of Spain but also provides fertile ground for personal development. She appreciates the wonder of the trail itself but is equally excited about how the pilgrimage impacts each student. As she puts it, “the Camino often serves as a springboard for more thrilling opportunities.”

2019 marks the eighth iteration of VT Camino.