SCAD students experience Australian culture by taking courses in Australia
By Rachel Chaikof
Imagine if students’ classroom instruction time included seeing koala bears, bike rides through a city, and tours of advertising agencies? A group of students from SCAD-Savannah and SCAD-Atlanta took a flight to the land Down Under to visit Sydney and Melbourne and to take courses in photography, art history and advertising with professors from the Savannah campus as part of SCAD’s off-campus program.
“While in Australia, I don’t think I have ever learned so much in so little time. I feel I’ve learned so much because we were in a non-classroom environment, not just spending time learning from books,” said Deanne Calder Andrus, a third-year photography student.
“Off-campus programs help me to learn in a very different way than learning in the classroom,” said Jennifer Jacoby, a third-year photography student, who also took the Art in Australia course. “Getting to see the art first hand and meet the artist gives me more of an appreciation and knowledge that I can’t get in class in Atlanta.”
Kelly Peterson, a fourth-year advertising student said having the opportunity to meet a completely fresh set of students and professors was a nice change of pace.
“I was spending time with fellow art students and professors around the clock at every opportunity I could learn from them during this experience,” Andrus said. Andrus said some of her favorite lessons were the tips she learned from fellow photographers, like how to shoot through a pair of sunglasses and how to clean a lens with a dollar bill if she’s ever in a bind.
“The opportunity to visit a new country and culture different from one’s own enables students to approach the idea of travel photography or, more specifically, develop the ability to 
represent the “other,” in a real-world situation,” said Liz Darlington, professor of photography. “It also provides me with the opportunity to discuss the difference between touristic photography, as used on postcards and travel brochures, and editorial travel photography favored by magazines.”
Darlington said teaching in the field presents a number of challenges. For instance, she cannot rely on traditional classroom technology to illustrate key photographic concepts or show students examples of other photographers’ approach to a similar brief. “However, nothing can compare with illustrating the practicalities of shooting an unfamiliar culture in an unfamiliar environment with a very limited time frame,” she said.
“I feel a major purpose for participating in a study abroad program is to learn to apply what I have learned from a different setting, context and culture to my own work,” Andrus said. “Being in Australia also forced me out of my comfort zone. This experience taught me to branch out and learn things that I would normally not have learned in a regular classroom environment,” she said.
Peterson said she liked that she and her classmates could able hear their professors comment on the ads they saw while traveling through the city.
“Most of the time we don’t have the ability to hear their comments on things like where the ad is placed or how often it is up around town,” Peterson said. “[I] got to learn more about the ads I see every day instead of ones out of the textbook.”
Peterson and Lindsay Hadley, professor of advertising design said they were fortunate to tour four of the best agencies in Australia, if not the world. DDB Sydney, one of the advertising agencies, shared its most recent advertising projects and explained what the agency looked for when hiring new creatives, Hadley said.
Ben Welsh, the creative director for M&C Saatchi in Sydney shared the agency’s recent award-winning work and walked the students through M&C Saatchi’s creative process. The lead copywriter for M&C Saatchi in Melbourne, Doogie Chapman, discussed the competitive nature of Australian agencies and the nuances of Australian target audiences. At Leo Burnett in Melbourne, a transplant from the Chicago office explained the creative process from the perspective of an account executive. He also explained how to transition from working in the United States to abroad.
Peterson said she really benefited from meeting people from various departments because students typically only get meet the an agency’s art director. This helped her get a more well-rounded perspective of career options in advertising, she said.
“In the classroom, we can describe how advertising works in the real world, and we can review work from some of the world’s best agencies,” said Hadley. “But it’s truly a luxury to hear directly from those who created the work our students admire most. It also helps to have award-winning creative directors reinforce the concepts and practices we teach in our classes.”
In addition, some of the advertising students made contacts within the agency, who eventually reviewed their portfolios, Hadley said.
While the students learned the concepts of photography, advertising and art history, they and their professors had many opportunities to have fun by soaking up in various cultural activities, including a bike tour.
“I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the bike tours,” Andrus said. “You got to see the cities up close and personal and not hampered by a bus or the slowness of walking.”
Darlington said that as a photographer, she likes to be able to cover ground and get a sense of the layout of the city in the shortest amount of time. “It gave me the opportunity to see a variety of neighborhoods and key sights with a 360-degree unobstructed view,” she said.
Some students also enjoyed seeing Australian animals.
“They were so unique, Andrus said. “It is not every day you get to see a koala in the wild or touch one in the zoo.” Jacoby said she saw wild kangaroos in a field. “I was able to get three feet away from them and some amazing pictures,” she said.
Peterson and Hadley agreed it was hard to choose a favorite moment. They enjoyed the sights along the Great Ocean Road; peddling bikes to Carlton Gardens in Melbourne to picnic with local cuisine; touring the Sydney Opera House, where they saw its beautiful wood interior and royal purple carpet; touring The King’s Cross, where they heard the dark history of that area; playing didgeridoos and tossing boomerangs.