Commodities, Cafes and Climate Change
June 16 - July 2, 2026
Application Deadline: Feb. 16, 2025
Let the city of Lyon and its surrounding region be your classrooms for 16 days. Be exposed to perspectives and experiences that include but go well beyond any typical itinerary for visiting this region of France. The program has three broad themes that guide our activities and site visits. Two of those themes are structured as formal 2-credit courses: “Exploring France’s Responses to Climate Change – Ten years after launching the 2015 Paris Agreement” and “Experiencing France’s Food System and Culture - From Commodities to Cafes.” The third theme is to take full advantage of being in France, so within our daily activities we will make time to be tourists. Visits to museums, historic sites and tourist destinations will be included in our program.
Exploring France’s Responses to Climate Change (2 credits) will be led by Dr. Dominique Bachelet, a climate scientist and OSU faculty member. She will draw upon her 40 years of experience as an ecologist and climate change researcher, along with her considerable network of French colleagues and personal perspective as a French-born and educated scholar. We will hear directly from the frontlines of how France is addressing the specific goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement and how French leaders, researchers and citizens are engaging in national and European efforts to confront the eminent changes resulting from climate change. Planned site visits include a tour of a nuclear power plant, a visit to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva, Switzerland, and site visits to see local efforts to preserve biodiversity within the context of changing climates and ecosystems.
Experiencing France’s Food System and Culture (2 credits) will be led by Dr. James Sterns, an agricultural economist and OSU faculty member. This will be the fifteenth study abroad program that he has led or co-led to France. Two words in the course title truly define this course’s itinerary: “experiencing” and “food.” Activities will immerse class participants in France’s food system, its history, and its daily functions from farm gate to food plate. Planned site visits include farms, vineyards, processors, distributors, retailers and by the very nature of our need to eat, restaurants and cafes! (But always with a critical eye, looking to learn and understand the who, how and why of this dynamic food system).
These two seminars, though created as separate courses, are highly complementary and many of the program activities will integrate simultaneously themes from both courses. For example, a site visit to the Beaujolais region will allow us to learn both about traditional practices and systems of quality control used to produce wine, but also about how climate change is threatening these centuries-old production practices. We will hear directly from vineyard managers, as they will discuss how they are seeking ways to mitigate and adapt to these threats.
The program is based in Lyon with day trips into the surrounding region. Day trips from Lyon will include destinations such as the cities of Annecy, Dijon and Marseille, a nuclear power plant, a farm visit, and a visit to a regional wholesale distribution center. A day trip to Geneva is also planned with visits to international agencies based there, such as the World Meteorological Organization and the World Trade Organization.
Students will stay in air-conditioned hotel rooms, most likely with two to four students to a room. Transportation to and from France is not included, but once the program begins, all in-country travel related to program activities will be provided. This includes access to public transport while in Lyon, and chartered buses and rail tickets for day trips and site visits outside of city limits. The main sources of out-of-pocket expenses while in France will be meals not included in the program, shopping, and extra activities initiated by students.