Hello!  Guten Tag!  Bonjour!

No Matter how it is said, it means the same.  

The European Studies Program at Slippery Rock University is a groundbreaking program to help SRU students understand the unique and incredible history of the European Continent.  By understanding Europe, students can learn how thier lives have and will be effected.  Today, we see the formation of a new Europe, one that being formed from many individual countries.  How will this new European Union effect the United States?  How will the lives of Slippery Rock Students be changed by this new Europe.  That is just one of the questions that the European Studies Program hopes to answer.  

The purpose of the project is to develop a new interdisciplinary area studies program in European Studies at Slippery Rock University (SRU) as well as to strengthen both the undergraduate curriculum in support of a European Studies minor and the teaching of modern European languages. Such a program will complement existing programs in Asian Studies and Latin American Studies at SRU, and will lend further support to the International Studies minor and the International Business major.

The European Studies Program is one of the latest interdisciplinary programs instituted at Slippery Rock University.  By combining several departments, it is the goal of the project to offer students a unique look into Europe from all aspects of society.  By combining Art, English, History, the Modern Languages, and Political and Governmental Sciences, the students are immersed in a European curriculum.  This program is also designed to help the Faculty better their classrooms by offering them the opportunities to investigate European influences in their own departments and classes.

Today, "Europe" as a political entity or European culture as a frame of reference includes those countries of western and eastern Europe since the break-up of the former Soviet Union, as well as those regions such as Scandinavia and the Mediterranean that might be referred to, respectively, as northern and southern Europe. What is commonly called the European Union actually consists of fifteen Member States, which include the six founding members: Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, plus Denmark, Greece, Spain, Ireland, Austria, Portugal, Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The Treaty of Nice calls for preparations for the enlargement of the European Union to include countries of central and eastern Europe, the Mediterranean and the Baltic.

In all, 12 countries are currently negotiating accession to the European Union: Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. In addition, Turkey has been recognized as a candidate for membership. Indeed, since the break-up of the Soviet bloc countries of the Warsaw Pact, the issues of European identity and European integration have become central to political, social, economic, and cultural debates of the 21st century.