CAMS connects old worlds with new
Editor's note: This is the third in a weekly series about lesser-known majors at Penn State. This story examines the classics and ancient Mediterranean studies major.

By ALISON BALMAT
Collegian Staff Writer

Egyptian hieroglyphics, Roman archaeology and Mesopotamian civilizations are just a few of the subjects students explore within the classics and ancient Mediterranean studies (CAMS) major.

"In the CAMS major, you have an opportunity to study the ancient Mediterranean world from Greece and Italy to Egypt and the Near East, and the significant cultural developments of those areas in antiquity," said Wilma Stern, assistant professor of classical archaeology.

Six years ago, the classics major expanded beyond Greek and Latin studies to include other civilizations and was renamed CAMS, said Gerald Knoppers, department head of classics and ancient Mediterranean studies. Nestled within the College of the Liberal Arts, CAMS has flourished from about three students in the major four years ago to about 25 students currently majoring in CAMS or switching into the major, Stern said.

"There's just . . . a greater interest in the ancient Mediterranean world at every level," Stern said. "There's some external values in the things to be learned in the study of antiquity that maintains its meaningfulness in the modern world."

Education-abroad opportunities within the major include studying in Athens, spending a summer in an Egyptian field school or participating in an archaeological excavation in Israel, Knoppers said.

Kate Liszka (sophomore-classics and ancient Mediterranean studies) will study abroad in Egypt next year and will focus most of her coursework in Cairo on an archaeological dig.

"I've always wanted to be an Egyptologist. I was looking for a major that would give me an overview of the ancient world," she said.

Liszka said she is fascinated by the discovery of civilizations that existed 3,000 or 4,000 years ago.

"Whenever you find out the historical aspects of things long ago and you find out the achievements of them, you realize there are such overlaps from ancient to modern civilization," she said.

Julia Lachewitz (senior-classics) studied in Athens for four months and found that in addition to what she learned in her literature, history and philosophy classes, she learned about humanity and herself.

"You go to Greece with all these pictures in your mind of ancient temples, and you realize there's this intense interdependency among (us and the ancient Greeks)," Lachewitz said. "Fundamentally, we're all the same."

Penn State's CAMS major has received national recognition for being among the first programs that integrate the study of ancient Greece and Rome with Egypt and the civilizations of the ancient Near East, Stern said.

CAMS majors can concentrate on the study of Greek, Latin or both, or select a nonlanguage-based option. After graduation, they pursue everything from teaching, museum or library work to seminary, graduate, law or medical school, Stern said.

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