Celebrating 60 Years Of Student Exchanges With Austria

COLLEGEVILLE (WJON News) -- The oldest high school study abroad program in the country is based here in Central Minnesota.

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St. John's Prep in Collegeville has had a partnership with Melk, Austria, for 60 years.

The first group of students from St. John's Prep left for Austria on September 1st, 1966.

The first year was 16.  I was over with a group of 18.  The largest group we had was 24.  In the beginning, it was very attractive for the students here to travel to Europe.

Retired teacher Emmy Sack says they've had nearly 500 students from St. John's spend an entire academic year in Austria over the past 60 years. Students from Melk also come to Collegeville every year.

They were a little bit smaller at the very beginning, and now it's actually the opposite.  Now, we have a larger group from Austria coming in than what we send over there.

The Austrians only stay for one semester in the fall. The students from St. John's live with host families while they are in Austria. The Austrian students stay in the boarding facility while they are at St. John's Prep.

St. John's Prep currently has three students studying at Stift Melk: Abigail Malikowski of St. Cloud, Isabelle Boyce of St. Joseph, and Ryan Mahowald of Sartell. Abigail and Ryan are juniors, and Isabelle is a sophomore.

Ryan is a third-generation Melk student. His grandfather, Bob Mahowald, was part of the first cohort. His dad, also Bob Maholwald, studied in Melk in 1994. Ryan’s sister, Megan, also studied in Melk in 2023.

Sack says he's hopeful the tradition will continue for many years to come.

Hopefully we'll continue for many years to come, because it is really a great thing for our students, and also for the Austrians when they come here, to experience a different culture, learn the language, see how everything works in a country, economy, politics, and so on.

Sack says several American students enrolled in the program have married Austrians over the years.

A 60th anniversary reunion is being planned for this June in Melk, Austria. They get together every five years, with the 65th anniversary planned for St. John's.