Doors to Discovery: Educator Expands Access to Study Abroad in Málaga, Spain

Scholarship fund announced during program’s 40th anniversary year

by MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson

Grace Jarvis watched countless little epiphanies unfold during her decades as a Dickinson Spanish instructor. It started on campus, as students realized they could make themselves understood in another language. It continued thousands of miles away, as students saw themselves successfully navigating language and life in Málaga, Spain. “Those moments build confidence, independence and cultural understanding. That’s growth, and it gives students a lot of joy,” she says. “That stays with them for life, in whatever profession they enter.”

Now, during the 40th anniversary year of the study-abroad program she helped develop, Jarvis is helping to unlock those life-changing experiences for current and future students. The retired senior lecturer is sparking a scholarship to help fund study abroad in Málaga for students with financial need, and she’s calling on the greater Dickinson community to help bring it to life.

Opening new worlds

Jarvis’ own global education took root in her childhood home, in Chicago. Her father, a Methodist minister, often invited international visitors to tea, and she loved learning about life in faraway countries. After spending three weeks at the United Nations in NYC—a prize for winning the UN Pilgrimage for Youth national essay contest—she began to envision a global career.

Jarvis took her first Spanish class at DePauw University, and it was love at first listen. She went on to become a high-school and college Spanish teacher, earning her graduate degree at the University of Missouri. Moving to Carlisle in 1969, she taught at Gettysburg College before leading her first Dickinson class in 1972. Jarvis joined Dickinson's Spanish department full-time in 1981.

While she taught all levels of Spanish language courses, the intro classes were her favorites. “Students come in knowing nothing, but by the end of the semester, they’re communicating in the present, the past and the future. That opens a whole new world to them,” she says.

Birth of the Málaga program

In the mid-1980s, Dickinson received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to expand its study-abroad programming. Jarvis, a co-writer of the grant proposal, traveled to Málaga to help lay the groundwork for a forthcoming study-abroad program in Spain. It was her very first trip to the city famously described as the “ciudad de paraíso," but it was far from her last. Across her 38 years with Dickinson, Jarvis directed a total of 14 study-abroad programs, eight of which were full-year immersions.

DIckinson students studying in Málaga took courses in Spanish and committed to speaking the language as much as possible, accelerating language learning. Homestays immersed them in Spanish daily life, while academic excursions and community deepened their cultural understanding and bolstered their independence.

To deepen the experience, Jarvis introduced internship opportunities to the Málaga program in 1990, well before study-abroad internships caught on at Dickinson and elsewhere. Students worked with partnering organizations to conduct original research, gain professional skills and contacts and deepen their sense of community belonging. She developed a 300-level Cross Cultural Communication course, which she taught in both Carlisle and Málaga, and a Spanish for Business Professions class for international business & management majors. Both courses were designed to give students an edge in a multicultural, multilingual economy by connecting language and cultural learning with work across a spectrum of fields.

The longtime educator also went above and beyond in less formal ways. Memorable study-abroad moments include a Thanksgiving dinner for three dozen guests in her small Málaga apartment. Jarvis also hosted a middle-of-night Super Bowl party for a student whose home city made the championship, and who wanted to watch the game with fellow Dickinsonians. Jarvis, ever the cultural conduit, provided tapas for the occasion. Back on campus, Jarvis' students attended flamenco performances, exhibitions and film screenings.

Jarvis brought one of Málaga’s artistic luminaries—her friend, the actor Antonio Banderas, revered in his home city alongside fellow native Pablo Picasso—to Dickinson in 2000, to accept an honorary doctor of arts degree. Eight years later, Banderas returned to Carlisle to screen his directorial debut. The U.S. film premiere was hosted by Dickinson at the Carlisle Theatre, and a Q&A followed, offering students a chance to interact with Banderas and with the film's screenwriter, Antonio Soler.

The legacy deepens

Dividing her retirement years between the U.S. and Spain, Jarvis looks forward to seeing Dickinson’s study-abroad programs continue to grow, just like the students who will take part in them. “If I can help even one student experience that, I want to do it,” she says. “But the more students who can cross those linguistic and cultural borders, the better.”

Jarvis’ commitment of a $50,000 matching gift to the Grace Laury Jarvis Málaga Scholarship represents half the full amount needed to make study abroad more accessible to current and future students. She’s optimistic that fellow Dickinsonians will contribute a combined $50,000 to unlock her gift. Every gift toward that total will also count toward Dickinson’s 600 for 60 Campaign for Study Abroad at Dickinson.

To help spread the word, Jarvis is reaching out to Málaga program alumni in advance of Dickinson’s anniversary celebration in Spain.

“Decades after they’ve studied abroad, so many alumni tell me they continue to view their experience as life changing,” Jarvis marvels. “I’m hoping others will join me in supporting the scholarship, so we can make an even greater impact in the years to come.”

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Published March 16, 2026