Students will scatter across different continents during the summer and fall to study abroad in places like Oxford, Germany and, this year, Ghana.
“I think interest is about the same. It kind of fluctuates a little bit and some years we will have more and some less. It’s hard to predict,” said Stephen Shewmaker, executive director for international education.
This year, Ghana will have it’s first official group.
“Ghana is a place students have gone to study in really small groups with professors, but this is the first time we will have a group,” Shewmaker said. “There’s an honors group that will spend two weeks in Oxford, about two weeks in Barcelona and two weeks in Ghana.”
Shewmaker said the trip’s locations seem random, but they are connected by a longitudinal location along the Prime Meridian, deeming the name of the trip, Justice Along the Meridian.
“Many of the students who are going who are in that program have been a part of CitySquare, so that has a strong justice view,” Shewmaker said. “It will be looking strongly at what life is like along the Meridian.”
“We also have experience and connections in all of those places, so that was another reason why it made sense to do that,” he said.
Shewmaker said he and Stephen Johnson traveled to Ghana, Spain and Oxford last summer to plan the trip out.
“I usually make a couple of trips every semester,” he said.
Groups traveling abroad this summer include a history maymester with Ron and Janine Morgan in Oxford and Leipzig, art and design in Oxford and Italy with Kenny Jones and Brandon Young, music and Bible in Leipzig, Germany with Curt Niccum and Susan Teel, psychology in Leipzig, Germany with Scott Perkins, COBA in Oxford with Don Pope and Orneita Burton, communication in Oxford with Carley Dodd, Joe Cardot and Lauren Lemley and English in Oxford with Mikee Deloney.
Also Honors Justice Along the Meridian in Oxford, Barcelona and Ghana with Stephen Johnson, social entrepreneurship in Honduras through Mission Lazarus with Andy Little and Global Healthcare in Montevideo, Uruguay with Lynette Austin and Cynthia Powell.
Ashley Crisp, junior communication disorders major from Dallas, will travel to Montevideo this summer with the Global Healthcare group. Crisp said she has traveled to Europe before, but never to South America.
“I’m excited about the potential hands-on experience, but also just being there,” Crisp said. “I’ve always wanted to travel to South America, so getting to see parts of it will be great. A few good friends will be on the trip too, so that will be great as well. Plus, if I understand correctly, the World Cup will be happening in Brazil during that time, so I imagine that it will be fun to be in a country that loves that.”
Crisp said she is also looking forward to possibly being able to observe speech therapy while in Montevideo.
“I’m not really nervous right now,” she said. “Ask me again in a couple of weeks when the trip gets closer.”
