King's Expands Its International Reach
This summer, King’s students have the opportunities to travel to Turkey, East Africa, China or Israel with the school and apply what they are learning in the classroom to international arenas. International Ventures held two seminars this past week where students were able to hear from the Global Engagement Coordinator and 2011 grad Elijah McCready and other students who have been part of the trips in previous years.
Each trip focuses on helping students integrate with top universities and institutions at the selected locations. Members of faculty and alumni accompany students as they are able to work with people of influence.
McCready says that International Ventures “is very different from study abroad because of its focus on engagement.”
McCready emphasizes that the program is focused on culturally relevant issues and current hot button topics in each nation. Students are able to connect with the people who are involved with making important decisions and look at the world from other informed perspectives.
While each trip is open to all majors, they each have a specific focus.
The trip to Turkey is an explicitly business-focused trip. Professor Brenburg and King's alumnus, Anthony Randazzo, will be going on the trip.
The trip to East Africa integrates all three majors. Alumnus Ted Pantone will be traveling with students and possibly Resident Life Director, Katrina Blank. Students will be able to focus on issues such as poverty, sexuality and development in the nation.
Students who go on the trip to China will have the unique opportunity to help craft a worldview curriculum for one of the universities. Director of speech and debate, Katie Teubl, will be working with the students as they develop the curriculum and on the trip itself.
The trip to Israel will be working with an NGO and looking at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and meeting with members of government and the military to gather insight. Professor Rabinowitz and McCready will be heading up the Israel trip.
The applications for the trips will be released on the King's website this week and students have until November 19th to complete them. The trips are limited to 15 students and, once put on a team, students will spend the spring semester studying the culture and conflicts in their country.
Elijah says that the King’s program allows students to have classroom time with their teams to prepare for culture-shock, study the history of the country in which they will be working and listen to guest speakers.
There are also two pilot trips still in the works to India and Central Asia, which will both require similar preparation to that of the four others.
The students at the seminars expressed great interest in all of the trips. Many signed up on the interest pages, and judging by the amount of students who attended, one can expect that there will be no shortage of students wanting to participate.
Students can stay up to date on the trips by checking out the International Ventures Facebook page.