Kyle Kellams: Traveling abroad can provide many benefits. Sevin Gallo, a history professor and director of global learning at Northwest Arkansas Community College, says international travel is an extraordinary opportunity for education no matter who you are.
Earlier this month on our program, we shared a brief conversation with her about specific travel opportunities at NWACC. That conversation also touched on the broad advantages of international travel.
Sevin Gallo: One of the things that I'm talking about with students and their parents and the community a lot lately is the difference that studying abroad can make for people once they come home. In regards to salary differentials across every sector of the economy, every industry, people who study abroad, the retention rates in every job are higher. They make more money. CEOs, hiring managers are always saying they like to hire people who have international experience studying abroad as a way, of course, to get that or interning abroad and all of the things that you experience and learn, the skills that you build.
Yes, you're learning destination specific or program theme specific knowledge, but the way you have to adapt to difference and engage with people who are different than you, you can put yourselves in the shoes of, you know, our neighbors in northwest Arkansas who are coming here from all over the world that are also similarly engaging with difference, whether they're from California or Calcutta or wherever, right?
Our study abroad students have that experience, too, so they're more adaptable. They have this multicultural knowledge that is so transferable in every single field. So, you know, of course our community gets richer and we all learn from people who come from around the world and work with us and live with us, our neighbors. But helping bring students go abroad and have that international experience and then bring that back home really is just a path to social mobility for them and then for our wider community. It absolutely helps more people have the skills to thrive and make our communities better too.
Kellams: Well, you know, in early December, President Barack Obama was at the Heartland Institute, and he mentioned that he really thought his desire to be more involved in American society came from when he lived abroad and what he saw abroad. There's a pretty good endorsement for learning abroad.
Gallo: Well, I was like number 35,000 in line to get those tickets, so I didn't have the opportunity to hear that firsthand. Like so many other thousands of people who live in northwest Arkansas, I assume. So I will take your word for it, though, Kyle, because I have read and heard him speak about his international experience and how that shaped him. I think personally that is very, very true for me. I mean, and so I studied abroad and in Turkey, and for me, you're just not the same person for the rest of your life. You're not the same person engaging with difference and having to adapt and figure it out. That is so, so powerful.
So you come back with those skills and then you never want to stop learning. You never want to stop going. You bring that into the rest of your life, your everyday life. And I always like to say, I mean, study abroad, it fosters broad mindedness. Um, and I am really in the business of trying to make people's worlds bigger.
I don't think that there's anything more exciting or or important that I could do than help people make their worlds bigger. Because when you go abroad you're going to come back and you're going to think of things that you wouldn't have thought of before. And it just happens for all of us that have the opportunity to have international experience.
And I want to say that part, the opportunity to have international experience, that's something that we're really conscientious about at a community college. Um, like I said before, community college is a path towards upward mobility and inclusion for so many people in the U.S. And then knowing that an international experience, the opportunity to study abroad can make such a significant impact career wise and then community wise for people. So trying to make this available to the widest number of people as possible is a huge part of our mission at NWACC.
Kellams: This is such a great way to do it because I think for many 18 or 19 year olds, maybe you came from rural Arkansas or a rural community, maybe you're a first-generation college student. Traveling abroad can sound intimidating. I might be going to a place where I don't speak the language. I don't know the culture. I don't want to do something that is insulting. So if you go with an expert or you go with others, that's a nice way to dip your toe into international travel.
Gallo: Yeah. Thank you, Kyle. And I will say that maybe, maybe half of the students who have traveled abroad with me since 2015 — I think that was the first year I took students — had never been on an airplane before. So not never been across the Atlantic or across the Pacific, but have never been on an airplane before.
And so we go through everything. We have all of the fears. I mean, I've had students show up at XNA and not want to get out of the car because they've decided, you know, here we are at the last minute and I don't know if I can do it. But then helping them, talking them through that initial anxiety and getting them first in the doors of the airport and then on the airplane.
And then now that person has gone, so she studied abroad in Greece. Since then, she's gone to Turkey, she's gone to Europe. We've had study abroad students who have made friends. They didn't know each other before. And it was all of their first times, first time traveling abroad, some of them first time on an airplane again, that have then got together and gone to Thailand together afterwards. It builds so much confidence
Kellams: You think to that young person, if they hadn't had the opportunity through this, they may have never traveled abroad.
Gallo: Absolutely.
Kellams: That's pretty impactful.
Gallo: Oh, I hope so. And I think so. I mean, I absolutely think that it is. Um, this is, I feel like this is from my own experience. I grew up in rural Ohio, a town of 2,500 people. Um, I went to college, I didn't know what a syllabus was on my first day. I'd never heard that word before. I was somehow, I mean, I was a really good student. I got there and I was, you know, always loved learning. But somehow that was a really important word for a university experience that I did not know, and I didn't have a phone in my pocket to find out. I had to wait like a full day to really figure out what that was.
Kellams: But of course, you're in the class nodding like you do know.
Gallo: Absolutely. I was really good at faking it until I figured it out. So having that personal experience of being in the shoes of so many of our students, um, it inspires me and it makes me want to work really, really hard, um, to help them be able to experience all of the incredible things that they can while they are abroad. So making the programs as powerful and as great as they possibly can be, but then also doing everything I can to open the doors for more and more students to go.
And community college. This is the time or undergraduate, when it is the time to go and make your world as big as possible, as soon as you can. You know, and then I also say, for people in the community who are retired and maybe you, maybe you traveled a lot for work, maybe you went to China for Walmart all the time, but you never went to Greece, or you never went to Italy.
Kellams: Or you were going from the hotel room to the conference center or the business meeting. And there's so much more culture that evaded you.
Gallo: Yes, absolutely. And so the opportunity to maybe learn a new skill like digital photography with an expert guide in Italy. I mean, why not?
Kellams: Sevin Gallo, a history professor and director of global learning at Northwest Arkansas Community College. Our recent discussion about specific NWACC travel programs for students and community members that previously aired on our show this month can be found here.
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