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Exploring the World
Study Abroad Thriving as Faculty Take the Lead
By Lori Gilbert
Maximo Madrigal never considered Study Abroad until a member of his School of Nursing cohort, Charlene Evangelista, implored her classmates to join her on lecturer Esther Harris’s annual trip to Ecuador to satisfy the program’s transcultural class. He decided to join her.
“I thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and I needed to take advantage of it,” said Madrigal, who grew up in Modesto and graduated from Gregori High School.
Participation in Study Abroad has increased since the COVID shutdown according to Director of Study Abroad Brittany Fentress. The number has risen from 35 to 50. Part of the interest, she said, is students wanting to experience all they can after missing activities during the shutdown. Part of it is an increase in faculty-led programs.
One such program had prompted her to make her first venture out of the country as a student at Murray State near her Kentucky home.
“I took a World Civ class, and the teacher was taking a group to China,” Fentress said.
She worked three jobs to pay for it and spent five weeks after her sophomore year on a historical visit to China.
A year later she went to Spain, which contributed six units to her Spanish minor, and then returned to China on a scholarship for two weeks.
Those trips left her wondering, “Where can I go next?”
She spent two years teaching English in Korea, a country that allowed her to bring her cat, Greta Garbo — a nod to Fentress’s love of old movies — then earned a master’s degree in England at the University of York and landed a job in international studies at Murray State.
Fentress came to Stan State nine years ago and has been encouraging students to consider Study Abroad since. Whether a short-term faculty-led trip, a semester in a new country — Spain and Korea are most popular — or a year-long program, Fentress is a proponent of them all because of her own experiences.
“It took my education to the next
level because I realized how little I knew,” Fentress said. “Seeing the impact these historical events had on modern society was so impactful, it became a desire to learn more and see more and do more and be better, and I know it’s a cliché, but be a citizen of the world.”
Now she encourages students to become citizens of the world.
Madrigal’s three weeks in Ecuador visiting five hospitals and seeing traditional methods, including birthing from a standing position, were equally impactful.
I thought it was a once-ina-lifetime thing, and I needed to take advantage of it.
- Maximo Madrigal
A Journey Abroad Through Darkness and Light
Criminal Justice Associate Professor Sebastián Sclofsky hopes his first faculty-led trip from Stan State, planned for this summer, will have an equally profound impact.
The two-week trip, from June 3-17 entitled “From Darkness to Light,” explores Holocaust history in Germany and Poland and offers a unit of credit for students. It is open to anyone from the campus or the public.
Sclofsky knows, however, that the cost could be a burden for interested students and is hoping to gather additional financial support to provide them with the experience. He is seeking support through grant funding and connections in the community. Anyone who would like to support this educational Study Abroad opportunity for students can make a contribution on the program’s website.
A gift of any amount will go directly to making this a once-ina-lifetime experience for students — $50 can provide pay for a week of transportation during the trip, $150 will cover the cost of a passport and $1,000 can provide airfare for a student.
Why should students and community members take the trip? Sclofsky says it’s a universal topic that asks us to reflect on our humanity.
“It needs to be studied, understood and analyzed,” he said. “This trip needs to be experienced as part of forming or educating individuals toward a more tolerant and democratic society. It doesn’t matter what your major is. There are elements that touch every life. This is a universal thing. This is about humanity.”
Sclofsky spent a large portion of his fall sabbatical planning the trip, traveling to Berlin and Poland and walking six to seven hours a day to map the places he wanted to include. He’s led trips to Poland many times, but this is the first two-week trip, the first with mostly non-Jews and the first for the University.
It will include not just concentration camp visits but also historic looks at the thriving Jewish life that existed in Berlin and Poland before the war.
“One of the things I’m trying to do is to raise questions and have discussions on what are the lessons to learn from this huge historical event,” Sclofsky said.
He’s still uncertain how his students will respond knowing that the experience will ask a lot of them physically and mentally.
“I hope they have a positive experience, despite the topic,” Sclofsky said. “I’m excited about it because of the conversations and the dialogues it generally sparks. It’s learning, it’s listening to the stories and having those conversations on the ground. It’s a tough trip. It’s tough physically. It’s a lot of walking.
“It’s also tough emotionally, but I’m convinced it’s going to be impactful for our students.”
The subject is important to Sclofsky, whose Jewish grandparents immigrated to South America from Germany and Poland.
He grew up around Holocaust survivors in his native Uruguay. His father, a human rights attorney and leader of Uruguay’s Jewish community, worked to find Nazis hiding in South America and was on the Claims Commission seeking to force Swiss banks to return money to Jewish Holocaust victims.
“This theme was always surrounding me,” said Sclofsky, who earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Studying in Israel, he led tours of Poland for South American college students and recent high school graduates for five years until he came to the U.S. in 2011 to begin a Ph.D. program in political science at the University of Florida.
“The late historian, Yehuda Bauer (researcher at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem), said the Holocaust can be a warning or can be a precedent,” Sclofsky said. “I find it extremely important, not only from my Jewish history, but from a universal perspective, that it’s fundamental to learn about the Holocaust, particularly with the emphasis of transforming its lessons into a warning. I raise the questions of how ordinary people became mass murderers. How some few became rescuers. How the vast majority became bystanders.”
Now he returns for a longer, expanded journey that is about more than teaching the Holocaust.
“I would like to ignite a spark of deeper conversation coming from the students for the need of thinking about the world, of learning more about the world, of transforming Stan State into a more meaningful place,” Sclofsky said. “They need to know the world is much larger than where we live. I want to set the tone for this program to continue and more programs of this type. I want to convince our administration to invest in our students and these types of experiences.”
Sclofsky hopes administrators will help fund student participation, take the trip themselves and come to understand his perspective as a professor, which is that “the biggest challenge of this University is to develop an informed public.”
He’d also like to set an example for other faculty to create Study Abroad trips for students. Monumental work may go into it, Sclofsky admits, but Stan State students are worth the effort.
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For more information about the From Darkness to Light trip to Germany, email Associate Professor Sebastián Sclofsky at jsclofsky@csustan.edu
