Hello everyone! My name is Carson Cronk and I am majoring in Management Information Systems with a certificate in Global Leadership. Through my global theme of technology and society, I want to help people around the world adapt to a world of advanced technology and innovation. Through my Beyond the Classroom Experience, I was able to expand my horizon through an internship with a technology company.

This summer, I had the incredible opportunity to work at ATG, a tech company founded in Missoula. Summer in Montana is my favorite time of the year. For this reason, I couldn’t resist the urge to stay in Missoula and gain experiences that will help me kickstart my career. ATG (which is owned by Cognizant) was an incredible fit because they are a technology consulting company that has an expansive array of clients and services across the world, yet they have deep roots in the local community. These are both values that I share, and I was thrilled to spend twelve weeks of my summer learning more about ATG, the technology industry, and the art of consulting.

Over the course of the summer, six other interns and myself worked through multiple tech advisory projects and expanded our networks through mentoring from the leading minds at the company. I was also able to work with a local non-profit in a systems integration project. As the project manager, I lead our team through each stage of the project and made sure we delivered a solution that advanced their mission. All of these experiences were an incredible privilege and I learned so much about being a leader. I gained invaluable experience in business consulting and the future of technology, two skills that directly align with my personal aspirations and my global theme. I am so grateful for this opportunity and can’t wait to see what the future holds!

Hello! My name is Samantha Boutte and for my Beyond the Classroom experience I went to Valencia Spain. While there I had an internship at an immigration nonprofit that fit in with my theme of inequality and justice as well as my major as a social worker. I gained so much experience but also got to view the nonprofit immigration sector from another perspective that I think will be valuable to share with organizations here in the US.

I was also able to explore places around Valencia. These excursions included seeing castles, beaches, small towns, museums, and so much more. During these excursions I met so many new people and learned so much from them and their home country. I was also able to visit Portugal while abroad! Overall this experience has greatly impacted me. I got to experience a new culture, new food, new people and saw how their culture affected their politics in regards to immigration and their approach to it.

Given my theme of culture and politics, as well as my major Political Science and my major’s concentration of international relations, I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity GLI offered me by visiting a different country on the other side of the world. For me this was Spain as I had been studying Spanish independently for the previous 2 years, and wanted to visit a European nation the same year that it would be having elections shortly before its government would (temporarily by rotation) begin its tenure as the leading nation in the European Union. 

However, despite my goals of making connections and learning a new language on this exchange I believe the biggest thing I learned about during this semester was myself. Maybe it was just part of growing up, but it’s true when I say that the biggest effects I felt were indirect. Living in another culture is not without its valid apprehensions- finances, grades, phrases, imposter syndrome, and there were times I wished I was back home instead of abroad. It isn’t for the faint-hearted as there are always times you feel like you put in all this work for nothing. Of course there will be things you will wish you could do over and over again. But in retrospect it’s also true I couldn’t have learned everything I had nor made the friends I did, if it wasn’t for those negative parts. As a result, I have a fresh perspective on life that gave me more confidence, not necessarily to become a leader, but an informed citizen who doesn’t give in. Your story belongs to you, that comes with accepting the good with the bad, but regardless of how it turns out you must remember that you’re capable of resilience.

This past spring, I had the privilege of studying abroad for an entire semester in Buenos Aires, Argentina, at the Universidad del Salvador, taking a total of 20 credits for the semester. My Franke GLI global theme was inequality and human rights, which was a very central part of my experience abroad. Though Argentina is a beautiful country with a rich culture, it is also a country that as of recent is riddled by poverty and injustice. During my exchange semester, I bolstered my Spanish in a really meaningful way, ate some really incredible food, and met some amazing people, but at the center of it all, I gained a much better perspective on the implications of global inequality through the physical manifestations of that inequality that I saw firsthand.

The fact of the matter is that currently, Argentina is going through significant economic hardship. In the six months I was there, inflation went up just under 100%. A month after my departure, it was up around 150%. While it was nice for me being able to eat out at one of the many incredible restaurants in the downtown area of Buenos Aires for around $3-5 USD, and being able to literally change the course of someone’s day better by offering them a couple bucks, it was really difficult to see the intense poverty the vast majority of the country was, and still is confronted with. Though the cycle of living paycheck to paycheck is something that is very common in the United States, it seemed that even more of the people of Argentina were living in that vicious cycle, and that those at the bottom economically were much deeper in poverty than those in the same position in America. 

Argentina is also in a very tricky position politically, with a Trump-style right-wing strongman, Javier Milei, recently taking the highest percentage of the vote in the country’s recent presidential primary elections. The presidential candidate has gone on record as wanting to cut essentially all social services, from public healthcare to public education, and is an unabashed denier of the genocide committed by a right-wing dictatorship some years earlier in the country’s history. Several friends of mine have expressed that they are genuinely considering fleeing the country should he actually win the presidency. In my time abroad, however, it became clear to me that Milei’s recent primary victory is in part the result of decades of American interference. According to the New York Times (https://archive.nytimes.com/lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/exposing-the-legacy-of-operation-condor/), the previously mentioned dictatorship that executed as many as 30,000 Argentinians was a direct result of the infamous Operation Condor, a United States-backed campaign of political repression and state terrorism that involved CIA-backed coups and the assassination of prominent leftist leaders all throughout South and Central America. However, despite my country being one of the driving factors behind one of the greatest traumas within Argentinian history, all of the people I met were exceedingly magnanimous with me, because I understood the historical relationship between my country and theirs. I think this was a relief for many people who have suffered such a deep cultural trauma, and are accustomed to Americans who don’t know or conveniently overlook that history, like during our required course, Successful Education Abroad (EDU 212), where we discussed the possibility of people attacking us for being American without ever examining what those attacks might be rooted in.

Despite my qualms, and the difficulty of seeing so much suffering, much of which is the direct responsibility of my own country’s actions, I am extremely grateful for the experience that I had in Buenos Aires. I am grateful for the perspective I gained not only on inequality and human rights, but also culture. In the United States, in my humble opinion, we lack any sort of culture or cultural practice that isn’t somehow rooted in domination, or simply the appropriation of other cultures. Hamburgers are from Hamburg, Germany, Thanksgiving is simultaneously a widely celebrated American holiday and a day of mourning for many indigenous peoples, and the Fourth of July is the celebration of a country that exists entirely on stolen indigenous land. So, keeping that in mind, it was a huge relief for me to live in a country with an actual coherent culture that drew people together. I enjoyed getting to try and help prepare milanesa, dulce de leche, choripan, and several other traditional Argentinian foods, including enjoying a traditional Argentinian asado on their respective independence day, and eating gnocchis every 29th of the month. Furthermore, it was really something special to be able to show up to any bus stop knowing that if I didn’t have funds on my card, someone would pay for me without hesitation, and then refuse when I offered to pay them back in cash. It felt like a different world knowing that if I wanted, I could talk to a random stranger on the street, and the odds are they would actually stop and chat with me, and I might even make a friend out of it. I ended up sleeping in the house of a friend I had made that way the night I lost my apartment keys, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. 

Seeing that culture of care for people that you barely know, even despite the right-wing uptick and intense political division in the country is something that I am still mourning losing, but also something that I hope to bring back. Everyday I work to be a more caring and kind person, even to those that I do not know. I work with Missoula Community Free Fridges to feed the most vulnerable in our city, I try and really listen to everyone I talk to, and I do everything I can to live my life in a way that is aligned with not only kindness, but also a better world for those who struggle every day, like many of the friends I made in Argentina. There are many things that I brought out of my study abroad experience, but a passion for equality, and kindness, even towards strangers are some of the biggest things I took away from my six months in the incomparable city of Buenos Aires.

Hello, my name is Jocelyn Stansberry and I am a wildlife biology student at the University of Montana. For my Beyond the Classroom Experience, I conducted research in Olympic National Park. The work was divided between intertidal coastal surveys and high alpine lake surveys. For each area, several different surveys were conducted to add to a long-term data set in order to best understand the impacts of our changing climate. Most of my work consisted of backpacking out to different locations to conduct the harder to reach survey sites. I composed a video of my time hiking, backpacking, and surveying for the coastal time period of my research, which can be found on my Instagram @jocelyn_s__. I have also included photos of the hikes out to our high alpine lakes. In these images, I am standing on a few of the many unmarked ridges my crew and I traveled on to reach the mountain lakes, or in the lakes that we surveyed for fish, frogs, and various physical science elements.

This Beyond the Classroom Experience provided me the opportunity to work in my dream position, collecting climate data for the National Park Service. My day-to-day experience varied with every week but ensured that I was constantly in the field, whether that meant I was wading through tidepools, digging dragonfly larvae out of mud, or backpacking miles into the mountains. During my time at Olympic, I learned vast amounts of knowledge about coastal ecology and limnology from the park’s lead marine biologist which furthered my connections for future positions in the park service. I believe understanding how the ocean is impacted by climate will be one of the most crucial science fields in our contemporary climate condition. My time in the Olympics has only emphasized these ideas and I am beyond grateful for the opportunity to begin my scientific journey with the assistance of the GLI program

Hello! I’m Parker Mickel, and for my Beyond the Classroom experience, I spent my spring semester in Cork, Ireland at UCC.

As a history major, I was drawn to Ireland because of its rich culture and history; suitably, my courses focused on history, largely playing into the theme of culture and politics. I took a course titled U.S. Collective Memory; my final paper for it focused on Hollywood’s impact on American collective memory regarding the Vietnam War, and how that impacts votership. I also took a course titled Censorship in 20^th Century Ireland, which covered censorship since Ireland’s independence. The erasure of culture (targeting primarily books but also heavily impacting film) not only was informed by the very Catholicized government but was executed to uphold classism.

I was lucky enough to have some adventures outside of Cork as well. In May, I went to the small town of Cobh. It holds prominence in Irish history as the port that the majority of emigrants had left through. The Titanic’s last port of call, the origin of the first immigrant through Ellis Island, and the setting of many heart-breaking goodbyes, commemorated by their heritage museum.

I had also journeyed to Blarney Castle multiple times during the semester. The castle sits on large, stunning grounds, and getting to explore the scenery and iconic piece of Ireland brought me a new feeling of connection to the country I was studying in.

All in all, this experience has been an absolute highlight of my college experience so far. Getting to experience a new culture, and seeing how that shapes their politics and their interpretation of U.S. and global politics, was absolutely fantastic. Putting it into perspective through the lived experiences of the people I talked to, the places around me, and the courses I took allowed me to grow as a person and develop my understanding of the world, and I would heartily recommend studying in Cork, Ireland to anyone.

For my study abroad experience I was able to go to Hamilton, New Zealand, a town near the west coast on Te Ika-a-Māui, the North Island. I have always wanted to visit New Zealand, and since I am studying Environmental Science, I thought it would be a great opportunity to see how another country with a lot of biodiversity and many different natural ecosystems approaches that subject. Additionally, I took an introductory class on Māori world view and ways of living, the Indigenous people who originally came to Aotearoa. This knowledge really changed the way I looked at the community around me and taught me unforgettable knowledge. The region I was living and studying in (the Waikato) contains a large proportion of the Māori population in New Zealand, so having a bit more knowledge of their customs and beliefs was very important to me. Some of the friends I made were also Māori, and they taught my other friend and I things that we would never have learned otherwise: raranga (weaving with the harakeke plant), waiata (songs) and introduced us to their culture in a much less academic way. 

A surprising discovery to me was that much of New Zealand’s native forest has been cleared away over time, for agriculture, for grazing, housing, etc. While it was still a beautiful place and had accessible protected land nearby, I expected a much more sustainable approach to have been taken, or at least more progress in resolving the harmful choices made to both the land and Māori people. There were many things that were very different than I expected, as with most traveling I now know. There was also a lot that I learned and loved about the country. For instance, there are no native mammals except the endangered bat species on the north island. Every ecological role was filled previously by birds; instead of having typical vegetation grazers like deer, they had huge flightless birds called moa. They also had giant eagles, called Haast’s eagles, weighing up to 33 lbs that filled a predator role. Because of its unique situation as an island New Zealand was full of incredibly interesting plant life as well. One of my favorites were the giant fern trees that made you feel like you were in Jurassic Park. 

I met some of the most amazing people who came from all over the world and had the opportunity to take a road trip with some of them down from Hamilton to Queenstown in the South Island. The locals I made friends with were all so kind, welcoming, and generally loving people, some of whom I would easily move back for. After traveling around the country a bit, I managed to visit and travel through Indonesia with a friend, which was the first time I’ve done any kind of unplanned, unprompted traveling. It wasn’t all a perfect experience, but looking back I can see clearly how much I’ve changed in such a little time and am so grateful to have gone to this wonderful place, had the experiences I did and meet people that I love and still talk to now.

Hi, my name is Gabby Adams! 

For my Out of Classroom Experience with GLI I had the amazing opportunity to take a course with the Wild Rockies Field Institute. I spent all of April and May backpacking and kayaking through southern Utah, while simultaneously taking classes focused on areas such as natural history, environmental systems, and political and social issues in the Colorado Plateau region. Along with four other women and two instructors, I spent the first two weeks of the course in Horseshoe Canyon. It was still early in spring so there were some freezing nights and cold windy days that quickly woke me up to the fact that a desert does not equate to endless sun and sweltering heat. We spent 13 days backpacking the length of the canyon while learning about plants, adaptations, and natural history in relation to the region. I realized throughout this early stage in the course how truly valuable it is to be living what you are learning. For instance we learned about the history of cattle and grazing in the region, then continuously saw firsthand some of the effects it has had on these canyons. And policies I learned about in past courses that I thought went right over my head suddenly made perfect sense while I laid under the stars in  Bears Ears National Monument. 

After a restock we spent the next 12 days in Dirty Devil Canyon. One which I think I can say challenged all of us. Navigating endless river crossings in our socks and chacos and sinking in quicksand made for some very long days. But to be at the bottom of the canyon with the layers of geology to teach us about the landscape’s long history was priceless. Throughout these two months I gained not only valuable educational knowledge and practical outdoor skills, but also a deeply rooted love and gratitude for the Colorado Plateau Region. Living outdoors for this amount of time away from my phone and even my support system was difficult in some ways, but it really opened up my mind to new perspectives and allowed me to love learning again. I would do this course again in an instant if I could, and I wholeheartedly recommend a Wild Rockies Field Institute course to anyone who loves the outdoors.

Hi everybody!

My name is Danielle Heltsley. I spent my spring 2023 semester in Barcelona, Spain. At the time, I was a junior continuing to purse my major in International Business and MIS. In the five month I spent abroad, time few by extremely quick leaving me with a jumbled memory of too many great experiences to recount. To start off, Barcelona is a vibrant city filled with culture and wonderful people. I had the chance to attend local holidays, travel around Europe and expand on my limited skill of speaking Spanish.

My time abroad was truly an unforgettable experience that has helped shape me into the person I am today. I learned a great deal about the European education system and have seen first-hand how different they are. The friends I made while abroad shared in these experiences and will be in my life forever. Together we went from being soaked in Greece’s heave rain to being toasty warm in the Italian sun then being overcome by the beauty of the Austrian architecture.

Finally, I would say that I am better off having had this wonderful life changing experience. Friends and family visited during these five months and firsthand saw me begin to change for the better. Life was pleasant, exciting, and exactly want I needed to kick of my senior year. I am forever grateful to all the people I met during this excursion and all the support I received from my people back at home.