May is that nebulous month caught in between spring and summer, when college students pack up their belongings and head home to work their summer jobs, spend time with family and friends they haven’t seen during the school year, or take a break before they pick up the books once again for summer classes. But May at Andrews is much more than just a transitional month. Hundreds of students from departments all over campus pack their suitcases, put on their adventure shoes, and hop on planes to destinations all over the world. Because at Andrews, May is study-tour season.

Study tours are an Andrews tradition and in many ways give students the opportunity to "Seek Knowledge; Affirm Faith; and Change the World."

“We’re an international campus; it only makes sense,” says assistant professor of digital media and photography Sharon Prest, about the reasoning behind study tours. Sharon is coordinating the photography and design tour to India this May. From May 10–30, students will learn about culture, design, and photography while traveling across northern India. Students can earn up to six credits while taking classes such as Travel Photography, Color Photography II, Topics in Documentary Photography, Visual Advocacy, and Book Design.

While the photography department has gone on tours the past several years to places such as New Zealand, Tanzania, Kenya, and Ecuador, this will be the first time design students will have the opportunity to accompany them. Led by assistant professor of art Robert Mason, students will not only snap pictures, but study Indian culture and society, and look at core social issues and ways to use design for social change. Upon return from the trip, design students will take the photographs they’ve shot on the tour and create their own book.

“The students’ skills jump immensely on tours,” Sharon explains. “Every waking moment is dedicated to work.” But the students do more than just hone their photography skills. The influence of travel has a much deeper effect on their lives. “Their cultural awareness and world view expands. Many have gone on to devote a year or two to mission work, wanting to give back.”

But the students traveling in May won’t have to wait to give back. Working with Maranatha, the group will dedicate a day to paint the Fendell Seventh-day Adventist Church in Shimla, India. Before going on the trip, they will raise funds to help buy supplies.

The photo and design students won’t be the only ones traveling this May, or the only ones planning to give back. From May 8–25, students will visit ancient China and Tibet, studying their rich culture and history.

Led by Jane Sabes, associate professor of political science, students will have the opportunity to walk along the Great Wall, float down the Three Rivers Gorge, and stand in Tiananmen Square, learning about history, religion, and politics, as well as experience and discuss contemporary culture and life, education, and the environment.

“Consider the world a global classroom,” Jane explains. “If students learn from surrounding themselves with a new culture by walking the streets, observing the architecture, speaking with local businessmen, tasting native foods, etc., … then I’m hoping that this practice of observation while ‘walking the streets’ will become a life habit for learning, not just when enrolled in classes or on a university campus. New sights and sounds and shared experiences with locals will create warm hearts toward citizens in our world-community.”

Again, students will not just be soaking in knowledge and experience. The group will be delivering quilts, handmade by women in the St. Joseph (Michigan) Seventh-day Adventist Church, to children in Chinese orphanages. A service component is worked into each tour that Jane participates in. On trips to Cuba in 2002 and 2003, students delivered Bibles to rural Adventist churches and clothing and medicine to Seminary students. On their 2004 trip to Fiji and Australia, students helped rebuild the Vatuvonu Seventh-day Adventist Church School which had been damaged in a severe hurricane. “Mission is the undergirding, the very heartbeat of all we teach at Andrews University,” states Jane.

This idea of service-learning is evidenced each year in the Division of Architecture’s annual trip to Bolivia. Since 1998, the Division has held the annual Birdhouse Competition and Benefit Auction to raise money for the Center for the Recuperation of Children at Risk of Drug Addiction (CERENID) in Bolivia. CERENID was started in 1994 in conjunction with the Division of Architecture and the Adventist Development & Relief Agency International and currently is home to over 40 street children. Each year, Andrews architecture students travel to Bolivia to continue their work on the facilities.

Tours have been a long-standing tradition for archaeology students at Andrews. Each summer, the Horn Archaeological Museum sponsors digs in Jordan, giving students the opportunity to earn up to 12 credits while spending six weeks digging up ancient history. “It’s how I started my career; the inspiration of that has been transforming for me,” states Øystein LaBianca, associate director of the Institute of Archaeology and professor of anthropology, as he recounts the first tour he took as a student with the late archaeologist and Seminary professor Siegfried Horn back in 1969. Øystein has led students on tours himself since 1984; this summer marks his 12th trip to Jordan.

“I see the focus of the tours as bridge-building,” explains Øystein. “We’re bridging understanding and helping to build appreciation for other cultures and other ways of being human. It’s important for us as Adventists who have a global mission. We need to have a deep appreciation for other cultures and communities, and tours have been a powerful teaching tool for that. On tours, students have some of their most meaningful and impacting experiences.”

Kristy Witzel, a research assistant at the Horn Institute of Archaeology and a 2005 anthropology graduate, has traveled on two of the Jordan digs: to Tell Hesban in 2004 and Tell Jalul in 2005. “These trips have offered me an irreplaceable education,” says Kristy. “I have learned so much about Middle Eastern culture and about its history, values, and religion. They have also provided me with excellent professional experience, both in archaeology and research.”

Beyond just the rich, hands-on educational experience, students interact with and build relationships with locals. “The highlight of the digs for me is always the Arabic hospitality and the friendships that develop both with the Andrews group and with the local people,” comments Kristy. “Andrews has been working in the Madaba Plains region of Jordan since 1968, and has developed a very special relationship with the villages surrounding Tell Hesban and [Tell] Jalul. Every dig season, about half of the team is made up of students and volunteers, and the other half is made up of local paid workers from the village. Often there are men and boys working at the site that are the sons and grandsons of workers from past seasons.”

“Knowledge has to be your own experience,” says Pedro Navia, chair of the International Language Studies department, a department that conducts at least one tour each summer. This May, Pedro will lead a group of 40 students on a 24-day tour through South America, focusing mainly on Brazil. Designed for Spanish majors or speakers, the tour gives students the opportunity to experience Latin American culture first-hand, while strengthening their language skills.

“Tours are highly important for academic experience and for one’s own knowledge,” Pedro explains. “For example, one can read lots of books on the United States, but you get a more complete picture by being here. Books are important, but so is life experience.”

One aspect of the learning experience for almost all the tours is interacting with other Adventists all over the world. Often incorporated into the trips are visits to sister schools and colleges, performances at churches, or service work. “It’s important that students can see that we belong to a huge church, not just here in the States, but almost everywhere. It may be a different culture, or a different language, but the beliefs are the same,” says Pedro.

“It’s important that our students be able to make connections with other Adventists,” echoes Claudio Gonzales, director of the Andrews University Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra will be taking its first-ever study tour this May, traveling to Austria, Germany, Italy, and France, stopping to perform at many Adventist churches and schools. But beyond the opportunity to perform, the students will experience music history in the streets of Salzburg—the birthplace of Mozart—and see and hear some of the greatest instruments ever made in Cremona, the cradle of violin-making since the 16th century. This trip will be the first music tour that will enable students to earn academic credit.

Seek Knowledge. Affirm Faith. Change the World. At Andrews, it’s something we take literally: our call to purpose, the reason for our existence. Study tours are just one way we put those words into action.

Beverly Stout is the University Relations media relations coordinator.

Sidebar

Italy, Germany, Austria, and France

May 8–21

China and Tibet

May 8–25

Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay

May 8–31

India

May 10–30

Italy and Switzerland

June 8–16

Tall al’Umayri, Jordan

June 28–August 9

Egypt

August 10–24