The ship is the floating campus of Semester at Sea of the Institute of Shipboard Schooling, the place, each semester, over 500 college students spend 4 months overseas in practically a dozen international locations.
It’s each an immersive and a comparative expertise, as members discover the similarities and variations between international locations and cultures inside the intergenerational SAS neighborhood.
Semester at Sea has a storied historical past that started with its maiden voyage in 1963. On previous applications, learners have met heads of state, Nobel Laureates, and different notable figures in politics, academia, and leisure.
Over the previous 60 years and 100 plus voyages, greater than 74,000 voyagers have develop into SAS alumni.
This distinctive neighborhood consists of college college students from throughout the globe who obtain faculty credit score from SAS/ISE tutorial associate Colorado State University. School provide over 70 rigorous tutorial programs and lead in-country discipline lessons and applications.
There are additionally hole yr college students and highschool seniors who’ve sufficient credit to graduate early and examine overseas. And there’s even a cohort of lifelong learners who audit programs and take part in lessons, excursions, and actions, proper alongside the scholars.
They, together with the numerous workers onboard, compose the “staculty,” lots of whom additionally carry their households aboard, together with their younger youngsters, often known as “ship children.”
Every semester, voyagers aged 3 to 87 carry diversified experiences, data, views, languages, and traditions aboard, and are what makes this distinctive neighborhood really dynamic.
Stakeholders as Storytellers
“You’re the storytellers,” professor Kelly Lengthy asserted throughout one in all her World Research lessons. “Each one in all you has a narrative to inform about this journey, about your expertise, and about your lives.”
I had the chance to take heed to the tales of a myriad of voyagers. Whereas every was markedly completely different, there have been a number of overarching themes that emerged, no matter one’s age or position on the ship.
The themes of curiosity, sense of belonging, and a name to motion have been resounding.
When this triad of ideas was additional triangulated with the SAS mannequin, the outcomes have been highly effective – and the potential for change limitless.
College students
In an interview with The PIE, SAS/ISE CEO Scott Marshall mirrored upon this system’s affect on college students as “the optimum kind of expertise that transforms how younger adults see the world – a really deep studying expertise.”
The nuanced lens by which to view was a theme resonated with all the college students on board who spoke with The PIE.
Jenna McMahon, a journalism main at Chico State College, spoke about stereotypes and the way they will propel the divisive dialog within the US about race and ethnicity.
“Having this [SAS] expertise will assist me train others that they will change their mindset. With correct data, they will change the best way they give thought to different folks and locations.”
Julia Carino of Clemson College spoke about assembly a global scholar from an space impacted by battle.
She mentioned their friendship helped her grasp a greater understanding of the struggles of individuals in war-torn nations, in addition to of her personal privilege, and fuelled a need to reconcile the 2.
“Assembly her and with the ability to hear her tales and the way the [war in Ukraine] has affected her are issues which might be removed from me, and I didn’t absolutely perceive. It has actually enlightened me on the American privilege I’ve,” Carino mentioned.
“By way of my time overseas, my thoughts has been opened to the ability of communication”
Hole yr scholar Reagan Driggers spoke concerning the energy of intercultural communication as a method of serving to her join with others.
“Touring the world amongst others who’re additionally passionate and inquisitive about differing cultures, folks, and international locations is sort of particular. By way of my time overseas, my thoughts has been opened to the ability of communication.
“Communication is important to growing, sustaining, and transmitting tradition and will be seen in each verbal and nonverbal methods,” Driggers defined.
Lifelong Learners
Lifelong learner and four-time SAS voyager Becky Hitchcock begins every morning by greeting fellow travellers at breakfast with intention playing cards, for individuals who want to choose a phrase of the day.
These playing cards have develop into a mainstay of the voyage with travellers looking for out Becky to attract their each day card. “They’ve recognized with the playing cards very strongly,” mentioned Becky.
“If you’re on a ship like this, there are such a lot of unknowns. However every morning there was a reference to an individual and a card, and it gave them one thing to stay up for.
“There have been significant and tender tales that emerged from conversations college students shared concerning the phrase on their card. It was very highly effective. It shaped a closeness, even inside an enormous neighborhood.
“Lifelong learners improve the voyage tremendously. When everybody can come collectively in an genuine, real, method, it creates room for creativity, which is important in creating constructive change,” Driggers concluded.
Ship Children
12-year-old Lars Horhager is a ship child, whose mother and father are each SAS professors.
Lars rapidly turned immersed within the shipboard neighborhood. He audits the worldwide research course and mentioned that course, alongside together with his standing afternoon card video games with older college students, are the most effective elements of his day.
Summing up his expertise on program, Lars referenced a quote from his father, “Expectation minus actuality equals happiness”. He mentioned for him this implies folks enter experiences with sure expectations and as soon as they’re positioned within the state of affairs, they’re met with the realities of it. When one can reconcile the 2, he identified, it permits room for pleasure to enter.
“Lifelong learners improve the voyage tremendously”
Lars additionally shared his intention to keep up a correspondence with the scholars he has met and hopes to reconnect with professor Scott Denning.
Lars relished Denning’s slide decks about every nation and mentioned he has stored every deck and appears ahead to revisiting them as soon as he has returned residence, as a method of reflecting upon his journey.
Staculty
Denning’s first SAS voyage started in January 2020 – a historic and short-lived voyage upended by the pandemic. Coming again in 2023, he was immensely grateful for the distinctive alternatives and experiences every voyage introduced.
“[SAS] is a life-changing, transformational expertise,” mentioned Denning. “It’s the most effective academic issues I’ve ever performed in my life.
“We’re all a part of this shared expertise that permits us to type bonds, to belief each other, and to get to know one another as human beings who embark on an enormous journey collectively – and that facilitates a distinct, highly effective degree of instructing and studying that I’ve by no means encountered earlier than.”
In reflecting upon what he’ll take away from the expertise, Denning mentioned he not solely brings again the experiences of being out on the planet.
“Extra importantly, I carry again the certain data of constructing connections with college students and colleagues as folks.”
Reflections upon Disembarkation
Earlier than my very own voyage, one thing I had heard repeatedly about Semester at Sea from alumni, school, and management is that SAS is a welcoming neighborhood in which there’s room for everybody.
“I carry again the certain data of constructing connections with college students”
Having simply arrived on the second to final port on Voyage 131, these on board had lengthy since shaped robust bonds as they travelled from Dubai to Morocco, with seven international locations in between and solely two ports remaining.
But regardless of my late arrival, this neighborhood of staculty, college students, and lifelong learners welcomed me with open arms, minds, and hearts.
They have been curious to find out about my profession in worldwide schooling and about my experiences overseas, and desperate to share tales of their very own journeys.
On the closing lecture of the semester, passing round an enormous globe and a Sharpie, professor Scott Denning, chair of the worldwide research division challenged college students of all ages to signal their identify on the globe.
“As you put together to depart this voyage,” he mentioned, “I ask every of you to pledge to make the world a greater place.”
As voyagers of all ages signed the globe, they mirrored concerning the international locations they visited on the voyage and the recollections they made.
Their pledges have been each these silent and spoken, and plenty of have been overcome by the journey’s deep significance on their life.
Voyagers shared that their response to this name to motion was to rise to the event, and apply the data they co-created collectively on this voyage – the educational, the experiential and the intergenerational – to enact change, encourage others, and assist resolve the world’s most urgent points.
