Traveling leads to learning
I was delighted to see the news Monday that IU Bloomington ranked fifth nationally for the number of students studying abroad in the 2024 Open Doors Report on International Education Exchange.
Nearly 3,000 IUB students studied abroad in 2022-23. That impressive total includes students who traveled to England, France, and the Czech Republic with Media School courses.
Honestly, I didn’t travel much until I was in my late 20s — as a child, my family never took vacations aside from trips from our home in New Haven, Connecticut, to visit my cousins in Philadelphia. My father would rather sit in our house and watch movies (I told you about his very large movie collection in my last post) set in Paris, Casablanca, and the rest of the world. For him, that was enough. And alas, probably for me too. Movies were important. College was important. Grad school was important, but not travel.
That changed when I met my wife Debra as a graduate student at the University of Southern California. I was immediately smitten, not just because of her talent, intelligence, and beauty, but also because she had traveled the world — dropping out of college to herd goats in the south of France at one point. Yes really! If you have a minute, Debra can tell you all about the psychology of goats and how to stop a charging male from goring you.
She introduced me to the idea of travel and adventure. We went to Zion National Park, then Hawaii, and we’ve spent our lives exploring the world — from walking the Inca Trail in Peru to hiking the Dolomites in Italy to exploring the Bahamas, India, the Czech Republic, and Cuba together.
Even though Debra completed an undergrad degree in film and a grad degree in painting, I learned from Debra that travel might be more important to an education than book learning. To see how people are. How people are different from you. What they care about. What you take for granted that they don’t.
So, I hope our students will take advantage of these opportunities much earlier in life than I did. One of my priorities for The Media School is to make travel opportunities accessible not just to some students but to all. They're imperative to an education.
This summer, The Media School is offering two international field experience courses: Healthcare Communication in Kenya, which partners Media School students with Kenyan students at Moi University in Eldoret to report on HIV/AIDS initiatives, and Smartphone Filmmaking in Prague, a three-week course based in the Czech Republic that uses media production to reflect on the travel experience.
I have been to both Kenya and the Czech Republic, and they’re incredible opportunities for quite different reasons. Even better, Media School students enrolled in the courses will receive a scholarship to help offset the costs. They’re both accepting applications through early December.
I can’t wait to hear our students’ reflections when they return. Maybe they’ll have an opportunity to herd some goats. Bon voyage.
Sincerely,
David Tolchinsky
Dean
The Media School at Indiana University
