Broadening horizons
ASU-Newport French travel abroad trip welcomes everyone
By Amy Widner
LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas State University-Newport may be a cozy community college with 1,700 students, but every single one of them deserves the opportunity to travel abroad, English Assistant Professor Terri Reno said.
Reno is readying for ASUNewport’s spring break 2009 trip to France and said not only students but faculty, Newport residents and anyone, for that matter, are welcome to come along. No school is too small to invest in expanding peoples’ horizons.
“We think that travel is education,” Reno said. “Especially in the center of the U.S., if people aren’t given the opportunity to travel, that’s unfortunate. To take people totally out of their own environment and take them to the other side of the world, to see that people think differently, I think that’s so needing. I don’t think there’s anything better to get people to open their eyes and get them thinking in a different way. Not to lower the classroom experience, but this is a whole different thing, not just head knowledge.”
That’s exactly what happened to Andrea Chism, an ASU-Newport library technician who went on the 2006 trip to Greece, where she did things like visit the Parthenon and the site of the first Olympics and take a cruise to different Greek islands. The food was amazing, she said.
“I went away from the trip with a love of going abroad,” Chism said. “Now I want to travel all the time. I realize America is not the only way things are done. Maybe not the best way, either. It gave me perspective. I also learned that there are things I like about home, too.”
The France trip lasts from Thursday, March 19, to Sunday, March 29. The basic cost is $1,600, which covers airfare, lodging, attraction entrance fees, breakfast and dinner. The only things left for participants to cover during the trip are spending money and lunch.
The tour will include stops in Paris, where they will visit places like the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Versailles and Arc deTriumph; Normandy, site of the D-Day invasion that engaged the United States in northern Europe in World War II; and Nice, which is along the Riviera and features some of the most famous beaches in the world.
“The trip’s emphasis is on castles, so we’re going to see some of the best castles in France, besides Versailles, which you can’t get any better than that,” Reno said.
Two ASU-Newport students will get to go for free because of the Alton E. and Thelma McCartney Scholarship Trust, managed by Merchants and Planters Bank, and an institutional scholarship provided by ASU-Newport. Students can get three hours of course credit through the trip by doing an independent study that usually includes reading the country’s literature and studying its history and geography, Reno said.
“The students, they have been thrilled in the past,” Reno said. “It’s been an eye-opener for a lot of them. Some of them are world travelers, but others had never been outside of Arkansas before. They’ve just been thrilled. Some of them, their lives have really changed.
“We’ve had teachers and future teachers on the trips before, and you know that is a gift that keeps on giving. That’ll be something that you know they’ll mention in their classrooms from then on. Geography will have a whole new meaning now,” Reno said.
This will be the sixth trip ASUNewport has offered and Reno has done the stateside organization for. Once overseas, the travel company, EF Educational Tours, takes over, providing a tour guide who handles everything from there. Reno said their experiences with tour guides in the past have been good. The program provides people who speak English and the native language and live in the country, plus, Reno has lived in Europe and can often provide her own insights. Previous trips were to Italy, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Greece and Spain.
Reno said the groups have had anywhere from 15 to 45 people of a range of ages. Often, she said, more people from the community or outside of it - they’ve had people from Texas, Maryland andFlorida who’ve come along - go on the trips than students or faculty. People meet, have fun together in the laid-back atmosphere and often stay in touch. It’s no luxury tour, but past participants have always been comfortable, Reno said, and the ability to do quite a bit of walking is important.
Reno said the decision to go to France this year was based on cost but also on interest. Even if people do not want to go on the France trip, ASU-Newport will be going somewhere each year, and people can call (501) 512-7800 to sign up for an e-mail mailing list about the trips. More information is available from Reno at (870) 512-7839 or treno@asun.edu. She has information packets for those interested.
The deadline to sign up for the trip is in December. The scholarship application deadline for students, who must be enrolled at ASU-Newport fulltime to apply, is Wednesday, Oct. 15.
- awidner@ arkansasonline.com
This article was published Sunday, October 5, 2008.
Three Rivers, Pages 115 on 10/05/2008
