As a speech language pathologist, often working with children with autism, Patricia Prelock had a unique vantage point for observing the power of language and communication. 

Though her career trajectory as a health professional was very clear, Prelock’s studies included a liberal arts foundation, including French and Latin. 

“I would always say language and communication is everything,” she said. “The ability to have an understanding of cultures, literature and languages, knowing that the people I interface with come from a variety of different regions, and understanding and appreciating their language and cultural traditions, I think, makes me a better clinician and a better researcher.”

In May, Prelock joined the University of Arizona as Provost and Chief Academic Officer, following five years as Provost and one year as Interim President at the University of Vermont. Her third day on campus, Prelock spoke at a ceremony in which Alain-Philippe Durand, Dorrance Dean of the College of Humanities, was bestowed with the l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques rank of Officer, France’s highest academic honor. 

“I think A-P, as our dean, has really identified how we can make the humanities relevant and current and still maintain the rigor that is so powerful in the humanities,” she said. “What we’re doing is really providing a career trajectory for students, that they still can have this deep knowledge of the humanities, but also be prepared for almost any career.” 

As provost, Prelock is focused on achieving “Success for Every Student,” and whether a student is a major, minor, or taking general education or language courses, the humanities are at the core of that education, giving students the ability to think critically, solve problems, and understand different perspectives and cultures. 

“When we think about fulfilling our land grant mission, it’s really about educating our community in Arizona and well beyond. I think what the humanities does is it provides that cultural context, that is so important for students to become an engaged citizen in their community, local, regionally and statewide,” she said.

As far as the other two components of the university’s mission, the College of Humanities adds the human element to research that shapes the future, and makes strong contributions to the university’s community engagement, through the Poetry Center’s one-of-a-kind archive and reading series, and public presentations through the Tucson Humanities Festival. 

In her first year on campus, Prelock said she’s been impressed by the way in which the College of Humanities incorporates study abroad and internships into career pathways for students. She has also observed widespread collaborations across campus, citing specifically the Applied Humanities degree and the Health Humanities Hub at the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine. 

“We have a dean in A-P Durand who really believes in the value of the humanities and is innovative in his approach to make the humanities truly relevant. He is not afraid to say ‘We study the humanities because it’s valuable and builds you from an intellectual perspective. But it also prepares you for any career that you want,’’’ she said. “I think that’s a differentiator for us.” 

Congratulations to the College of Humanities’ Outstanding Senior for Spring Winter 2025, Loyda Vance! 

Vance is a first-generation college student graduating with dual degrees, a B.A. in Spanish and Portuguese and a B.S. in Urban and Regional Development. In the spring, she will continue at the University of Arizona, pursuing her master’s degree in Urban Planning. 

In her convocation address, Vance told fellow graduates that she chose the Spanish Generalist concentration as her major in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese because she loves the language and wanted to learn all sides of it.  

“Through the wide range of classes, I learned how impressive consecutive interpreting is. I gained a deeper understanding of culture and lived experiences through literature. My Hispanic linguistics classes helped me notice and correct my own grammatical errors. These were my building blocks, skills I will use every day moving forward,” she said. “The lessons you have learned and the skills you have perfected will also stay with you. Your dedication to learning something new, something meaningful, something that helps you build bridges with communities will guide you far beyond the classroom. Humanities is you. It is us.” 

Vance originally started at the University of Arizona right after high school, but indecision and financial reasons caused her to leave school. After three years, she returned to college through the Second Start program at Pima Community College, where she founded Art Sparks, a student-led organization that promoted artistic growth and community engagement. 

As president, she led weekly workshops, organized gallery showcases, and partnered with local organizations—including the Japanese Garden, El Jefe Cat Lounge, and Survivor Shield Foundation—to bring art into public and healing spaces. Those experiences helped spark her passion and she returned to the U of A, knowing how she wanted to combine her two majors into a career. 

“I want to help strengthen connections between public services and Spanish-speaking communities while keeping an open door to all the diverse communities that make up Tucson,” Vance told her fellow graduates. 

“We support refugees, non-English speakers, and anyone who needs guidance accessing essential resources. We recognize and embrace cultural differences, seeing them not as barriers but as opportunities to connect and understand. We listen to people’s stories, learn from their experiences, and allow ourselves to step into their world, even if only for a moment. Through empathy, knowledge, and the skills we’ve gained in the College of Humanities, we are prepared to be bridges, helping others navigate challenges, and making a meaningful difference in our communities.” 

In nominating her as Outstanding Senior, Eliud Chuffe, Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, and Yadira Berigan, Associate Professor of Practice and former Director of Undergraduate Studies, wrote that Vance is guided by her “belief in the power of language as a bridge—not a barrier.” 

“We have observed Loyda’s remarkable journey—characterized by resilience, dedication, intellectual curiosity, and a deep sense of purpose in everything she does,” they wrote. “She demonstrated that she is academically gifted and that, despite many obstacles, she is a stronger individual who is deeply rooted in our community and our culture and has a purpose to help everyone.” 

At the U of A, Vance’s career goal of building more inclusive cities has guided her research and community involvement, including work to create an interactive website to make Green Stormwater Infrastructure information more accessible to the public. 

“Her ability to translate complex planning ideas into community-friendly tools highlights her as a bright student and a future fully bilingual urban planner with vision and empathy,” Chuffe and Berigan wrote. “As someone raised in a Spanish-speaking household, Loyda understands the real-world impact of language gaps in public services. Her goal is to improve city infrastructure and ensure that Spanish-speaking residents have equal access to resources and representation. Loyda embodies this mission in everything she does.” 

Jennitza Barreras, graduating in May 2026 with a double major in Spanish and Elementary Education: Bilingual Emphasis from the University of Arizona, is one of the 2025 Undergraduate Centennial Achievement Award Recipients. 

Angus Leydic, a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) who has been a graduate assistant in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Department of Public and Applied Humanities, is one of this year’s Doctoral Centennial Achievement Award Recipients. 

A first-generation Mexican American student, Barreras is proud to set an example for her four younger siblings and grateful to her parents, whose sacrifices made her education possible. Originally from Gridley, California, she moved to Sahuarita at age 14, where she built a strong sense of home and community.

Her college journey began in the College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic, financial struggles and long overnight shifts forced her to step away. Returning in 2022 with renewed focus, she discovered her passion for education as a career and a calling. 

These challenges strengthened her commitment to equity and access in education. Her journey has been one of persistence, not only on her own behalf, but on behalf of her family, her community and the support system she has built at the U of A.

Barreras has taken on leadership and service roles as student council treasurer and social media chair, College of Education ambassador and AmeriCorps tutor. Through the TRIO Teacher Prep Program, she has worked as a peer mentor, math and Spanish tutor, and student assistant, supporting college students and engaging families through outreach. She has also sought professional development in STEM, preparing to bring engaging and culturally responsive math and science experiences into her future classroom.

Her academic achievements include the AASRA Scholarship, Alumni Council’s Dean Taylor Scholarship, Marilyn J. Ludwig Scholarship and the ADELANTE Internship Award. She has also earned dean’s list recognition in both the College of Humanities and the College of Education.

Barreras plans to begin her teaching career in local Title I schools while pursuing graduate studies and, ultimately, a doctoral degree in education. She hopes to continue serving as an advocate for underrepresented students both in and out of the classroom, building pathways to equitable education. 

Leydic is a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT). They earned their Master of Arts in languages, literatures and cultures, with a focus on theoretical and applied Spanish linguistics, from Illinois State University, and their Bachelor of Arts in Spanish literature and art history from Duquesne University. Raised in Pittsburgh, they are a first-generation American and a first-generation college graduate.

Developing from this multicultural perspective, their work and research seeks to improve the lives of minoritized people, with their current focus on LGBTQ+ people within larger social institutions. Angus has received multiple awards, including the Linda Waugh/SLAT Research Grant to fund their current dissertation project, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Stipend Award to support travel and research presentations for K-16 educators and administrators, and the prestigious Bilinski Fellowship for 2025-2026.

Their most recent projects are titled “Ontologically and Epistemologically Trans: Trans Being and Sense-Making in a Digital Gay Space” and “Queer and/or Trans Student Perspectives on Queering Classroom Materials.” They previously served as co-chair for the 2023 SLAT Roundtable Conference and successfully secured the Professional Opportunities Development Grant to fund the event and host the international plenary speaker.

Leydic has served for two years as the graduate student liaison to the SLAT Executive Council. They have held graduate assistant positions in the English Writing Program, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Department of Public and Applied Humanities. They have also worked in private K-12 schools teaching Spanish, U.S. history from an antiracist lens, and art classes. In addition, they have held positions as a case manager for foster care in Pittsburgh for Spanish-speaking youth and as a case manager for unaccompanied refugee minors in facilities associated with the Department of Human Services.

As a peer mentor for first-year SLAT graduate students, Leydic helps foster community within an interdisciplinary program. They have also served as a teacher advisor for an LGBTQ+ student association during their time as a K-8 teacher and as a curriculum designer, developing sexual orientation, gender identity and expression (SOGIE) training for previous workplaces.

After graduating, Leydic hopes to promote ethical research design and develop equitable teaching practices with students and educators alike. 

In a November symposium organized by Arum Park, a new generation of Classics scholars from across the country gathered at the University of Arizona to discuss how the field is expanding by examining connections with Asia. 

The two-day symposium, supported by a Faculty Seed Grant from the Office of Research & Partnerships and a Capacity Building Grant from the Research Leadership Institute, included both scholarly presentations and a roundtable discussion about the future of the field and what can be gained from exploring Classics and Asia together. 

Park, Associate Professor of Classics, is a former co-chair and current board member of the Asian and Asian American Classical Caucus and co-editor of the new University of Michigan Book Series “Classics and Asia at the Intersections.” Park said she conceived the symposium out of admiration for the innovative research she’s seen in the AAACC community and the importance of sharing it with her home institution’s faculty, graduate students and undergraduates. 

Speakers included UCLA’s Kelly Nguyen, who explored how Vietnamese writers from the French colonization era to contemporary times have engaged with the Greco-Roman classical tradition for different liberatory purposes; College of the Holy Cross’s Dominic Machado, presenting comparative readings of civil war poetry from ancient Rome and modern Sri Lanka; and the University of Washington’s Christopher Waldo, whose work on Asian American writers’ engagement with classical antiquity brought critical attention to a whole body of modern literature that had largely been ignored by previous Classicists. 

“This kind of work responds to and pushes against a more traditional way of thinking about Classics, that modernity and antiquity are totally separate, and it has inspired my current book project on Asian identity and Greek tragedy,” Park said. 

The roundtable showcased the AAACC’s revolutionary dual mission of both promoting groundbreaking research and supporting and elevating Classicists who inhabit marginalized identities. The roundtable included Nguyen, Machado and Waldo, along with Katherine Lu Hsu, Tori Lee, Young Richard Kim and Ellen Bauerle, moderated by Park. 

“I saw the roundtable and symposium as an opportunity for us to speak explicitly about the spirit of support and community at the heart of our work as Classicists,” Park said. “It’s vital that we counter the model of isolated, competitive, and even combative knowledge production that can be pervasive in academia, to expand knowledge through human connection, and to forge human connection through the expansion of knowledge.” 

Waldo, the author of the forthcoming first book in the University of Michigan series, said the focus on mentorship has played a significant role in developing this community of scholars.

“The vision that we have is important for sustaining the future of Classics. One of the classes I teach is about race and identity in antiquity, and my students get so excited about these topics and about talking about the future of the field of Classics and where this study of antiquity can go,” he said. “A lot of students see themselves represented just because I’m the professor of the class, but when they can read articles by Asian American scholars, they get excited about that. They like this much more contemporary vision of the field and it makes them more interested in taking more Classics classes. It gives me hope about the future.” 

A renowned expert in Chinese and East Asian Buddhism, Jiang Wu made his reputation in the field by going beyond textual and historic analysis to use big data methods to search for new insights. 

It’s an approach he started in graduate school, using GIS and spatial mapping long before the term digital humanities arose, and continued throughout his career, bringing advanced digital analysis to bear in asking new questions of ancient texts. 

In recognition of the wide-ranging impact of his career, including a Gugenheim fellowship in 2023, the Arizona Board of Regents in April designated Wu a Regents Professor, the highest faculty rank at the University of Arizona and the first to be awarded in the Department of East Asian Studies. 

“I’m not a Buddhist or a religious person, but I’ve absorbed lots of ideas of religion,” he said. “You learn something but you want to go beyond and see the next step. You’ve already mastered a certain field or your research topic, but what happens next? I’ve been spending time thinking about what’s going to be next, so that leads to the application of advanced technology. I want to see how these tools can bring me to the next level.”  

Wu, founding director of the Center for Buddhist Studies, said he’s always operated on the idea that the same texts can offer lots of information depending on how you look at them, especially for those who know their sources very well. 

“In my career, I always do something a little bit unconventional,” he said. “I look at the sources that I think have a potential to transform into data and think about the nature of the data. That’s a different way of interpreting your text.” 

Wu was originally drawn to Buddhism after starting out as an undergraduate philosophy major. 

“The initial motivation was always to learn more about the wisdom that religion can provide and how to apply that to my life and other people’s lives. The more you study, getting into deeper thinking, you get lots of transcendental questions and that leads you deeper into religion. The kind of religion I was drawn to when I was young was Zen Buddhism. Suddenly, Zen sets you free, and I was drawn to that idea,” he said. “So I kept learning and studying philosophy and religion and then the history of the different time periods that shaped the transformation of Buddhism, and its traditions, from India to central Asia and to China, Japan and Korea.” 

Wu arrived in Boston from China in 1996 and after earning his doctorate at Harvard in 2002, was hired by the University of Arizona, arriving in Tucson with the feeling that it was a different country.

“It’s a quiet place and during the years, the university provided all kinds of resources so I could concentrate on my research. You can do mediocre work, even if you’re a professor. But I wanted to do something extraordinary,” he said. “I always wanted to be a leader, in the field, in my research, to propose new ideas, create new data. Nobody can expect what happens 23 years later, but over the years you can see the trajectory. So it’s really a fulfilling moment.”   

In his 23 years at the university, the Department of East Asian Studies has grown tremendously, especially in the past 12 to 15 years after Albert Welter was hired as department head. 

“We are able to attract students because of our research expertise, especially in Buddhist studies,” he said. “We’re keeping a pretty big graduate program in the department and we have students finishing and finding good jobs. That raises our reputation tremendously because they are holding important faculty positions.”   

Wu’s research focuses on how the religion spread and how it has changed and been refined over many centuries. His first book Enlightenment in Dispute: The Reinvention of Chan Buddhism in Seventeenth-century China, published in 2008, presented a complete re-evaluation of the importance and popularity of 17th century Buddhism in China and has become foundational in the field. 

“When I do research, I want to bring this from the narrow field of China studies or religious studies to think about how I can draw some general rules or principles,” he said. 

In 2016, his second book dealt with the spread of Buddhism across Asia led by Chinese monks traveling to Japan specifically for the purpose of spreading Zen Buddhism to Kyoto in 1654, and it won the Tianzu Best Book Award in Chan Studies. To augment his studies, he created the Buddhist Geographic Information System a comprehensive database of every Buddhist monastery in China. 

Among Wu’s current projects is the Regional Religious System, which aims to provide a new perspective to old questions of regionalism and localism in Chinese history, using historical GIS and spatial analysis to consider how religion influenced regional development. In that and similar projects, Wu has been contacted by economic historians asking about his data, which points toward new opportunities.

“That gave me some kind of motivation to start thinking about how we can join that kind of research team and look at religious data and how that contributes to other fields. The million dollar question is how institutional transformation contribute to evolutions in human history and societies,” he said. “The formation of a religious system can contribute to societal change in general and if we do diligent work, we can find more data and invent a methodology to adopt more sophisticated analysis.” 

On Giving Day, Feb. 11 and 12, join Steve & Margot Kerr in support of our mission to make study abroad a reality for all College of Humanities students by helping them overcome financial obstacles through scholarships.

The $1M gift to launch the Kerr Family Endowment for Humanities Abroad is just the beginning of a multi-year effort the College of Humanities is launching to dramatically increase the amount of scholarship funds available so that all students have access to life-changing study abroad opportunities. 

“If you’re an alum, if you’re a basketball fan, if you are a fan of the ‘88 team that went to the Final Four, or if you just love the school and you’re a supporter, I would love to have this be a group effort where we get donations, even small donations, because everything really adds up,” Kerr said. “If we could get a lot of people thinking about this and adding to the endowment, it becomes a group effort and really powerful. And it only makes the U of A that much stronger of an institution.” 

If you share our belief that travel abroad is essential to a humanities education, please show your support by making a gift of any size to the Kerr Family Endowment for Humanities Abroad. 

For more information, contact Michele Murphy, Director of Development, at mbmurphy@arizona.edu. 

The fall semester brings the second pair of students in the Health Humanities Hub Interdisciplinary Scholars program, with each developing their own unique ways to unite studies in the humanities and health. 

For Mykelti Nuamah, his first three years at the University of Arizona were focused on his major in Physiology and Medical Sciences. Then his advisor mentioned the new Religious Studies for Health Professionals major and his reaction was “where has this been the whole time?” 

“We know the humanities and medicine are very interconnected but before she mentioned it, it never clicked in my head that this is something that could pursue,” he said. “I’ve always been interested in the interdisciplinary nature of life in general and this is exactly what I was looking for. Having the humanities aspect tied in is the icing on the cake and it unlocked something more for me. Having this humanities background is reminding me of the importance of the human aspect of medicine.” 

In contrast to Nuamah, Eli Marion has had one foot in the humanities and one in the sciences for quite some time. His mother grew up speaking Spanish at home and Marion himself went to a dual-language immersion elementary school, developing bilingual skills and becoming more interested in the study of language. 

He entered the University of Arizona as a major in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science and minor in Spanish, but ended up switching his major and minor, and adding a minor in Biochemistry, focusing on pre-med courses while sharpening his language skills the point he could serve as a Spanish medical interpreter in clinical environments and provide patient advocacy at Flying Samaritans clinics in Agua Prieta, Mexico.

Marion’s honors thesis, working with Regents Professor Sonia Colina in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, examines Spanish medical interpretation in the live consecutive mode to assess the current capabilities of AI language models. 

“My goal is to be able to serve patients directly in their most proficient language,” he said. “Going forward, how can this relatively new technology be improved to be a more comprehensive and effective solution?” 

One highlight of Nuamah and Marion’s internship was a multi-day Forum Theater training and public performance exploring scenes of health and care, organized by Aurelia Mouzet, Associate Professor of French. That experience contributed heavily to their main project for the semester: developing a curriculum to introduce health humanities concepts to high school students in the Pima County Joint Technical Education District (JTED) Health Professions program. Alongside Forum Theater scenes, the curriculum featured a film screening, an expressive writing exercise called the Three-Minute Mental Makeover, and in-depth discussion with the JTED Community Health and Wellness students about ethically complex care situations involving confidentiality, consent, trust and rapport.

Another ongoing project is launching the Health Humanities Collective, a student club for anyone whose personal or academic interests intersect with both the humanities and healthcare. 

“If I had this my freshman year, I would’ve been more confident in the things I’m doing for my future. Having people with similar shared goals is huge,” Nuamah said. “We all want to become the best doctors we can be and I know we’re not the only people interested in health humanities. Once we have the foundation, I think it can be much bigger on campus and bring people out of the woodwork.” 

Marion said one of his main interests going into the internship was language access and cultural fluency in the practice of medicine. Throughout the semester, he’s been working on identifying as many language access resources as he can find in the medical and medical education realms. 

“So far what I’ve found is very minimal and somewhat focused on patients, or at the organizational level there are guidelines you can use, but there’s nothing to bridge that gap,” Marion said. “There’s not much covered in medical education on the proper use of medical interpreters, or different kinds of medical interpretation. We need to add to the training information on how to work with interpreters, how to be cognizant of cultural and religious practices and customs. Medical students are practicing the patient encounter, but without a huge piece of the patient encounter.”  

Nuamah said he’s excited to be among the first four H3 Interdisciplinary Scholars because they can each begin building more of an emphasis on the intersection of humanities and health. 

“There are numbers and statistics on the science side, but when you bring the humanities, it gets more introspective and more nuanced,” Nuamah said. “Patient care is not just about what we see in the office. If we want better outcomes we have to know the human story behind every health decision.” 

What should we eat? As basic nourishment, food is part of daily life everywhere. But food is also inextricably linked to culture and as such, the questions of eating right quickly become complex. 

In search of a broader understanding of food and culinary cultures, Joshua Schlachet, faculty member in the Department of East Asian Studies, developed a new project that expands on more than a decade of research into the history of Japanese food culture to create a global framework for examining food and culture. 

“This project will try to recenter the conversation on global healthy eating on humanistic terms,” Schlachet said. “Questions of what to eat and why require humanistic answers.” 

The 2025-26 recipient of the Dorrance Dean’s Award for Research & Entrepreneurialism, Schlachet is awarded $20,000 for his project, “Eating Right Everywhere: Towards a Unified Program for Culinary Humanities.”

Part of the Fearless Inquiries Project, the Dorrance Dean’s Award for Research & Entrepreneurialism recognizes faculty and staff in the College of Humanities whose work is groundbreaking, and that dramatically demonstrates new ways of thinking in, through, and with the humanities. The future-focused DARE Program encourages research-oriented initiatives that are fantastic yet achievable, and that build on past failures and successes to imagine new approaches to improving our increasingly galactically aware planet.

The Eating Right Everywhere Initiative unites cutting-edge research in health humanities and cultural studies with perspectives from nutritionists, industry professionals, and community stakeholders to reimagine healthful consumption in a global, humanistic framework. The project integrates public humanities scholarship with curricular development and global partnerships in a bold, sustainable, evidence-based initiative.

Schlachet, a historian of early modern and modern Japan, specializes in the cultural history of food and nourishment, and teaches the popular course “The Culture of Food and Health in Japan.” His first book, Nourishing Life: Cultures of Food and Health in Early Modern Japan, will be published in April by the University of Hawai'i Press. 

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But Schlachet has long sought to build a bridge from his own work toward a holistic and multicultural theory of food and health. This first-of-its-kind project conceptualizes a global approach, rooted in particular places or times, but putting those specifics into conversation with each other to consider the cultural implications of food in the broadest sense. 

The project will combine academic voices from different global regions, but also diasporic and indigenous communities, along with nutritionists, dieticians, chefs, restauranteurs and other industry professionals. Tucson, recognized as the nation’s first UNESCO City of Gastronomy in large part because of its culinary heritage, is a fitting location to launch not only the project, but other cutting-edge approaches to culinary humanities, Schlachet said. 

The project has three pillars: Academic, which will include a research symposium on campus next year, with participants contributing to an edited volume; Programmatic, which will establish a cluster of culinary humanities faculty and develop new undergraduate courses; and Collaborative, centered on community engagement events on eating right, indigenous foodways and sustainable agriculture, and talks or seminars showcasing the work of culinary humanities faculty. 

Schlachet said he often thinks of the famous quote, “First we eat, then we do everything else,” attributed to food writer M.F.K. Fisher. And food is a fundamental precursor to everything else we do, but from a cultural perspective, it’s so much more. 

“This is a great place to develop collaborations with food studies in a way that will recenter cultural studies approaches to human experience and food as both deeply personal and global,” he said. 

In May, the College of Humanities will add the Balkan nations of Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia to its growing list of destinations in the Study Abroad for Adult Learners program. 

The format is unique among other tours, even those sponsored by universities, in its framing as a study abroad opportunity, traveling alongside Dorrance Dean Alain-Philippe Durand and professors who are experts in the regions. 

"I love traveling the world with our College of Humanities’ friends and world-class faculty experts. Many of us have been fortunate to have transformative study abroad experiences when we were students and this program allows us to re-live those all over again,” Durand said. 

Spaces are still available for the Adriatic Treasures trip, May 24 – June 2, 2026. Find more information and sign up at the link. 

The faculty expert will be Benjamin Jens, Associate Professor of Practice in the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies, who will provide insights on the region’s ancient cultures, centuries-old traditions and modern politics. Jens will also teach a Humanities Seminars Program course, “Bloodlines: The Balkan Origins of the Vampire,” to offer an advance look at the region. 

Since 2018, the Study Abroad for Adult Learners program has journeyed to Argentina and Brazil, India, and two trips to France, one to Provence and the second to Bordeaux and the Dordogne. 

The College works with a tour company that brings its own expertise, designing an itineraries that includes excellent hotels and dining experiences. For sights and activities the faculty experts and the tour company collaborate to tailor a custom trip. The schedules are balanced to allow the participants time for their own exploration as well. 

“The faculty bring not only knowledge of the region we’re visiting, the history, culture, language and literature, but their own personal expertise,” said Michele Murphy, Director of Development for the College of Humanities. “The travelers we attract are lifelong learners. People come back because they’re traveling with a group of like-minded people. They're really curious and want to learn while they travel.”  

For Nancy Davis, who’s participated in trips to France, India and South America, the repeat experiences have meant she’s developed friendships with some of the other travelers, which is one of the things that makes the program special. 

“I’m in my 70s and I don’t worry about being in Europe by myself. But India and Latin America are two places that if you’re a woman my age, you don’t go yourself,” she said. “But traveling with a group with professors and guides who know the lay of the land, I don’t worry about safety for a minute.” 

Before the trip to South America, Davis enrolled in the Humanities Seminars Program course designed to prepare travelers. 

“That was very helpful to get an advance education, with some great pre-reading and a briefing of what we should keep our eyes open for,” she said. “It was also great to get to know the faculty members. It’s not a hierarchy that there frequently is in an academic setting. There’s an equality and it’s extremely comfortable to ask them questions. They give us several lectures, but they’re there the whole time so if you have a question about a historical or cultural thing, they know.” 

For the trips themselves, Davis has enjoyed special experiences, like riding elephants in India and going to a tango club in Buenos Aires, activities that are made possible by the limited number of travelers and the faculty expertise and connections. 

“The cultural things you do are above and beyond what most even well-traveled people can put together,” she said.