The Director's Corner
February 25, 2025
As the past few days have introduced me to the delights of Auburn’s early spring, one of the most famous lines of English literature has been running through my mind, from the General Prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Opening with an evocative description of the natural world as it awakens from the cold of winter, Chaucer observes that at this time of year, “Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages” (Then people want to go on pilgrimages). My own desire is less for myself to go abroad at this moment, than it is for all of you, the Honors College’s wonderful students, to graduate from Auburn having had the life-altering experience of educational travel.
Why do I think travel is so important, especially for students who already exhibit impressive academic accomplishments and deep engagements in co-curricular activities? The short answer is that no matter how good a student you are, no matter how hard you study on our campus, you will learn things through travel that you cannot learn otherwise, and you will internalize those lessons on a bone-deep level.
When I was a sophomore in college, I enrolled in a course on the history of Mexico that included a spring break trip to Mexico City and Morelia, a beautiful colonial-era city in central Mexico. I had been to Canada several times as a child, and once had been to Germany with my family, but this was my first time being outside of the United States without my parents. More than three decades later, I think about this trip all the time. I did lots of tourist things like visit the Pyramids of Teotihuacan, but those are not really what I think about. Rather, I remember countless small experiences I had ¾ navigating a crowded subway, timidly haggling in a street market, playing hide-and-seek with young children in a city park, witnessing levels of poverty I had never seen before in the outskirts of the city, touring churches that looked and felt so different from my home churches in their expression of the same religion, getting sick from accidentally drinking untreated water, getting lost and then finding my way back to the hotel that in truth was just around the corner.
Amidst the many lessons I learned from that trip, two stand out: first, that I had could manage more on my own than I had realized, and second, that “my way” -- the thousands of taken-for-granted behaviors, tastes, and beliefs that shape how I go through the world -- is not the only way. Our world is infinitely variable. Humans are better equipped to flourish in their career and their lives if they understand that basic point.
Many students understandably do not travel because they do not have the money or the time. Regarding the time, I want to make sure that all our students understand the benefits of a study-and-travel course, which provides two of its three credits through the trip itself, meeting only one hour a week during the semester. Study-and-travel can be a great way to fit an educational experience abroad into a busy schedule, allowing students to have a regular semester with a 10-14 day trip during speak or at the end of the term. Regarding the financial cost, I have decided over the coming years to prioritize what I am calling the “World Classroom” in my fundraising, with hopes of providing more support for our students to study in other countries, or in other parts of the United Staes. My hope is that more Honors students every year will be able to enjoy this life-changing, and self-changing opportunity.
Dr. Laura Stevens
Director, Honors College
Professor of English
