The value of study abroad: a faculty reflection
September 11, 2025
This past summer, I had the opportunity to lead a study abroad course that took Xavier students on a journey through southern Germany and Belgium, with stops in Eichstätt, Ingolstadt, Munich, Mainz, and Antwerp. At the heart of this course was a guiding question: How do art, space, sound, and ritual work together to create rhetorical meaning in a Jesuit context?To answer this question, we visited churches, libraries, museums, and historical sites, not just to admire their beauty or to critique their excess, but to consider them as rhetorical spaces — spaces that make an argument to shape behavior, belief, and a sense of community belonging, experiences that require presence and embodied immersion to fully understand.
I structured the course so that students learned online for three weeks prior to travel, giving them familiarity with the sites we would visit and fluency with theoretical frames to guide our thinking. However, once we arrived on site, the learning became deeply student-led, with each student becoming an expert in one dimension of our itinerary, delivering presentations on-site, and leading their peers in discussion. In doing so, students deepened their own knowledge and took real responsibility for the collective learning of the group.
This type of responsibility, paired with the unpredictability of travel, fosters growth that is both academic and personal. Students had to navigate unfamiliar transportation systems, communicate across languages, manage logistics, and adapt to cultural differences, all while working together to navigate these challenges. By the end of the course, several students were already imagining futures that included more international experiences, whether applying to the summer or semester exchange program at the University of Eichstätt (a Xavier partner institution) or exploring potential international career paths. The study abroad course didn’t just expose students to new ideas — it expanded their sense of what might be possible, creating world-wide connections with people, places, and diverse cultural practices.
As we stepped into vast, light-filled domes or hushed chapels adorned with sacred art and felt the rush of communal awe, we weren’t simply observing: we were inhabiting the argument of that space, giving voice to its meaning as we moved through it together. The discussions that followed — in courtyards, biergartens, or long train rides — carried a depth and immediacy that I hope for (but often do not achieve) in a traditional classroom setting. These shared experiences clarified and deepened my own research questions about rhetorical immersion so that I returned home energized and more connected to my students, my scholarship, and our university’s mission.
In a Jesuit context, we speak of cura personalis as manifesting in various ways. Study abroad allows that care to unfold not only academically, but socially, emotionally, and spiritually. Students begin to see themselves not just as learners, but as global citizens open to experience, responsible for reflection, and ready to act with discernment.
Dr. Renea Frey
Associate Professor, English