Global Campus—Building a Global Perspective
Study abroad is a staple of higher education, but for Lubbock Christian University’s (LCU) Global Campus, the experiences go far beyond just a fun travel opportunity—and the growing array of options makes these trips more accessible than ever.
“We have three areas of focus,” explained Rob Anderson, Director of Global Campus at LCU. “We've got our full study abroad, which is a full semester in Ávila, Spain; we've got our Global Experiences Trips, which are three-week trips that tend to start in one city and end in another; and we have our class trips, which focus on highlighting the content of a particular subject.”
LCU’s longest running Global Campus offering is the semester in Spain, in which a cohort of students travel to Ávila, Spain. In what most would consider a traditional “Study Abroad” program, students live in a dorm and meet in classes on the campus of the Catholic University of Ávila (UCAV). Ávila is located in the Castile and Léon region of Spain, approximately an hour and a half west of Madrid.
Over the last several years, Global Campus has worked with faculty to develop courses in which the teaching and learning culminate in a class trip, as the travel component provides a dynamic context for the course material and brings it to life. Some of the first of these trips included a theatre course led by Dr. Laurie Doyle, with theatre students traveling to New York City to experience a behind-the-scenes look at live theatre on a professional level, and Dr. Kregg Fehr’s “U.S. History since 1877” and “Colonial America” classes, which traveled to San Franciso and Boston, respectively.
The newest offerings curated by Global Campus, however, focus just as much on cultural awareness and practical world experience as they do on history and academia.
“Our Global Experiences happen in May,” explained Anderson. “These are primarily intended for cultural awareness—when you go, you're getting more of an exposure to culture alongside faculty and fellow students.”
These classes meet every other week, since the three weeks of travel also count toward classroom hours, and that instructional time is split between learning about the theme or cultural context of the locations featured on the trip and practical tools and guidance for global travel.
“Every professor will approach it slightly differently” Anderson explained, “but a general pattern would be that half of their time focused on education, or the topic. For example, a professor might present information about the beginning of World War II, talk about the historical elements, providing information about Auschwitz or Birkenau, and kind of give some background information. Then, the other part of the class will cover traveling. How do you travel on the train? How do you protect your things? How do you keep from getting pickpocketed? What do you do if there's an emergency? How does travel insurance work?”
Part of that experience includes research projects. Most professors include assignments that incorporate research about locations. “Say that we're going to be in Salzburg on May 17th,” Anderson explained. “Tell me what I can do. Tell me a little bit about the history of Salzburg and the area. What is it that I want to go see? As a student, where are restaurants that you want to go visit? What's the weather going to be like? It’s exciting when a student comes in and explains, ‘Here's a restaurant I found!’ or ‘This Sound of Music bike ride tour—we've got to go do that!’”
Beyond the practical traveling skills, however, Anderson believes that one of the most valuable parts of these trips is the raw experience of other cultures.
“We want students to be able to gain this cultural awareness, to really understand the culture. But to do that, you have to go to the culture. Sometimes, traveling Americans can be culturally ignorant, so we work to set those expectations. Don't do this—that's offensive. Don't be surprised when they do this, because this is just how they do things there.
“We went to church in Peru as a part of one of these trips,” he continued. “When we were there, the locals kissed as a part of their greeting. At first, if you're not used to it, it’s bound to feel very awkward. It’s stuff like that—we want students to understand culture, how to travel respectfully.”
The Global Experiences trips offer travel opportunities across the globe. “We had one group that went to Japan, but it was three different places,” shared Anderson. “Dr. Andy Laughlin and Dean Tracy Mack took a group from Poland to Paris, which started in Auschwitz, later went to Warsaw and Krakow, and finished at Normandy Beach in France—effectively spanning the beginning to the end of World War II.”
One of the upcoming trips, planned for May 2026, focuses on the Olympics, traveling from Switzerland to Greece, ending at the birthplace of the Olympics in Athens, and it will be led by Dr. Haley Burton ('15) and Dr. Chris Huggins ('04). Another, traveling from Scotland to France, will feature travel by train and include stops in Edinburgh, York, Manchester, Nottingham, Oxford, London, and Paris. The third planned trip will once again bring students to Japan, including visits to the Imperial Palace, Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, and cultural sites like Studio Ghibli Park, among many others.
Even with the recent growth in opportunities Global Campus provides, Anderson continues to harbor big dreams for the program.
“We’ll continue to have a full semester study abroad program in Spain,” he said, “because there’s nothing like the deep immersion that spending a full semester abroad can give. We’ll also continue to offer Global Experiences Trips and expand those to different places. We will likely always include a Europe trip, but we also would like to add South America or Africa, and maybe even Australia—we really want these student experiences to be culturally diverse.”
Anderson also wants to expand service-learning opportunities. “Obviously, we already have our Peru medical mission trip, but there are always similar opportunities across the disciplines at LCU, and it’s central to our mission as a university.”
Anderson explains that, as a part of LCU’s calling as a faith-based institution, this is an essential part of personal growth for these students.
“There is a poem—Dr. Andy Laughlin uses it on all of his trips—by Gio Evan. The poem starts out, ‘Try to travel, otherwise you may become racist, and you may end up believing that your skin is the only one to be right, that your language is the most romantic and that you were the first to be the first.’ I remember one of the students was like, ‘Racist? I'm not racist.’ But that sparked a deep conversation. We tend to view racism as an attitude that says, ‘I hate a certain culture,’ or ‘I hate a certain group of people.’ And racism certainly has looked like that in our American history, so it makes sense that a student would react that way. But racism also is the sense in which you're saying, ‘My culture is the best, my language is the best, my food is the best, the way I interact with people is the best.’”
Just as the apostle Paul met the philosophers in Athens with respect to their culture and beliefs, Anderson believes that Christians have a responsibility to respect other cultures as we seek to love our neighbors.
“I tell students, ‘Most of us, in our work today, will interact with people around the globe. And as you work with them, if you assume your way is the only way, the best way, it becomes very narrow-minded and can work against you.’ Our students need to be exposed to different cultures because that experience enlarges their worldview, both from a practical standpoint—how we live with one another—and from a deeper, spiritual aspect. You need to be well-cultured in order to be able to understand other people, and as you're telling people about Jesus and how Jesus is the answer, if you don’t know how to embrace other cultures, you're behind in a lot of different ways. I think you're missing some great opportunities.”
For junior general business major Thaden West, his trip to Japan gave him exactly that perspective. “Originally, I went on the trip to Japan because many of my friends were going, and honestly, I thought it would be a fun opportunity to try something new and make a few memories,” he recalled. “But looking back on my experience with Global Campus, I’ve realized it didn’t just give me a fun experience, it completely changed how I see the world and how I see myself. Traveling to Japan pushed me out of my comfort zone in ways I never expected. I was immersed in a culture that, while beautiful and rich in tradition, was vastly different from anything I had ever experienced. I had to learn how to navigate unfamiliar customs, communicate with people who spoke a language I didn’t know, and adjust to an entirely new way of life. What started as a casual adventure became a powerful lesson in humility, empathy, and perspective. Global Campus didn’t just teach me about Japan—it taught me about myself. It challenged me to grow, to think more deeply, and to become more open minded and aware of the world around me. And for that, I’m incredibly grateful.”
When asked about their favorite memories or most-transformative experiences at LCU, students who participated in Global Campus experiences unfailingly place those aspects of their LCU story at the top of their lists.
“I tell students all the time that we all learn about Battle of Gettysburg, and most of us just get to see a picture of a field in a textbook that, if we’re honest, looks no different than any other field,” Anderson explained. “But when you go there, when you stand in that field and feel the weight of what happened, it’s totally different. It's still a field, the exact same picture, but it becomes so much more real.”
One of the services that Global Campus uses with their students on any given trip or time abroad is a photo sharing service that allows all students to submit photographs they take to a shared folder accessible to only those in the group. Anderson explained that often the group collections can reach hundreds of photos each day, but he was surprised when the group visited Auschwitz.
“There were no pictures posted in Auschwitz,” he shared. “And not because they weren’t allowed to take any—but because the students were present. They allowed themselves to feel the heaviness of the place they were in.”
One of the powerful things about traveling with a group is the close-knit bonds those kinds of experiences can build between students, and even with staff and faculty.
Matlin Mimms (’25), a recent LCU graduate who embarked on the May trip from Poland to Paris, certainly felt those relationships in her trip.
“We had the opportunity to live extraordinarily for three weeks traveling throughout Europe spanning from the urban Warsaw, Poland to the quaint French village of Honfleur,” she explained. “We traveled mile after mile via bus, train, and foot alongside fellow students and faculty of different studies and walks of life, most of whom I would have hardly interacted with otherwise. I built deep relationships saturated in trust as we travelled in proximity with each other day after day to foreign places where the most familiar thing around was each other. I learned what it means to lead when necessary, to follow the group when differing opinions arise, and watch and care for those around me.”
“LCU gave me the opportunity to see and grow in an organized, safe, and supported way,” she continued. “Traveling shifts your perspective on life which flows into daily life back in the familiar. I trust others more deeply, I appreciate the gift of life more fully, and I continue to want to learn more because I traveled to the unfamiliar.”
“I decided to go on the trip from Poland to Paris because I have always wanted to travel the world, and this was so much better than my I could have imagined,” shared Madalyn Franklin (’25), a Plains, TX native who graduated this past May with a degree in Agribusiness. “It wasn't picture perfect, but we got to see the world as it is—a chaotic mix of good and bad, beautiful and ugly, magical and real. Seeing this part of the world and reliving parts of our history broadened not only my perspective of what life is all about, but it also deepened my capacity for understanding the person next to me. Each person has a story that reflects that mixture of good and bad, and yet we are all still beautifully human, just as Europe is beautifully Europe. This trip throughout Europe has molded my heart to carry much more grace for humanity, as I realized that we are all still growing and learning what it truly means to be human.”
“There's something about travel with students that strips away some of the barriers that would otherwise make it more difficult to engage with them,” Anderson shared. “To visit with students, to hear about their lives, to get to speak to them and be an encouragement, and just watch them encourage one another, to see how they interact—all of that is special. There were some conversations that I got to have with students that were just sacred—that I feel like God really used the discomfort of being in a different culture, a different place, to prompt some powerful conversations. That’s really the catalyst.”
For Mimms, the opportunity to travel was transformative. “I got to experience Creation in a whole new light, with childlike wonder. The new (to me) sights we got to see, like the magnificent Wawel Royal Castle and the medieval, cobblestone streets of Rothenburg, have been aging for centuries before I laid my eyes on them. It is humbling to leave the familiar and realize how much you don’t know, but as a result, you gain much,” she emphasized. “To travel is to grow.”