Ever rent A Room With A View?

Helena Bonham Carter in her E.M Forster period, swooning – literally – over the art in Florence. 

You’ll swoon, too.

At America’s small, private Lutheran colleges and universities, education is all about making it real, not just sitting in some huge auditorium snoozing through slide after slide, chart after chart, lecture after lecture, day after day after day. One of the best ways to get real is on an overseas or off-campus program, an opportunity about half of our students take advantage of. 

At Concordia University, in Seward, Nebraska, for example, Associate Professor of Art Lynn Soloway combines her art expertise and wanderlust to offer some powerful “learning beyond the classroom” experiences for students.

Soloway, with Assistant Professor of Communication Bruce Creed and 18 student art lovers, toured Italy’s Sistine Chapel, Uffizi Museum, and the Coliseum.

The trip included the cities of Venice, Florence and Rome, as well as the smaller towns of Siena and Assisi, to see works by Giotto, DaVinci and Raphael, and of course, Michelangelo.

“I believe in being globally oriented. It’s important as a university-educated person to see other parts of the world as much as you can – to see what God has made, and in some cases, what man has trashed. You realize how much God has blessed you. It’s too easy to be complacent,” the art professor reflects. 

For junior David Dolak, seeing Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel depiction of Creation was way past awesome. “Our eyes dart from one beautiful fresco panel to the next, seeing and noticing the way the entire ceiling owns the church, ...

...overpowering everything else for a moment. Nothing could ever teach us that – no book, no set of slides, no documentary,” Dolak relates.

Opportunities to “get real” abound at Concordia and other Lutheran colleges, and not just in the art department.

Last year alone, dozens of Concordia students took advantage of trips off campus and overseas – student teaching at the Hong Kong International School; visiting a mission near Madurai, India; to New Guinea, Hawaii and the U.S. Southwest. Concordia’s 47-member A Cappella Choir performed in the 12th annual Australian International Music Festival, one of just 25 groups selected for the event. 

Professor Soloway’s goal in planning treks for future designers, artists, educators and scholars is simple. “My biggest push in this is to get people to see outside of the box they’re in,” she says.

“And experience things beyond the United States, especially when you’re young.”