Austria: Salzburg & Vienna

Created 31-Aug-20

During my years as a community college Professor, I was fortunate to participate in the Global Citizenship Alliance's Spring Seminar on Global Citizenship six times between 2006-2019 as the Lead Faculty Advisor for a group of approximately fifty Miami Dade College Honors College students and faculty. This program provides an intensive seven-day international experience for participants to explore pressing issues of global concern and to view such issues from a perspective both literally and figuratively outside the borders of the United States.

Each Seminar Session was full of new learnings - particularly paradigm shifts in my views of environmental sustainability, the roles of education, immigration, problem-solving, and collaboration. I always left each Session with a better understanding of the international political order, the global economy, worldwide social developments, what it means to be a global citizen, and, most importantly, with the desire and ability to envision and affect positive change on my Campuses and community. The Seminars changed my ways of thinking and teaching like no other professional development activities I had ever known. And the city of Salzburg itself was particularly meaningful place for me because my father, who served in the US Army during WWII, was part of the force that liberated the city from the German army.

In this creative and intellectually charged atmosphere, I used the breaks between the daily sessions and while students were working on their group projects to make the photographs in this gallery. I wandered the grounds of the Seminar setting (Schloss Leopoldskron or Schlosswirt zu Anif and their neighborhoods) and all over Salzburg's Old City. A day visit to the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial in Germany, and a day of cultural activities in Vienna at the conclusion of the Seminar offered more opportunities for making photographs.