For the 2025-26 school year, a $4.4 million grant will allow Grinnell College to offer three Global Learning Courses.
For many students, Grinnell’s Faculty-led Learning Across the Globe (FLAG) courses offers them the chance to study abroad for the first time. The Global Learning Program (GLP) gives 15 first-year students per course the opportunity to travel during spring break and the beginning of summer break.
This year, three GLP courses will be available: BIO-195: New and Emerging Infectious Diseases: The Intersection of Environment, Animal Health and Human Health, SOC-195: Historic Memory and the Shadows of Violence in 21st Century Europe and LAS-195 SPAM: U.S. Empire in a Can.
Last year, the College only offered one GLP course — HUM-195 Theorizing Dance and Language — which took students to Prague in March and London in May 2025. Susie McCurry `71 and the Holden Family Foundation gave a $4.4 million grant to the College on Jan. 5, which the College will be using to fund GLP courses for the next decade.
According to Ashley Laux, associate director of FLAG, McCurry believed that it was important for first year students to travel abroad before declaring their major, as studying abroad could change the trajectory of their degree. This is the reason why GLP courses are offered to first year students only.
“The GLP program is really, along with IGE [Institute for Global Engagement], her vision, so we would not be able to hold this program without her funding,” said Laux in reference to McCurry. “Her funding has supported my staff role, and also has really made it possible for this successful experience for first years.”
But before any students can start to prepare for travel, faculty who want to lead a GLP course must first write and submit a proposal to IGE that aligns with the College’s global education learning goals, along with a strong rationale for why students should be taken to a particular destination. The process can be rigorous for two reasons — the course must be taught by two faculty members and a detailed budget has to be submitted, Laux said. “Faculty members submit a budget for the courses,” said Laux.
“What will it cost to fly round trip to South Africa from Des Moines, for example, what will it cost to take trains or buses? What will it cost to go to hotels? So the faculty proposal is pretty rigorous.”
For Henry R. Luce Professor of Nations and the Global Environment Professor David Campbell, GLP courses are a way to teach biology at the intersection of ecosystems, disease and humanity.
“Unfortunately, in your generation and my daughter’s generation and my grandson’s generation, infectious disease is going to be a major player,” said Campbell. “It just has to do with the density dependent nature of most diseases and how they’re transmitted. And so there couldn’t be a more acutely relevant topic for young people, college-age people, than infectious diseases.”
Campbell and Biology Professor Shannon Hinsa-Leasure will be teaching BIO-195 next semester where they will be taking their students to Kruger National Park in South Africa to study the saltation of animal diseases into humans and vice versa and then to Fairbanks, Alaska where they will do DNA sequencing.
Professor Campbell and Professor Hinsa-Leasure have gotten this course approved three times now, which Laux said is challenging when competing against other faculty.
“Basically, we’ve been lucky,” said Campbell. “We’ve succeeded three times in a row. It’s hugely expensive to take 15 students to South Africa and then take the same 15 after the semester’s over to Fairbanks, Alaska. I mean, that’s opposite sides of the world.”
Once the course is approved, the faculty’s next task is to choose 15 students for the course.
“It’s very hard to know and the tutorials teachers are asked to write a note of recommendations. They don’t know the kids either just a few weeks into the semester,” said Campbell. “So it’s a difficult process. Obviously it’s a flawed process, because we just don’t know. But we do the best we can, and we try to figure out 15 students that would benefit the most from this incredible cross cultural, cross ecosystemic, and in Alaska, profoundly deep in time experience.”
The group of students chosen will reflect the diversity of Grinnell College, Campbell said.
“It’s a meritocracy and at Grinnell College, where there’s such a diversity of students, that always results in a diverse group,” said Campbell. “If we were in a more conventional school, I think we’d have to struggle harder to get a diverse group.”
While the program is limited in the amount of students that it can bring, the impact it has had on students can’t be measured.
“I feel like it opens up the horizon for students who may not have ever traveled outside their home country, or haven’t had a learning experience in another place before,” said Laux. “It’s helped them decide what they might like to major in, or the types of work that excites them.”
