Traveling Well: Leading Students on the Path to Human Flourishing

Students enter university today for many reasons. Because many begin this experience as 18 or 19 year old young adults, they are developmentally open to new ideas. Their thought processes are being refined, and they come to university with many questions about who they are and what they actually believe. As a result of these converging factors, faculty are in a unique position to influence, encourage and mentor students not only in their academic courses but in extracurricular pursuits as well. This paper aims to present the philosophical connection between international travel and spirituality and to propose how faculty members can cultivate a richer conception and practice of teaching and learning, particularly in the discipline of nursing. Through understanding the spiritual attributes of international travel, faculty can foster students’ ability to develop spiritual intelligence, build transcultural skills and learn cultural humility. The philosophical connection between elements of travel and elements of spirituality is especially important as we help our students learn to attend to themselves as a whole person.

There is a long-standing tradition of global pilgrimage; from treks to Lourdes or Machu Pichu for soul enriching experiences to other sites such as famous museums or ruins (Scriven, 2014; Warfield, Baker, & Fox, 2014; Cousineau, 2012). Many of these journeys are motivated by faith and it is not always the destination but also the journey that is of significance. Spiritual attributes of travel are linked to the desire for personal transformation that can happen when one steps outside the routine of daily life, becomes ensconced in another place and is able to view life from a different perspective.

As faculty, we desire to bring our students alongside us as we live out our passion and profess the tenets of our disciplines. By traveling with our students, either on study abroad, service learning projects, mission trips or field trips, we can help them sort out their experiences and work through the disparities that may exist between students’ self-perceptions and actual cultural humility. In this way, travel with our students can be a time of spiritual transformation for both student and faculty member alike.