Last May, HCC sponsored six students to participate in the Salzburg Global Seminar’s Global Citizenship Program.

It’s a one week seminar in Salzburg, Austria. Along with attending the seminar, students take a mini government course to receive academic credit.

HCC Southwest student Kevin McCaslin was one of the students selected to participate.

McCaslin said that before the seminar, “I hate to admit it, but I really didn’t think about the idea of being a global citizen very much.”

McCaslin said the Salzburg experience makes you, “start thinking of yourself as not just a citizen of the United States, but also as a citizen of the world… It’s not giving up your previous citizenship; you’re still a member of your local community – your Houston community, your Texas community, your American community. You can also be a member of the global community and actually try to help and get the word out about treating other people as people.”

The program was packed with more than twenty-five sessions and workshops.

McCaslin’s favorite lectures were from Dr. Alex Seago who is from the U.K. and Dr Reinhold Wagnleitner who is from Austria, both are historians.

“I’ve always liked history,” McCaslin admitted, “but I only focused on the politics – the nations and rulers aspects of history, whereas they focused on a lot on cultural aspects which is a very interesting view of history.”

Dr. Wagnleitner talked about how American culture has spread throughout the world, and Dr. Seago spoke on the effect it leaves on other cultures.

“It’s interesting not just to listen to those talks, but to go to another country – to go to Europe, to go to Austria, to go to Salzburg. It’s bringing yourself out of your local culture, and into another global culture to bring you out to thinking about the rest of the world.”

Students also visited the WWII Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site in neighboring Germany.

“One very powerful thing is when you walk from the museum towards the memorial sites,” McCaslin explained, “there is a line of trees, kind of like a pathway that goes to where the barracks are. Those trees had been there since the beginning… [they are] something that had been there through all of it.”

McCaslin recalled visiting the forest area behind the crematorium where the holocaust victim’s ashes were spread. “You can walk through there very quietly and just take in the horrors that happened.”

The Study Abroad Scholarship is funded by HCC, which covers the costs of airfare, tuition, meals and accommodations. Students are only responsible personal spending and for the cost of the GOVT 2389 course, but eligible students can use their financial aid for the class.

“It was a crazy-amazing experience to be able to go to Europe,” McCaslin said. “Honestly, I can’t afford on my own to spend several hundreds, thousands of dollars to go and study abroad….I’m always going to be thankful for it.”

“I want to try to do more studying abroad,” McCaslin said, “It’s hard to explain how different and how amazing it is to be able to go somewhere and experience other cultures and other countries and really just open your mind to the world.”