Back in spring 2003, Ellen Furlong climbed active volcanoes, waded through surf to a bird sanctuary and studied tropical spiders.
Last month, she got to share the Transylvania May term study abroad experience with current Pioneers — not in Hawaii this time, but also cool: They studied monkeys in Gibraltar, among other adventures. Furlong and lecturer of accounting Melissa Coombs Mattox ’07, who visited France as an undergraduate and then recently returned with a class of her own, reflected on May term travel from their dual perspective of student and teacher.
Furlong fondly remembers being a student during May term — when Pioneers focus on a single class, often involving travel. Besides Tropical Ecology with professor James Wagner, she took a variety of other courses, including Theory of Numbers with David Choate and Southern Literature with Martha Billips. Each one “radiated the excitement and passion of professors finally getting to geek out about their favorite topics,” she said. “I knew that I had big shoes to fill.”
This year, she joined sociology professor Olivia Fleming for the May term class Monkeying Around: Non-Human Animals and Society, which traveled to London and Gibraltar.
“Some intellectual experiences must be lived to be fully understood,” Furlong continued. “I learned that first as a student standing on that volcano with the flowing lava near me, and now I try to provide those opportunities to my students. But these days with less lava and more monkeys.” She called these “moments when learning escapes the page and becomes reality.”
Mattox was also transformed by her May term study abroad experiences. “These trips taught me so much beyond academics,” she said.
She took two May term travel courses as a student, visiting London, Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam for International Accounting with Dan Fulks and Judy Jones and the Big Apple for Intro to Fine Arts with Greg Partain and Tim Soulis.
Not only did Mattox realize she loved Broadway shows, she also learned she was capable of planning adventures herself, including navigating mass transit.
She took her May term passion and experience to France for this year’s International Business and Accounting class. “I wanted to provide students, particularly now after all of the COVID disruptions, with the same opportunity to experience the world and connect it to what they’ve been learning on campus,” she said.
It’s an opportunity Mattox thinks students should take advantage of during this phase of their life. “May term ideally utilizes this small window of time where students’ minds are already open from all of their other Transy studies but before they graduate, and jobs and life make travel harder to fit in,” she said.
