Celebrating Hope

This past year has been one of the most difficult I can call to mind in my decades-long career in international education. It’s been an accumulation of crises, shifting policies, geopolitical tensions, and very real human anxieties that surfaced in our emails, team huddles, one-on-one conversations, and student interactions. As a senior international officer at Dickinson College (Dickinson), a small liberal arts college in South Central Pennsylvania, I manage a diverse global team and have found myself wondering “Are we going to be okay?” more often than I’d like.

Marking Milestones

Amid this uncertainty and what feels like never-ending change management, Dickinson and our Center for Global Study and Engagement have been celebrating. Yes, celebrating. This year, four of our study abroad programs reached special milestones—Dickinson in Germany, France, and Spain turned 40 and Dickinson in Italy turned 60. Our partners and program teams in Bremen, Toulouse, and Bologna (with Málaga to come in April 2026) rolled out the red carpet, and 500 of us across three cities raised glasses of sparkling wine to honor six decades of international partnerships that have changed countless lives.

These celebrations—ranging from a weeklong event series to one evening—brought together current and past staff, faculty, students, host families, institutional leaders from our Carlisle campus, and our local and global university partners.

At each event, the heart of the celebration was the deep, meaningful connections between people and places only possible through long-standing exchange partnerships. The gala in Bologna, held at Palazzo Re Enzo with more than 300 guests, offered a powerful moment to reflect on 60 years of study abroad at Dickinson and in the United States more broadly. In that historic hall stood a few alums from the original 1965 cohort, who traveled by ship to Italy, as well as alums across the decades alongside our current juniors embarking on a similar learning journey under vastly different circumstances. It left me wondering what has changed over those 60 years, and what has remained the same.

Connecting Past to Present

In the 1960s, U.S. study abroad grew as international education became closely linked to Cold War priorities and federally backed cultural exchange efforts. The Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961—commonly known as the Fulbright–Hays Act —passed in 1961, strengthening the government’s commitment to sending students overseas and further emphasizing the value of building understanding between people in the United States and other nations. This shift spurred the expansion of university programs abroad, language immersion initiatives, and cross-institutional partnerships. As a result, study abroad during this era served not only as an academic and personal growth opportunity for students, but also as a tool for U.S. international engagement. Students who went abroad in 1965 followed their own educational paths while also contributing to a wider national agenda that promoted overseas learning as part of U.S. diplomacy.

In the subsequent sixty years, international education became a field, and we now have a better understanding of its value in diplomatic efforts and how to better support students and their learning. At the same time, we have taken a more critical lens to international education, asking who benefits, who does not, and how global education can sometimes exacerbate rather than solve the world’s inequities.

So, what is the purpose for students studying abroad today and is that purpose more complicated now? Current students at Dickinson share many of the same goals as our alums from 1965: they want to learn about the world and themselves, and they are thinking about how they can grow, leave an impact, and make progress toward their degrees and dreams. Yet with international education under attack and nationalism on the rise with rhetoric and policies that not only vilify educational exchange but also restrict it, have today’s students lost a sense of clear purpose?

A Shared Vision Through the Years

At the center of my approach to international education sits hope, joy, and partnership. These celebrations only reinforce this framework. These working definitions guide my strategic decisions and strengthen my team’s shared purpose in the face of real challenges and distress. In an increasingly hostile environment for higher and international education, they remind us that we live in an interdependent world, and our work is part of a larger ecosystem that operates within a historical and political context.

Hope is about action and impact—why our work matters, who is included and excluded, and how we imagine and build something better together.

Joy is about purpose—what motivates us, how we center justice and reduce harm, and where we find the practices that fill our cup.

Partnership is about people—who our cocreators are, how we build equitable partnerships, and how we are better together.

International education is about imagining a better world together, even when we and the systems around us sometimes fall short of our ideals. Celebrating our long-standing programs and partnerships this past year reminded me why I do this work. The students who headed abroad in 1965 did so filled with hope. Our alums spoke about how their experiences shaped their futures and made a place that initially felt unfamiliar feel like a new home. Our current students are also hopeful and looking for belonging. Across generations, students may not know exactly what awaits them as they journey abroad, but they consistently find meaning and purpose in their lives through education abroad.

Celebrating 60 years of international education with people whose lives were so profoundly shaped by these programs—so much so that they traveled from around the world to mark the occasion—reinforced that what we do is impactful and we should hold on to hope. So, take a break for a moment from the anxieties of our day-to-day and grab a glass of something bubbly to celebrate what we do—it matters.  •

Samantha Brandauer is the associate provost and executive director of the Center for Global Study and Engagement at Dickinson College.