Story by Riley Palshaw
Each year, Mizzou Honors College students pack their suitcases and scatter across the world, chasing new experiences in places far from campus through study abroad. They go for different reasons – curiosity, adventure, academic opportunity – but they often return describing the same feeling. Studying abroad, they say, opened their eyes to new ways of living and learning, and became one of the most rewarding decisions they made at Mizzou.
The Honors College supports these experiences in more than one way. Some students travel through the college’s own faculty-led programs, which are designed with immersive coursework and hands-on learning that place students directly inside the issues they are studying. Others choose programs outside the Honors College and still earn credit toward their Honors Certificate, with up to six study abroad credit hours counting as long as they earn a “B” or higher. Together, these options make global learning accessible to a wide range of students, no matter their major or destination.
Junior Ivy Reed, an interdisciplinary student studying women’s and gender studies, Spanish and journalism, knew she wanted a program that would challenge her academically and linguistically. This past summer, Reed participated in the School of Languages’ intensive Spanish program, a two-month experience split between a month in Lima, Peru, and a month in northern Spain. Living with host families and taking university-level Spanish classes helped her move beyond what she could learn in a traditional college classroom.
“The thing to do when you study abroad and the way to immerse yourself in a culture is to speak the language,” says Reed, who is also a Stamps Scholar at Mizzou. “I want that to be a part of my experience.”
Her travels left such a lasting impression that Reed decided to apply to the School of Journalism’s Barcelona Internship Program for the 2025 fall semester, using part of her Stamps Scholarship enrichment funding to make the experience possible. Now she has been reporting and interviewing in Spanish every day at her two internships: one at RUIDO Photo, a documentary photojournalism organization, and another at Catalan News, an English-language news publication.
“It’s really been a great feeling to feel like I can communicate with people in a second language and tell their stories through journalism,” says Reed. “It’s also just been a great way to get to know Barcelona.”
Journalism student Matthew Gerber shared similar sentiments about his semester in Brussels, Belgium, through the School of Journalism’s Internship Program, where he is working with a communications and event planning agency. For him, studying abroad not only gave him more professional direction, but a stronger sense of self.
“Studying abroad also helped me become more resilient and comfortable with plans changing and things going wrong,” says Gerber. “The lockbox on your Paris AirBnb refusing to open is pretty nerve-wracking, but it teaches you how to operate under pressure and let go of stress to enjoy the rest of the day.”
For many Honors College students, that sense of resilience becomes an unexpected outcome of time spent abroad. Biomedical engineering major Jenna Skidmore felt it too during her three-week summer program with DIS Study Abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark. Receiving an Honors College Study Abroad Award helped ease the financial stress of traveling, but the experience itself pushed her far outside her academic comfort zone, and even further outside her personal one.
“I definitely left the experience feeling a lot more confident in myself and my ability to do hard things,” says Skidmore, “because I just hadn’t lived entirely cut off from everyone I know by an entire ocean before.”
Regardless of where Honors College students spend their time abroad, the challenges of navigating a new city, culture and language became a lesson in independence. The leap into international study is not just about travel, but about discovery and benefits that shape students long after they return to Mizzou.
And for anyone still debating whether the leap is worth it, Skidmore leaves them with this: “I would definitely encourage any Honors College student considering it to just take the jump.”