Dr. Shawna Dolansky and I met our first prospective students for the Israel travel course this afternoon. Dean John Osborne (who is contributing 15k from the FASS endowment to reduce costs for students in the course!) spoke eloquently about how such travel courses are life changing by speaking about his own experiences as an undergraduate and pointing with pride to the range of travel courses being offered in our faculty this year. The room was full of bright and excited students hearing for the first time the details of the itinerary and how the course will actually function. I was delighted by the diversity in the room: there were majors from architecture, business, sciences, and the humanities who were from a range of religious and ethnic backgrounds and nationalities (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, First Nations, Canada, India, Turkey, China to name a few). They still have to apply, and find the funds to pay for the course, but we are already imagining what an amazing first cohort this group would make -Deidre Butler