UW Alumni Tours
Thank you, Travelers!
My study abroad experience was such a blessing and it enriched my educational experience in ways I couldn’t have imagined possible. — Guadalupe Tovar, B.S., ’17, Astronomy
As a UW Alumni Tours traveler, you know how travel leads to personal discovery and strengthened community. In recognition of your commitment to the transformative power of travel, UW Alumni Tours has made a donation of $5,000 to the UW Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity‘s (OMA&D) Study Abroad Support Fund. This fund makes the dream of international travel an accessible possibility for all students.
OMA&D’s Study Abroad Support Fund helps students who are part of OMA&D’s Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) in their quest to participate in the UW’s study abroad programs. EOP students are underrepresented minority, first-generation and low-income students who might face barriers to travel.
Many students who receive scholarships are unable to accept them because they don’t have the financial resources to cover additional items like passport fees or buy airplane tickets far enough in advance to get the best price. This fund helps students with those costs, enabling them to take advantage of earned study abroad scholarships.
We are honored to pay it forward and helps student realize the dream and life-changing benefits of travel — in your name. Through travel, their limits are truly boundless. If you’d like to help multiply our impact, build on our commitment and donate to the Study Abroad Support Fund today.
Testimonial from a traveler and donor
“My story changes when I know your story.”
—Gordon Bettles (Klamath), Steward, Many Nations Longhouse, University of Oregon
Studying abroad is a choice to open one’s self up to more growthful and transformative experiences. It means seeing the world through a new, expanded lens. It is an experience that will likely overwhelm one’s senses — smells, taste, textures, architecture, landscape, language, music, people, art, institutions, culture — just to name a few. It can feel disorienting and cause one to miss home. However, in exchange, one’s ideas of place and home, family and friendships, social and political, expands, thereby promoting growth. Stepping outside one’s cultural collective and racial identity opens up and broadens one’s view of the world.
In a university study abroad program, students will have the opportunity to enhance their chosen field of study, as well as explore new fields of interest unique to the abroad site and experience. Students build confidence and independence, meet fellow students from other countries and make life-long friendships.
My husband and I rate highly UW Alumni Tours and appreciate fellow travelers’ efforts to increase student access to study abroad opportunities by donating to the OMA&D Study Abroad Fund.
—Romayne Watt, Member, Native American Advisory Board, University of Washington, UW Alumni Tours Traveler
