Austria: Salzburg & Vienna

As part of my work with the Miami Dade College Honors College, I participated in the Global Citizenship Alliance's Spring Seminar on Global Citizenship six times as the Lead Faculty Advisor for a group of our students and faculty.

This program in Salzburg, Austria provided an intensive seven-day international experience for participants to explore pressing issues of global concern and to view such issues from a perspective both literally and figuratively outside the borders of the United States. Each Seminar session was full of new learnings - particularly paradigm shifts in my views of environmental sustainability, the roles of education, immigration, problem-solving, and international collaboration. I always left each Seminar with a better understanding of the international political order, the global economy, worldwide social developments, what it means to be a global citizen, and, most importantly, with the desire and ability to envision and affect positive change in my College and community. The Seminars changed my ways of thinking and teaching like no other professional development activities I had ever known.

The city of Salzburg itself was particularly meaningful place for me because my father, who served in the US Army during WWII, was part of the force that liberated the city from the German army in April 1945. Energized by this creative and intellectually charged atmosphere, I used the breaks between the daily sessions and while students were working on their group projects to make the photographs in this gallery. I wandered the grounds of the Seminar setting (Schloss Leopoldskron or Schlosswirt zu Anif and their neighborhoods) and all over Salzburg's Old City.

A day visit to the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial in Germany, and a day of cultural activities in Vienna at the conclusion of the Seminar offered more opportunities for making photographs.