Students studying in Telemark have the opportunity to learn Norwegian and participate in field trips that underscore outdoor life and regional identity. Lutes in Oslo focus on conflict resolution and peacebuilding, topics Norway is deeply committed to, Williams said. The country is engaged in a dynamic discussion defining and redefining its international roles, and PLU students participate in dialogue on issues such as European integration and multiculturalism in schools.

Before five Pacific Lutheran University students could finishing unpacking boxes in the house on South Grant Avenue in Tacoma’s Hilltop neighborhood, they were already learning about the new community they call home.

Christina Easley ’19 says she’s seen beautiful artwork along the downtown corridor while riding the bus that takes her to and from PLU’s campus.

“I had never noticed before,” she said.

That’s exactly what the Tacoma Immersion Experience Semester (TIES) program is challenging students to do — look at the community just outside PLU’s boundaries in new ways.

“It breaks all the rules,” Joel Zylstra said of the program, which launched this semester. (In a good way, he added). Zylstra’s the director of the Center for Community Engagement and Service, which houses the new program.

The study away experience, the newest Gateway program through the Wang Center for Global Education, is the result of three years of intensive planning. It started with an idea in the early 2000s to provide living and learning re-entry for students who study away and gain a rich new perspective.

In 2003, Zylstra said students coming back from the twin-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago struggled to acclimate back into campus culture.

“Everything felt trivial,” he said, adding that students wanted to pursue ways to apply the racial consciousness and diversity-minded skills they learned abroad here at home.

So, faculty members JoDee Keller, Elizabeth Brusco and Barbara Temple-Thurston started an immersive experience for students in the Salishan community, a diverse mixed-income neighborhood in Tacoma.

Eventually, the program will evolve to include about 12 students, Zylstra says. Once it’s fully fleshed out, students will take a class exclusively offered to the TIES group and two classes of their choice at off-campus locations, in addition to an internship or community-based research opportunity. (This year, students are participating in a slightly modified schedule to start.)

“I’m already aware of so many organizations I didn’t know existed,” said Easley, who is working at the Tacoma Community House this semester.

The Center for Community Engagement and Service serves as a foundation for the TIES program. Many of the organizations and local connections are built upon the work done within CCES. It epitomizes the Wang Center’s goal with Gateways — maintaining a strong, mutually beneficial relationship between the university and a community or region.

Rachel Haxtema, TIES program coordinator, says students gain just as much from learning about Tacoma as they do from learning about any place abroad.

While developing the program, organizers talked a lot about falling in love with Tacoma, something she hopes for TIES students learning about the City of Destiny.

“If you take the time to immerse yourself in that same way you do abroad, you can have the same experience,” Haxtema said.

Zylstra agreed, stressing that an immersive experience teaches students a lot no matter how far they travel.

“If you can learn how to examine and engage any community, it’s a transferrable set of skills,” he said. “It’s learning how to study communities.”

Yannet Urgessa ’16 feels comfortable here, and she’s got the hair to prove it. It’s big. It’s curly. And, she says, it’s unapologetically black.

“A lot of growth I’ve done is reflected in my hair,” she said.

Urgessa didn’t always wear her confidence so proudly on her head. After emigrating from Ethiopia, she grew up in Bergen, Norway, among a sea of silky, blond hair.

She said wearing her hair in an Afro “freaked my friends out.” So, from the time she was 13 years old, Urgessa straightened her hair daily.

The decision catered to her white friends, she says in hindsight. She sacrificed the health of her hair to make them feel comfortable, and the damage went deeper than her roots and split ends.

When Urgessa talks about the stages of her hair, it’s more than a statement about fashion or beauty. It’s a symbol of her constant identity struggle, an indicator of the growth she’s made as an international student at Pacific Lutheran University.

Her family relocated when she was 6 years old, fleeing a country rife with political instability. Her family never abandoned their ethnic Oromo roots, but actively immersed themselves in their new culture.

Now, she’s relocated again, extending her international education to a third continent as a sociology major at PLU.

The university’s commitment to global education is a value that’s familiar to Urgessa. She speaks five languages — Amhara and Oromo that are native to Ethiopia, English, Norwegian and German — and learned from an early age to act as a citizen of the world.

“My parents did a really good job of fostering a global community within our household,” she said.

Urgessa spends a lot of time thinking about her identity and how it fits within that global community. “After I came to PLU, that’s when I had the biggest struggle figuring out how to identify who I am,” she said.

Once she arrived, she interacted with students of color who were confident in their own skin.

“I had never experienced that before,” she said. Many of her new friends at PLU were social justice advocates who “embraced their blackness,” she said, and it inspired her to follow their lead.

So, among other changes, she stopped straightening her hair. Through her newfound support system, immersion in PLU’s Diversity Center and sociology classes, Urgessa became equally comfortable in her own skin in yet another new culture thousands of miles from home.

“I found that I could be unapologetically who I wanted to be,” she said.

Urgessa said her PLU experience has been pivotal in strengthening her values as a global citizen, but she said it isn’t easy for everyone to embrace cultural immersion. To help her fellow international students get the most out of their experience abroad, Urgessa became an international peer advisor (IPA).

IPAs usher new international students through their first week at the university, offering them advice, guidance and support as they navigate their new community.

Urgessa uses her role to proactively avoid common pitfalls, such as students forming cliques with peers from the same country. She intentionally came to PLU without friends in tow, and encourages the same mentality among the international students she advises.

Urgessa’s cultural immersion won’t end with graduation. She plans to obtain a work visa and attend graduate school. She hopes to work in law and participate in ongoing activism. “I want to create change somehow,” she said.

Eventually, she will return to Norway. But she isn’t ready just yet. No matter where her global citizenship takes her, Urgessa will continue to be herself — unapologetically.

“I’m brave enough to challenge certain things,” she said of living in the U.S., “and safe enough to challenge them.”

The white vans pulled into the parking lot at Washburn’s General Store along Bayview Avenue — known to locals as Front Street — as they have every year for 21 of the past 23 years.

The faces of the Pacific Lutheran University students who filed into the store were new, but that didn’t matter.

“Are you guys PLU?” someone asked. “Where’s Dave?”

Still, even though he’s considered an adopted member of the community, Huelsbeck is careful not to take the lead.

“It’s an issue of authority,” he said. “I’m one kind of authority on Makah culture, but I’m not Makah.”

So, staff from the Makah Cultural and Research Center (MCRC) heavily influence the direction of the study away experience. Janine Ledford, executive director of the MCRC, and others create and coordinate the 12-day schedule of activities and lectures.

“I’m hoping the experience coming to Neah Bay and (learning about) Makah culture will lead to a reflection on their own lives, what it means to be a human in the company of others,” said Greg Colfax, a Makah carver who worked on the Ozette excavation effort. He shared a lecture about his experiences at the site.

Colfax spent more than two years at Ozette, working in a number of roles, including bringing clams and sockeye to the workers and guarding the site upon appointment from the police chief.

Beyond that, Ledford says, all students attend college, join the Job Corps or enlist in the military after high school. Many of them eventually return, to apply the skills they’ve gained within the community.

“People stay here through the good, the bad and the inbetween,” Ledford said.

Many tribal members say that success in school is a direct result of the strong ties to identity, and the respect the school district has for that identity.

Yvonne Wilkie, a storyteller who invited PLU students to her home, said cultural education builds confidence and empowers students.

“They are comfortable in their own skin,” she said. “It makes a huge difference in how they think of themselves. And they know they always have this community to come back to.”

That community is one that is present at every stage of life, for everyone. PLU has become a part of the fabric, at least for a short time each January.

One Friday night during J-Term, Huelsbeck brought PLU students to Neah Bay High School’s boys and girls basketball games. It’s an annual tradition that shows one way Makah culture intersects with that of PLU students — a slice of small-town America under Friday night lights, Huelsbeck says.

Nearly everyone the students met from Day One sat courtside. Both teams won handily, against a backdrop of enthusiastic support from relatives, extended family, friends and more. (Those family values stick with PLU students long after they return home.)

Every few minutes, a familiar face greeted Huelsbeck. Each one took a seat next to him, eager to hear about this year’s group from PLU. Some lingered longer than others, but all parted with the same farewell message:

“Welcome back to Neah Bay, Dave.”

In Namibia, he gained experience dealing with issues that teachers in those situations face — poverty, language barriers, lack of resources — in a global context.

Not all the teaching moments were easy, but Sam said they were necessary.

“Struggling with things is where learning happens,” he said. “You have to go into a study abroad experience with a growth mindset, because it’s going to be hard. You have to be resilient. There is no going back home.”

Education major Anna Parker ’17 said those unexpected challenges offered the most enriching learning opportunities.

She said she learned to be resourceful during her time co-teaching with her mentor, since Namibian teachers often must create any of the learning materials they use from scratch — such as letters that adorn the walls or illustrations in picture books.

She had students in her classrooms from each country exchange letters. “I wanted them to understand where I was going and what I was doing,” she said of her American students. “I wanted to use it as a teaching tool.”

Sam and Allison credit Windhoek “100 percent” for finding each other. Their wedding rings were handcrafted by a Namibian jeweler, and their home is adorned with souvenirs from their time there — reminders of the time everything changed.

But the biggest reminder of their time studying away is the love they have for the work they do.

The experiences that landed them where they are today came with plenty of challenges, but the Namibia program allowed them more space to dive deeper into those complexities.

Candice Hughes ’08 grew up in Sangre Grande, the largest town in northeastern Trinidad, part of the twin-island Caribbean nation Trinidad and Tobago. All things considered, she knew her home well.

That’s when Hughes started to look beyond her rudimentary understanding of Trinidadian traditions she thought she knew so well.

“When you live in a place, you don’t question things,” Hughes said. “Before I got involved in this program, I didn’t even know half of this stuff.”

That stuff, Hughes and others say, transforms those who experience it. Students meet the “living legends” who have mastered steelpan and calypso music. They experience the revival of the cocoa industry and get an intimate look at the planning behind exuberant events such as Carnival and Panorama.

And, most importantly, they dive into deep questions about identity, race, gender, colonialism and other complexities.

“It’s a growing and learning experience,” said Maya Bamba ’18, who participated in the program spring 2016. “You will come back a different person, whether you realize it or not.”

Hughes is still experiencing growth, through the eyes of current Lutes. She’s the on-site program coordinator, based near the University of the West Indies, located just outside Port of Spain.

“Candice is a living example of a PLU education living out in the world,” said Greg Youtz, Trinidad program director and professor of music. “It’s a dream team we have working with us in Trinidad.”

“Trinidadians say it like it is,” Temple-Thurston said. “It changes our students profoundly.”

It wasn’t enough for students to attend the university, however. Temple-Thurston wanted them immersed in the community — one foot on campus, one in the folk culture.

Trini native John Cupid was the key to successful immersion, she said. He contacted Temple-Thurston out of the blue, when he learned she was developing the program. His local connections led to rich experiences off campus and eventually improved the cultural competence of the University of the West Indies, as well.

Youtz said Carnival is a collective statement about Trinidad’s history and culture — an “astonishing explosion of human creativity.” Students learn traditional choreography, choose their own costumes and think through the meaning behind them. One year, PLU and its students were featured for nearly 10 minutes during the national broadcast.

“People are blown away,” Hughes said. “Because students are able to go beyond that tourist view of Trinidad and Tobago, locals are willing to open up to them. It’s a partnership that’s formed.”

As a result, learning goes beyond lectures in a classroom at the university. It includes seeking out the “living legends,” as Hughes calls them, learning from the personal experience of those who have witnessed the cultural traditions as they’ve formed.

The list of legends includes world-renowned authors, calypso artists, Carnival designers and more.

Shelondra Harris ’17 said it’s amazing to be a part of such a spectacular event and have the opportunity to meet local celebrities and leaders.

“It’s really cool that the program allows us to have these interactions,” she said during her time in Trinidad. “Everyone you meet, whether they are a historian or a person on the street, they know some bit about their history.”

Hughes hopes that fellow Lutes who return from Trinidad will be inspired to learn more about their own cultures — just as she did. Perhaps they will take that first trip to Mount Rainier, or explore corners of their community they never knew existed.

“You return with that vigor,” she said. “That vigor of understanding your own self, understanding your own community, understanding your own country.”

As for the students who have yet to open that door, Hughes says, Trinidadians are waiting.

“Everybody knows PLU’s coming,” she said. “They are expecting us.”

Editor’s note: The name of the undocumented student featured in this story was changed to protect her identity. Given the uncertain future of the immigration policy Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), ResoLute granted anonymity to “Sophia” in order for her to speak freely about her experience with the Oaxaca, Mexico, study away program.

Sophia, who holds a work permit, is a beneficiary of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an immigration policy started by the Obama administration in 2012 that allows undocumented minors and students to remain in the U.S. as well as study at American colleges.

A laborious process landed Sophia in that airport, pondering her identity alongside fellow Lutes.

“I wasn’t sure if I was to go to the visitor’s side because I had advance parole paperwork, or if I was to go through the domestic line since I carried a Mexican passport,” she said. “It took me a solid five minutes before I went directly to an officer to ask.”

That was the first development in Sophia’s semester-long identity struggle, one that continues more than a year after she returned to the U.S.

“Even in the airport,” she said, “there was a clash of identity.”

Then, a thief nearly robbed Sophia of the fruits of her persistence.

En route to one of three jobs, just before taking her important documents to her sister’s house for safe keeping, Sophia’s wallet was stolen out of her car while she pumped gas. The documentation she needed to travel — including her Social Security card, work authorization card and passport — was gone.

Though Sophia worked diligently to replace the documents, she doubted that Oaxaca was still in the picture and eventually withdrew from the program.

“At that point going to Mexico was the last thing on my mind,” she said.

The constant reflection and evaluation was, and continues to be, a meaningful experience, Sophia stressed. She said the study away program prompted her to ask bigger questions about her identity — growth that went beyond the scope of the coursework.

Still, the program itself is powerful. It includes an intensive Spanish course, a salsa dancing class, an immersive homestay with a local family, participation in Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) festivities, nonprofit internship opportunities and more.

Sophia volunteered with Fundación En Vía, an organization that supports social and community development through microfinance, responsible tourism and education. Empowering women is key to the nonprofit.

Ann Auman, professor of biology and program director for the study away program in Namibia, is bringing a research component to her students’ semester away in spring 2017 thanks to Wang Center funding.

Auman, a microbiologist, is guiding her students in an experiment studying so-called “gut biology.” Students will swab stool samples (yes, science can be dirty work) and mail them to a lab for testing before and during their time in Namibia to compare how microbes in their bodies change, due to shifts in diet, environmental conditions and more.

Microbes share a lot of information about human health, Auman says. Imbalances may be affected by diseases, such as diabetes. They also may affect a person’s mental health or likelihood of weight gain.

“It’s telling you how you compare to the average healthy person,” Auman said. “Often the gut influences things we didn’t realize.”

It’s not a glamorous task, of course, but it will offer a detailed look into the students’ bodies and provide an educational experience that forces them to look at the research in a new context, Auman said.

“It’s important to recognize that science crosses international boundaries,” she said.

The Wang Center funded gut microbiome sequencing kits for the experiment. The testing amounts to about $50 per person, per sample.

The experiment will contribute to a wide-ranging study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. “They want lots of people to participate,” Auman said of NIH.

Auman already has tested a version of this experiment with capstone students on campus at PLU. They looked at their test results and chose interesting data points to reflect upon and analyze.

In Namibia, students will build upon that approach by also reflecting on the factors they believe impacted the changes, as well as what those findings mean for Namibians’ microbiomes.

Auman noted that many of the diseases that affect microbiomes are often Western diseases.

“Our Western culture tends to diminish the diversity of microbiomes,” she said; the diversity of them correlates with human health.

In other words, more diversity of microbiomes means healthier people.

Auman left for Namibia Jan. 8, 2016, with her 12-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter. Her children are enrolled in a private international school in Windhoek. She’s excited for them to experience the same cultural education that her PLU students will experience.

“We need to be culturally aware,” she said, “whether we’re scientists or just people.”