Student Life Reflection

by Paul Hagen, Dean of Students

Over the next few days four hundred EPS students will embark on 18 local, domestic, and international EBC Week experiences. Students will build an electric car, hike through the canyons of Utah, explore the arts of LA, visit with lawmakers in D.C., replant forests in Madagascar, and participate in a host of other activities both on and off campus. It should come as no surprise that an undertaking of this magnitude takes a good deal of effort to pull off. There are flights to book, forms to sign, bags to pack, passport photos to take, meals to arrange, equipment to purchase, activities to plan, hotels to reserve, itineraries to set, and on and on…

So why do we do it? Why do we dedicate so much time and energy to one week of travel in the spring? The simple answer is because it is important. There are lessons that can only be taught beyond the classroom, and these are often the lessons that will last a lifetime. “Travel and change of place,” wrote Seneca in the First Century, “impart new vigor to the mind.” Students are about to engage in a week of transformative travel, a week that they will undoubtedly return from with fresh perspectives and a more vigorous mind.