The world as their classroom

More than 60 Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts students spent their summer creating art, forging friendships and immersing themselves in cultures half a world away.

It’s part of a shifting global strategy for the college. Rather than focusing on recruiting international students through the Global Arts Academy, the college is expanding international experiences for current students.

“As visa policies changed, we had to put recruiting international students to come study in Nebraska on hold,” said Andy Belser, dean of the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts. “We have flipped our model to now offer our current students more international experiences. These will come in the form of a typical 10- to 20-day trip abroad. But starting next year, it will also include intensive teaching or artistic engagement for students. Meanwhile, we seek to maintain our current international connections and relationships so that we can recruit internationally again when it becomes feasible to do so.”

Next summer, the college will offer Experiencing Culture Through the Arts in Vietnam, where approximately 30 students from multiple disciplines will build a cabaret show in a week in Vietnam. The program will be led by Acting Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Dance Susan Ourada and Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film Director Hank Stratton, along with additional faculty representing musical theatre, entertainment design and production, graphic design and emerging media arts.

“We’ll have UNL faculty mentoring the UNL students, who will then mentor the Vietnamese high school students. We’re planning to do one block of time in Ho Chi Minh City and one block in Hanoi,” Ourada said. “Musical theatre is a popular thing around the world, and I think that a lot of the American standard musical theatre music is known to people around the world. I think it’s very exciting to think about bringing some of that to the students in Vietnam.”

“This isn’t simply about taking American musical theatre to Vietnam,” Stratton said. “It’s about creating a genuine exchange where students learn to lead, collaborate and listen across cultures. We want them to return as stronger artists, certainly, but also as more thoughtful global citizens who understand that storytelling is one of the most powerful ways people connect across languages and borders.”

The students will also visit Sa Pa, a mountainous town in northwestern Vietnam known for its terraced rice fields, where they will participate in homestays with local hill tribes.

“We want students to get more than just an urban cultural experience in Vietnam,” Ourada said.

Additional offerings in 2027 will include the return of Music and Sound in Mexico City and a new Music in Prague course in Czechia.

Ourada said these international experiences are important for students to have.

“I always love that kind of one-world experience for people where students can meet someone from a very different culture and just see how we’re all sort of the same,” she said. “We’re interested in the same things and just how exciting it can be to interface with a different culture.”

This past summer, four study-abroad courses were offered:  Seoul Immersion: Design, Media & Innovation in South Korea, led by emerging media arts and graphic design faculty members Jinku Kim, Jen Landis and Rachel Stuckey; Story Abroad: City as Story Space in London, led by Assistant Professor of Emerging Media Arts Bryan Jackson; Study at Shakespeare’s Globe in London, led by Associate Professor of Practice in Theatre Rafael Untalan and Associate Professor of Theatre Michelle Harvey; and Music and Sound in Mexico City, led by Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology Kristen Graves.

Seoul: Collaboration across cultures

Kim said Seoul was the perfect place for graphic design and emerging media arts students to explore design and media together.

“Seoul Immersion was a two-week study-abroad course that used Seoul as a living classroom for students to explore design, media, technology, culture and everyday urban life,” he said. “Seoul is a particularly rich place to explore that intersection [between graphic design and emerging media arts] because the city brings together layers of history and tradition with contemporary design, technology and media culture.”

A centerpiece of the course was “Ping Pong: In Between Conversations,” a two-day collaboration in which mixed teams of UNL and Kookmin University students created multimedia projects inspired by both Nebraska and Seoul. The partnerships began before departure through virtual meetings and continued in person as students gathered sounds, photographs, videos and observations from each culture before presenting collaborative works. 

“The collaboration was one of the most valuable parts of the class,” Kim said. “Students learned from one another not only through formal activities but through conversation, shared experiences and spending time together.”

Stuckey said the goal was to provide experiences students could never have as tourists.

“They got to do a two-day project with Korean students, visit studios and universities and really interact with Korea in a deeper way,” she said.

For senior emerging media arts major Devon Williams, collaborating with Korean students was the reason she returned to Seoul after participating in a different study-abroad program in 2024.

“To find students halfway across the globe who were studying the same subjects as me was genuinely exciting,” Williams said. “It felt more like exploring the city with friends.”

Senior graphic design and computer science major Sophia Harding said working alongside Kookmin students reinforced that creativity transcends borders.

“College students are college students, no matter where you are in the world,” she said. “I feel as though I am a better designer, citizen and person after this experience.”

“Technical ability is important, but the ability to listen, adapt, respect context, build relationships and work with others is just as important,” Kim said. “This class gave students a meaningful opportunity to practice those skills.”

The students’ projects from “Ping Pong: In Between Conversations” were exhibited in June at the CICA Museum (Czong Institute for Contemporary Art) in Gimpo, South Korea. Stuckey also presented about the project at the CICA New Media Art Conference.

“It’s 10 times cooler that it’s being shown in Seoul, South Korea,” Williams said of the exhibition. “It’s incredibly rewarding to see all our hard work on display in a genuine museum. Two days of collaboration might not seem like a lot of time, but the amount of creativity that bloomed from those 48 hours was incredible.”

While there, Belser signed a letter of intent with the College of Design at Kookmin University to expand student and faculty exchanges and strengthen academic collaboration between the two schools.

London: Storytelling through place

In London, students explored how place shapes storytelling while creating their own short audiovisual projects inspired by the city.

“Story Abroad London deepens students’ understanding of storytelling and expands their sense of what is possible,” Jackson said. “It’s a course where learning unfolds in the streets, theatres, galleries, museums, libraries and community centers of London—a world capital of art and culture.”

Students attended a production of the new play “1536,” participated in a private question-and-answer session with the playwright, actors and sound designer, visited the House of Annetta community space and premiered their final productions in a local theatre, among other activities.   

Emerging media arts senior Meredith Koehler said speaking with the creative teams behind the productions was among the most memorable parts of the trip.

“We got the opportunity to do a Q&A with a few of the actors from ‘1536,’ the writer of the play and the sound designer,” she said. “We then were able to chat with the cast of ‘Redcliffe’ after their show as it was their first public performance of the musical. Another highlight for me personally was visiting the city of Richmond and going to the pub that was in the show ‘Ted Lasso.’”

Senior emerging media arts major Marley Svoboda said the class encouraged students to interpret London in personal ways.

“We were exposed to lots of new things and encouraged to run with them in whatever direction we wanted,” she said. “The assignment was to make a short audio-video project using clips we gathered on the trip. We had a screening of the final projects in a local theatre, and it was amazing to see the different interpretations of the prompt.”

“I wanted this international experience in order to understand how a different country interacts with the fine arts,” Koehler said. “It broadened my view of what's possible career-wise in emerging media arts.”

Svoboda said travel makes distant places tangible.

“Traveling helps to make the rest of the world real. Once you meet the locals and really get to know their lifestyle, the place no longer seems abstract. Traveling breaks down cultural barriers,” she said. “It has made me a more understanding and inclusive person.”

Jackson said these kinds of international experiences are important for students.

“International experiences like this study abroad course are essential for students who are staking out their place in the world and learning to see themselves as in the middle of everything,” Jackson said. “It’s critical they see themselves and their creative works in context of the international marketplace of ideas.”

Mexico City: Learning to listen

In Mexico City, students explored the city through the concept of deep listening— understanding not only what they heard, but the cultural context behind every sound. Whether documenting street musicians, listening to vendors' marketing calls or exploring neighborhoods, students learned to experience the city with all their senses.

“One of the purposes of the class was to get students listening all the way around in every direction and thinking about what those sounds might mean,” Graves said. “Watching students navigate brand new experiences was an honor.”

The course was one of four offered in Mexico City this summer through the Nebraska Global Experience Office's first study-abroad hub. Other courses included offerings in agriculture, entrepreneurship and the Center for Academic Success and Transition (CAST).

Among the highlights was a visit to the National Sound Archive, where students listened to curated recordings and explored how sound preserves history and culture. They also traveled to an Indigenous chinampa farm, where they learned about traditional agriculture while paying attention to the sounds of insects, plants and the surrounding environment.

For sophomore music education major Brennan Clark, the experience reshaped both his musicianship and his worldview.

“I learned so much about myself, life and the world,” Clark said. “You learn how to communicate with others you might not share a language with. Being somewhere that does not have the same cultural norms really opens your eyes to how there is not just one way to go about living life.”

The interdisciplinary nature of the trip also stood out.

“Since I was very focused on the sounds and music I was hearing, it was nice to hear what the people studying business were focusing on,” Clark said. “The classes were helping each other out and enriching each other.”

Graves said the shared experience strengthened students' connections to one another while demonstrating music's power to bring people together across cultures.

“As much as I love our new music building, I think getting out of the building, having students practice public listening, having them witness music in the wild, so to speak, but also in a place that is brand new for them, was really helpful. It just pushed them in brand new ways. Music is a low-risk way to connect with people.”

—Study at Shakespeare’s Globe in London took place in July, after our publication deadline.