Alumna Offers Financial Support for Students' Summer Immersion
A Wilmington College alumna and member of the Board of Trustees financially supported sending four students to Colombia this summer based upon her love for travel and the new worlds it has opened during her lifetime.
PICTURED: From the left, Dr. Jeff Stahley and Elizabeth Garvey chat with the students gong to Colombia, Blake O'Brien, Trentin Alexander, Pedro Escobedo and Ashley Mullen.
Elizabeth Garvey, a member of the Class of 1965 and a Quaker member of the Board, gave an initial $2,000 gift to the Spanish Enrichment Initiative and later, after a student letter-writing campaign seeking support from others, a matching gift that helped bolster the $10,000 fund in support of deferring students' travel expenses for this cultural immersion.
"There's a big world out there," Garvey said when she met the students during her time on campus for the April Board meetings. "You will come back speaking Spanish at two or three levels higher than when you arrived."
Blake O'Brien, Trentin Alexander, Pedro Escobedo and Ashley Mullen will spend a month in Cartagena, Colombia, this summer with Dr. Jeff Stahley, associate professor of Spanish. He has been taking students to Colombia since 2012. This will be his sixth trip to that nation and 11th overall to Latin American locales with WC students.
They will study at the Centro Catalina in Cartagena. This trip is the latest excursion in the College's study-abroad program, which offers hands-on learning experiences around the world ranging from week-long study tours to extended stay trips and full semesters abroad.
"You'll be so aware of getting better throughout the month," Stahley told the students. "It will be fun for me to see the progress you'll make."