Associate Professor of Criminal Justice Jill Fort, Ph.D. along with 12 Newman University students will be joining Associate Professor of History Kelly McFall, Ph.D. on his bi-annual trip to Europe this May. They will visit six cities in 20 days, and will also be taking a side trip to Budapest where they will visit Newman University alumnus Levente “Levi” Nyitrai.
The six cities will include London, Vienna, Cracow, Prague and Amsterdam. While the group explores the cities, they will be visiting a variety of historical and tourist sights such as cathedrals, museums, castles, and palaces, along with a variety of everyday sightings such as homey neighborhoods and local restaurants.
One of McFall’s goals for this trip is to, “help them [the students] understand what it looks like and feels like to be an ordinary person in Europe, not a tourist.”
McFall chose these particular cities to visit partly because these are cities that have experienced dramatic changes in the past 50 years or more.
“I want to give them a sense of European history by visiting specific cities that have been changed,” McFall said. “I hope that the students will get a better understanding of the European past and how it has shaped the present. I also hope that students will better understand the Europe of today and how it relates to the United States and to them.”
McFall took his first trip with Newman in 2009, so this will be his fifth time going. The trip takes a year to plan — its advertising began last May — and McFall has been recruiting, booking, and getting train tickets ever since.
Full and early preparation is part of what will make this trip a success along with having a guide who knows where he is going.
McFall’s ultimate goal of the trip is so that “students will gain confidence of traveling, about how to travel in a foreign country, and I hope that students will gain a better understanding of who they are themselves and how they’ve changed over time.”
