These are essential life skills for entering the workforce or graduate school or if you are planning to do mission and service work. Mara Kaufman '98 said her SST experience in Costa Rica, which led her to further study in Central America, literally challenged her thinking about herself and her goals. By working and living with people from another culture, you are seeing their day to day lives - you can't get that from a lecture. SST is a central component of GC's international education program, which stresses ideals such as intercultural understanding, peace-making, living simply and equality for all persons. This program is vital to the college's mission - and to GC's motto, Culture for Service.
Many colleges offer a liberal arts curriculum, and some offer an international education program.
GC, however was one of the first colleges in the nation to require international education. And SST is different from other programs in the way it incorporates service-learning, earning GC global recognition for its innovative approach to intercultural education. By combining academic study with personal experience, students develop intercultural openness, an understanding of their own and another culture from a different perspective, social and spiritual sensitivity, a deepening of personal faith and world views and a healthy understanding of self and others. Though the timing is different for each person, students usually plan SST for their sophomore or junior year, depending on the desired destination, academic and extracurricular schedules, requirements for majors and other variables. Faculty advisers work with individuals to determine when to schedule SST in their plan of study.