The long-lasting impacts of FlagSHIP at Flagler

By Emily Braunstein

FlagSHIP courses are not about tourism or vacationing, but rather immersing students in the culture of a new city.

FlagSHIP — short for Flagler Sophomore High Impact Practice — provides opportunities for Flagler College sophomores to learn about the global or local community and have unique experiences with powerful, long-lasting impacts on the students.

Professor Sandy Gehring taught her FlagSHIP course on homelessness in St. Augustine. This is a significant issue in the community that many students overlook, and Gehring’s goal was to inform the students on the issue and its solutions.

“I often hear every semester that the course is the most powerful, humbling and life-changing course they have taken here at Flagler,” Gehring said.

Being an instructor, there is a responsibility to teach students in a way that makes a lasting impact. In Gehring’s course, students regularly prepared and served dinner to the homeless at the St. Francis House homeless shelter. They also helped to build a new home for Habitat for Humanity of St. Johns County.

“Over the years that I have taught this course, I have seen students become much more aware of the complexities of being unhoused in St. Augustine,” Gehring said.

During Gehring’s FlagSHIP course, they have often done a “sleep out” night, where students have slept outside of FEC or in their cars. This has educated students on how difficult living without our usual comforts can be.

“I think that it is unique and students have an incredibly special and personalized opportunity to learn in ways that are innovative and outside of normal classroom limitations,” said Brenda Kauffman, Ph.D, associate professor of Political Science & International Studies, director of International Studies, and FlagSHIP coordinator.

Kauffman teaches Costa Rica: Sustainability, Farming and Culture, where students spent several days working for an animal rehabilitation facility. The hands-on learning experience gives a different perspective on learning, unlike just the classroom.

“Immersing oneself into a new culture is an excellent way to recognize one’s own cultural biases and orientations, as well as to discover the way power and privilege impact people all over the world in different ways,” Kauffman said.

Nicholas B. Miller, Ph.D. and associate professor of History, teaches his course on history and culture in Lisbon, Portugal. FlagSHIP is about seeking an authentic perspective of a new city, above and beyond a typical tourist experience.

“The degree to which my FlagSHIP integrates daily activities into comprehensive lesson plans makes this somewhat different than a normal tourist experience, allowing the students to participate and understand the cultural opportunities in a much deeper way than most tourists,” Miller said.

Unlike a typical vacation, students are visiting a new place in an educational way. Miller taught in Lisbon prior to teaching at Flagler, so he was able to use his local knowledge and contacts in the city to give students a personal experience.

“The experience really expanded students’ cultural horizons. Over the week that we were in Lisbon, I saw the students become more familiar with the city. By the end of the trip, they seemed quite comfortable in Lisbon and increasingly able to navigate the city independently,” Miller said.

The students were able to become familiar with a new city and learn about the culture of a new community from their FlagSHIP experience.

“Especially for those students who have not yet traveled abroad, I think they took away from the experience a far greater appreciation of the scale of cultural differences that exist, including in seemingly everyday dynamics that one usually takes for granted,” Miller said

This immersion into a new culture and first-hand experiences have impacted Flagler sophomores in a way that classroom experiences couldn’t.

“Flagship impacted my life because it opened my eyes to a whole other world outside of our own, and truly showed me how privileged we are and how much we take everything we have for granted,” Natalie Finerty, sophomore, said. Finerty did the Culture, Environment, and Development FlagSHIP in Kenya.

Many sophomores, still at a young adult age, do not have much experience traveling or immersing in other cultures. FlagSHIP provides, what is to many students, a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“My favorite parts were definitely getting out of my comfort zone and learning to be uncomfortable because of everything that I have grown up with the privilege of having. I also met some of my lifelong friends there that I would not have gotten through the trip without,” Finerty said.