Vol State students, faculty visit Galapagos Islands for Spring travel study program

As international travel restrictions continue to loosen, students are taking to the sky to experience once-in-a-lifetime travel study programs.

One such trip through Volunteer State Community College in partnership with Tennessee Consortium for International Studies saw students and faculty travel to the Galápagos Islands, an island chain belonging to Ecuador, for 10 days earlier this spring.

The travel study program provided one credit towards students’ degrees and was an elective class that covered selective topics in biology such as interest in flora and fauna, the different species inhabiting the Galápagos Islands, natural selection and more.

“It was just such a great program,” Vol State student Grace Glover said.

Nearly two dozen students and faculty shared the waters 600 miles off the coast of South America with penguins, sea lions, rays and iguana and walked along the shore with blue footed boobies, red footed boobies and other species of centuries old bird life.

Students of all majors attended the travel study, Glover said, including biology, nursing, education, medical and laboratory technology students and more.

“It really made discussions really interesting because we were able to collaborate on what we were learning from our own end and incorporate that into what we were seeing,” Glover said.

Each day students participated in field trips around the volcanic archipelago straddling the equator in the Pacific Ocean.

One of those field trips included a 10-mile guided hike around Sierra Negra, a large inactive shield volcano on Isabela Island.

“The entire hike was just absolutely gorgeous, and our guide was handing us fresh guava off trees to eat, and I was like, ‘this is such a cool experience’,” she said.

“It was really such an immersive and beautiful program that we got to be a part of.”

Other experiences allowed students to observe the islands’ giant tortoises, thought to be a hundred years old, and other animals and birds found only on the islands that have not evolved over centuries, allowing for some truly unique and unusual characteristics.

How ‘broke college kids’ travel

“We’re all broke college students so I was like, ‘this is probably not the best time to do that’,” she said while considering traveling last Fall.

But after hearing one of her professors discuss the advantages of transferable skills from travel studies, she decided to learn more about the program, see what trips had been offered and seek out possible financial assistance and scholarships that could help offset the cost of a trip.

While browsing the TnCIS website, Glover discovered the Galápagos Islands trip and decided to apply, hoping to be accepted after a previous trip to the Dominican Republic fell through due to travel restrictions from COVID-19.

“This opportunity came around and I was like, ‘I have to get on it before it gets away from me’,” she said.

After two weeks of applications, essays and interviews, Glover was accepted into the program and received financial aid and scholarships that paid for about 80 percent of the trip’s expenses.

“And it was just such a memorable experience for me to be able to pursue something so harshly and it be rewarded, and I was actually able to go on this program,” she said.

Glover credits Vol State for its assistance and support throughout the process and doesn’t think the trip would have been possible without her school’s help.

And she urges other students to take advantage of the resources on campus for travel study programs through their own schools.

“I was like I don’t think I will ever get to travel and let alone I didn’t think I would ever get to travel before I was out of college,” she said.

“So, when I found out about this program I just was like, ‘Grace you’ve got to do this, you can’t miss this opportunity to go here’,” she said. “My professor that went on the program with us, she kept on telling us, ‘Y’all this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to travel and go to these beautiful islands and learn about so much.”

Returning home last month, Glover loves sharing her experience with others and educating people about the program and resources available to them.

“Really seek out those opportunities,” she said.

"Volunteer State Community College has really impacted my entire life and future career; they have really helped me exceed in ways that I never thought I could."

Katie Nixon can be reached at knixon@gannett.com or (615) 517-1285.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Vol State students, faculty visit Galapagos Islands for Spring travel study program