Semester at Sea Voyage Inspires, Cements Teaching Philosophy
Nearly 300 students, faculty, and staff funneled into the ship’s auditorium. On a typical cruise, the room, with two levels of seating towering over a stage, hosted various shows and other forms of entertainment.
Instead, everyone gathered for one of two classes required for participants of the 132nd Semester at Sea voyage. Co-taught by Katherine Grasso, Ph.D., associate professor of communication, this class was just one of many facets of Grasso’s sabbatical abroad that would ultimately shape her worldview and teaching philosophy.
Run in partnership with Colorado State University, Semester at Sea is a unique study-abroad program where students take classes aboard a cruise ship while traveling around the world. Classes are taught by experts in their field, like Grasso, who demonstrate a history of teaching excellence, significant real-world experience, a global perspective, and other qualifications.
“I’d heard from professors that they’d applied three or four times before being accepted, so I thought it would be like that,” Grasso says. “When I applied for the first time and was told I’d be part of the Fall 2023 voyage, it was faster than I expected. I think because I have experience teaching intercultural communication it was relevant for what they needed.”
For Grasso, teaching for Semester at Sea was momentous for two reasons. Not only because co-teaching hundreds of people during one of her classes challenged her to face her fear of public speaking head-on, but because the ship had been beckoning her to return ever since she was a student participant in 2009.
“Semester at Sea was such an amazing experience as a student that, once I became a professor, I thought, ‘Hey, that could be my route to get back on the ship. Let’s go back as an adult and do things differently.’”
During her voyage as a faculty member, Grasso taught Global Studies and Intercultural Communication. Despite being rerouted several times due to events ranging from natural disasters to war, the ship docked in a myriad of countries throughout Western Europe, the Mediterranean, South Africa, and East Asia.
Throughout the journey, Grasso’s students participated in classes, field experiences, and personal excursions. Along the way, they donated 40 coats to villagers in Vietnam, in addition to visiting an organization in Malta dedicated to providing language and life skills to migrants. Experiences like these deeply touched Grasso, who had learned to fully appreciate them.
“Compared to when I was a student, I had a more mature, compassionate outlook on what I was seeing and made a more deliberate effort to understand the communities that I was visiting rather than going places just to say I’ve been there,” she says.
Grasso acknowledges that not every student embarks on the journey to expand their worldview. However, she tried to catalyze growth by leading unique expeditions beyond what was required. One such expedition? Hiking in a Malaysian jungle.
“When we first set out, most of the students were stretching beyond what they would normally want to do. They had concerns such as, ‘We’re going to get wet. We’re going to get muddy. We’ll be covered in leeches, and we don’t know what it’s going to be like.’”
Her students were right. The hike was treacherous, the food unfamiliar—one night, they ate fried frogs from the river—and the accommodations were primitive. Despite all this, something magical happened.
“By the time we had hiked for several hours, the students had transformed,” says Grasso. “They were rugged outdoor people pulling the leeches off each other like it was nothing. To see students go from being timid to being excited and much braver was cool.”
This jungle experience, and others like it, helped transform Grasso’s teaching philosophy. While she is no stranger to international trips, having led DeSales students to Amsterdam and Copenhagen in past years, being a faculty member during the Fall 2023 Semester at Sea voyage solidified her desire to offer similar learning opportunities locally.
This spring semester, Grasso adapted her Intercultural Communication course at DeSales to include more lectures by local community members, as well as trips to places like a Quaker meeting, a mosque, a Hindu temple, and a Jewish synagogue.
Through these experiential learning opportunities, students gained a better understanding of the religious and cultural diversity around the Lehigh Valley. In the future, she also hopes to develop workshops or information sessions on why taking an interdisciplinary approach to education is key to providing a transformative experience.
“It’s so important to take students out of the classroom,” says Grasso. “As an educator, I’ve developed a strong sense of satisfaction in seeing students grow. I’m trying to carry on that passion for experiential learning with students. If we are going to talk about building skills in something in a classroom, we have to get outside and do it.”
