Bailey Buhrman
Creighton University’s Global Scholars Program is a four-year educational and professional development program designed to immerse select students in a variety of cultures for a rich academic, social and service experience. Bailey Buhrman is among the program’s first graduating class.
Creighton student’s global study experience stressed empathy, respect
Bailey Buhrman very much wanted to see the world, to explore other cultures and to encounter people who experienced life differently from the one she knew growing up in Omaha.
That became possible, while simultaneously pursuing a college education, when she noticed on the bottom of her acceptance letter from Creighton University a notation alerting her to a newly created global study program.
“On the very bottom it said, ‘Apply for our new Global Scholars Program,’” she says.
So, she did.
The Global Scholars Program, founded four years ago by Creighton University President the Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson, SJ, PhD, provides four global study and service experiences during four years of study. Two of those — Australia and the Dominican Republic — were common to all participants. Going forward, Sydney, Australia, has been replaced by Bologna, Italy.
Buhrman, a cultural anthropology and communication studies major who will graduate in May as part of Creighton’s first Global Scholars cohort, says the program satisfied both her desire to explore other cultures and her family’s hope that she might not wander too far from home.
Australia, she says, which she visited in her freshman year, felt safer than the United States given its absence of a gun culture. It also seemed more advanced in environmental stewardship. On the other hand, she says, the country seemed to be addressing civil rights issues that the United States confronted decades ago.
Her sophomore year trip to the Dominican Republic, Buhrman said, was “wildly different” from the bustling world of the University of Sydney.
“We learned a lot about the history of the Dominican Republic and the difficult race relations between Dominicans and Haitians,” she says.
She also learned that humility plays a role when serving in any nation.
“It was super important for my growth as a person, realizing that everybody has their own story and that it is not for me to say what is worse or better, just that people have different upbringings and hold perspectives on the world that are just as important as mine,” she says.
As for the future, exposure to the wider world has had its effect.
“I am already halfway through a graduate degree in conflict negotiation that I hope to complete by May of 2023,” she says. “I really just hope to work with people to bridge understandings of injustice, and why it occurs, and how we can be helpful.”
