Growing up in a French immersion program in Louisiana, Maggie knew she wanted to pursue her love of language and culture in her collegiate studies and career path–but how do you do that? Growing up with a single mom, Maggie knew she needed to work hard to earn scholarships for college, and also find ways to fund her desire to study abroad. Little did she know, she would one day become a Study Abroad Advisor, then Director, and now be a Director of Global Engagement at a major university. Join us for this conversation about Maggie’s journey to find a rewarding career path that utilizes everything in her background to help students experience the life changing decision to study abroad. This episode includes tips and advice for students interested in a collegiate study abroad experience.
Growing up in a French immersion program in Louisiana, Maggie knew she wanted to pursue her love of language and culture in her collegiate studies and career path–but how do you do that? Growing up with a single mom, Maggie knew she needed to work hard to earn scholarships for college, and also find ways to fund her desire to study abroad. Little did she know, she would one day become a Study Abroad Advisor, then Director, and now be a Director of Global Engagement at a major university. Join us for this conversation about Maggie’s journey to find a rewarding career path that utilizes everything in her background to help students experience the life changing decision to study abroad. This episode includes tips and advice for students interested in a collegiate study abroad experience.
Thank you for joining us today on Paths in Progress. I'm your host, Carrie Young. On this podcast, people in a variety of career fields, talk about their journey from choosing their college, deciding which majors and minors to pursue, their first jobs out of college, and all of the hurdles, detours and victories along their path through today. Our goal is to help students hear about a variety of exciting opportunities out there and understand what day-to-day life is like in these careers. I hope you enjoy and learn from our story today. Thanks for listening. Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us today. Today we are here with Dr. Maggie. She is a Director of Global Engagement at the University of Houston. She has a bachelor's degree in French with a minor in Spanish. She has a master's degree in Higher Education Administration and she has a Doctorate of Education in Ethical Leadership. Maggie, thanks so much for joining us today.
Maggie:Thanks so much for having me. That's really an intimidating in a way, introduction because it's all my degrees first and oftentimes in my work, I don't even think about those as I go into it. I'm just Maggie and I'm really happy to be here and to talk today with you, Carrie, thanks so much.
Carrie:Well, you are so much more than just Maggie, but I understand your point. Yeah, well people will hear what I'm talking about. So, Maggie, can you take us back to high school and tell us what you were thinking regarding your educational future and looking for colleges and whether you were thinking about any particular career path?
Maggie:So, I am the product of Louisiana. And I love to kinda share my story there. Growing up in Louisiana, you know, the education system isn't that great, compared to other states. I think we're the 47th or 48th, best education system in the us. But one thing that we really do have that's beautiful is the French language and culture. And so I grew up in a French immersion program. Yeah, it was really wonderful. I took all my subjects in French except for English spelling and handwriting. And so I knew that I wanted to do something with language and with culture. I remember visiting the college that I eventually went to and thinking, Wow, look at this French program. They have a French newspaper. They have a great French department. They have a French honor society. I and I nerded out, um
Carrie:That's the best though. You know, you found your place when you're nerding out over what they have, right?
Maggie:Well, that plus the free t-shirts and the ice cream in the cafeteria sold me. But I just, I knew that to go to college, I had to pay for it. I had to get it paid for. So I'm also the product of a single mom, and my mom worked really hard to put me in places where I could then achieve. She didn't have the means to help me achieve, but, I was one of those young kids that was a high achiever and got A's, and I knew I needed to get scholarships to go to college. And so that's what I did. I found a college where I knew I'd fit in. It was the right place for me. I worked really hard for scholarships to kinda help connect me to college. And I was a Pell Grant recipient as well. And so my Pell combined with my scholarships, helped me pay for most of my college. And so I ended up going to Centenary College of Louisiana. It's probably smaller than your high school, and it's a little private liberal arts in Shreveport, Louisiana. And I loved it. I loved every second of it. That was just truly fantastic for me.
Carrie:Can you talk a little bit about just that environment of a small liberal arts college? Because I think there's some people that are seeking that out, right? There's some people that may not really understand what that's like, and then I think some people are kind of dismissive of it, because, you know, a lot of people picture college as like a big place. The things we see in the media the most are like these massive campuses and, you know, the big universities people are familiar with. So can you talk a little bit about why you felt like it was good for you to attend the type of college you did, and like some of the benefits for that type of setting?
Maggie:Absolutely. Yeah. I think private liberal arts colleges are really dynamic topic actually. They're misunderstood, in a lot of ways. They're nothing but privilege. And in a lot of ways they're just a wonderful environment for students. You know, before I picked Centenary, I was gonna go to Texas A&M University. I was an Aggie growing up, which is kinda funny. Since I was a little girl, people called me Maggie Aggie, and I was gonna go to A&M I didn't know my dad growing up. All I knew was he was an Astros fan and an Aggie. So I am, and was an Astros fan, still am an Astros fan. Really happy about the world Series that just ended, and our great win there. But, I grew up wanting to go to A&M and I and I got into A&M from out of state. It was really a great kind of, Wow moment for me that I could get into A&M from out of state with a scholarship. But then I visited Centenary and there was something about it. The academics were stellar. The faculty that took the time to really talk to you, the interpersonal interactions, the really special attention that you got at a small college was different than what I felt when I visited A&M. You were more than just a number in that way. And I, I loved that. I think that I connected to that and that fit what I was looking for more than going to a large school. Which is funny cuz in my higher ed career I've worked in really big institutions and I love that space too. But I think for me as a student going to a liberal arts, going to a small college, it gave me more than I even thought I was looking for. And so I don't think it's something to be overlooked. It gives you an opportunity to really blossom and to get some of that special support that you might not get at a larger school or that might be harder to find. But Centenary really was the best place for me because of the faculty, the French department, all of the engagement opportunities on and off campus. And I just fell in love with it immediately. I wasn't even supposed to visit it, but my friend wanted to visit and she didn't want her mom to go with her. So we went together for the weekend trip up from South Louisiana up to Shreveport and we both decided that we were gonna go there and we did.
Carrie:Wow. So not something you were planning, you just kind of tagged along and there you go. Wow. Yeah, absolutely. You never know. You never know. I love that.
Maggie:Honestly, in that moment. It makes me think of the Shonda Rhimes book, The Power of Yes. And I said Yes, but going to that opportunity, and lo and behold, that changed my entire path. Open to something new and I'm really glad that I was open to it. I love that. So can you talk about your experience as a French major? I think we understand why you picked the French major considering your background. That makes sense. Yes, sir. I actually started as a Polys Sci major. Oh, and I wanted to go work at the UN and I wanted to be a diplomat and I wanted to be Madeline Albright
Carrie:Yeah. Well, so what made you change your mind? What changed?
Maggie:I made a D on my first poly sci test and I,
Carrie:Oh, that'll do it. Mm-hmm.
Maggie:As the students say, I was shook. You know, being an A student all your life and then you fail at something. Up until that point, still hadn't failed yet. And I wouldn't even call that my moment of failure that changed things, but I got that D minus, what I had put into that test I thought was enough and I thought was my all, and it made me drop the class and change my mind about what I wanted to do. And I wish I would've had a little bit more of a guiding adult in my life at that time, cuz maybe I would've stayed on that path and changed my approach. But I did change my whole approach and I switched over to being a French major. It was what I was good at. I really did enjoy it. I loved languages and the rest is history. And yet I've always loved politics and I've always loved diplomacy and the idea of, of doing better for the world. I haven't lost that love, but it's just not something that I do every day now.
Carrie:Yeah. Well, and I think there's a good lesson there because it's important to find balance in those situations, right? I mean, sometimes you do need to give yourself a little more time depending on the subject. Sometimes you know. You know, sometimes something happens and you just know. But there's also students on the other end of the spectrum who keep failing at the things that they need to be successful in a particular area. And you know, we see this a lot with engineering and pre-med and things like that, where they'll just keep failing math, or they'll keep failing chemistry or whatever one of those foundational courses are, you know, for what they're trying to get. And it's hard when you have your sights set on something and you're not looking at the cards on the table. Right. And you just keep kind of trying. So it's important to find that balance in never giving up, but also knowing realistic about what's happening. Yeah.
Maggie:I think that's a great point, and I think that's something that some students really struggle with because there's a should involved. They should be this, they have to be based on what they were told by their parents or what they told themselves is so powerful. We can tell ourselves what we have to do. And so in a way, I'm really proud of myself for deciding and noticing like, this doesn't seem like it's the right fit for me. And changing out of it. Maybe I could have tried it a little bit more. But ultimately it was a really good move for me.
Carrie:Yeah. So when you switched to French, were you still thinking about the UN a little bit and like just going at it from a different major or what were you thinking?
Maggie:I was thinking. The world. I was thinking the globe, I was thinking interacting with people from different places. Not as thoughtfully as I'm wording it now. I was thinking maybe I could be a translator or maybe I could work in France or maybe I could work in a francophone country. Cuz at that point I had had francophone teachers from Senegal and Canada and Belgium, and I knew there was a bigger role than just the hexagon of France. But I wanted to do something that connected cultures and countries. And so that much I had figured out. I immediately started looking at, okay, so I'm gonna be a French major, now I'm switching over. This is the right place for me. I love my lit courses. I love my French culture and history courses. I took an art history course in French. That was one of my favorite classes in college. I found a way to study abroad. And that's really what further solidified my desire to connect across countries and culture.
Carrie:So for people listening, we're gonna be talking a lot about study abroad, because this is a huge part of Maggie's path and her story. So let's start with your study abroad experiences and also kind of throw in lessons along the way. Listening from this, from the beginning, people are thinking, Okay, you said you have to pay for college yourself. You had a single mom, you were on scholarship and Pell Grant. So like coming from that perspective, it sounds like, wait a second, why are you looking at something that sounds expensive. France sounds expensive. It is, right? Yes. Obviously you were aware of these things, you know, when you started looking at opportunities and you have a lot more experience with that now. So can we talk about how you went about it and then obviously we can talk a little bit more later too, about resources available to students right now?
Maggie:Definitely. I think that study abroad is misunderstood by so many as being incredibly expensive. And for the elite. Statistically, it's more white women that go abroad. But it is much more accessible than that depending on the way that you approach it. It can definitely be expensive, depending on the program you choose or the way that you go about it. But I was really fortunate that my college had an exchange program and with that you just kept paying the same tuition and fees at the university and then you just paid your room and board abroad. And my room and board was again paid by my federal student loans that I was taking out. And so I just paid it to my landlord in France rather than the res hall in Louisiana.
Carrie:There's so many universities and colleges that have these partnership programs set up exactly the way you just described it. So for students who know they wanna study abroad and they're looking at colleges, look for these places that have these partnership opportunities with other colleges and universities abroad. Because it can be as simple as Maggie just said: you're paying your tuition and your room and board just like you normally would if you had stayed on your campus, but you're doing it to like the sister campus or the companion campus or whatever you wanna call it. Those exist fairly widespread across the country. So if you know you wanna do this, looking for that can really be a key to give you access to automatically go to whatever place that is.
Maggie:Yeah, absolutely. And I will say my mom didn't really understand it. I didn't explain things to her until everything was squared away, because that was easy for me. And then I see some of my students do that now and they tell me, Yeah, I'm gonna tell my parents once I have everything figured out. I really relate to that. I didn't wanna stress her out, I didn't wanna make her worried. I didn't wanna make her feel burdened to pay for me because she couldn't do that. Having this opportunity was just integral for me to be able to go on this program. So I was supposed to be a year long exchange student in France, and about two weeks before I went abroad, Hurricane Katrina hit. I'm from south Louisiana and Katrina just devastated New Orleans and South Louisiana. And the effects of Katrina were felt throughout Louisiana and beyond actually. So, so many people had evacuated. They had come to Lake Charles where I'm from. They had gone on to Houston, gone up to Alexandria and Shreveport. And so I was even working in a shelter, a little bit helping my mom, helping the refugees from Katrina, from New Orleans, with places to sleep and support through it all. And so I was seeing that firsthand. And then I was supposed to go abroad two weeks. And that was really hard for me, to be able to have to leave my community and to go Galvan across France. And so in a lot of ways that was a really challenging moment for me. But I did go. But then what happened next shook me a lot more. So about a week or two after I get abroad. And the timeline at this point is a little bit fuzzy, but a few weeks here and there, Hurricane Rita hit and that was another very significant storm. Another really large hurricane that hit Lake Charles directly. What happened from Hurricane Rita hitting Lake Charles was that I didn't hear from my mom or my brother for three weeks straight. This is, oh my gosh. Yeah. It was very traumatizing for me, especially at the time. And this is back in the day when we didn't really have that many cell phones. I was trying to communicate with him via email. I was messaging my brother's MySpace account. I checked in on AOL instant Messenger to see if he signed on. I had people in Lake Charles drive by the house to see if it was still standing, and it was. But ultimately, I couldn't get in touch with him for three weeks while I was also going through my own culture shock in France. Yeah. And it was incredibly challenging for me. I hit a bit of a downward spiral of depression from it. My mental health really suffered and I didn't know that that's what was going on. I don't think that mental health was something that we really talked about back then. And it's not something that I was prepared to consider in any of my pre departures with my study abroad advisors from my college. Mm-hmm. Ultimately I heard from them. My mom evacuated to a different part of Louisiana. My brother evacuated to Dallas. They were safe. The house was okay. Not great, but Okay. And, you know, I was able to kind of come out of it, throughout the rest of that semester, but I decided I wasn't gonna stay for a full year. It was just too hard for me.
Carrie:Yeah.
Maggie:I think this was a big moment of failure for me in a way, that I was giving up on what I was really good at and what I wanted to do. But I was just too shaken from it. And so I ended up coming home it semester. But ultimately that changed the trajectory of my time in college and it kind of changed the things that I got involved with. So I'm actually really thankful for that decision and for that low moment in my life. And I will say my time abroad was fantastic. I loved it. I was in these French literature courses where we talked, you know, Renaissance French poetry and I read Balzack and I took weekend trips, all across France and to the UK and to Ireland and to the Netherlands. So I got to do a lot of traveling, but I was doing all of that while learning myself at nineteen years old. So it was just one of the biggest formative moments of my life. Truly.
Carrie:So was that your sophomore year of college?
Maggie:Yes. I was a little bit unique in going abroad during my sophomore year. Usually juniors go abroad, but I was at a French fluency level that I could be just fine. Yeah. Here in France. Yeah, for sure. And so that's why I went abroad my sophomore year.
Carrie:I think this is a really important thing for students to be hearing also, because, you know, we've both had a lot of students over the years who've had a really traumatic event happen in their life. Whether they lose someone in their family or something happens to their home or in their hometown, or, we've had, unfortunately, more natural disasters. Somebody is diagnosed with cancer or the student themselves has a diagnosis that changes their life. You know, there's all of these different things that happen and you know, sometimes students are making decisions based around that. But I've also seen students really try to fight it when they perhaps need to step away and take a pause. I don't wanna criticize that, cuz obviously that's different for everybody. And people handle things differently. But I think it's also important for students just to think about and hear that things will happen in life that are out of our control and that may not be affecting your immediate environment. You know, it may not be happening on your campus, so to speak, but it's impacting you significantly because it's someone in your family or, a best friend or.
Maggie:Or your entire Louisiana community that was Yeah. So profoundly, you know, and to have it to be a one two punch of Louisiana being hit by Katrina and then Rita. That was also a big part of it. And where I'm from, your community is your family. And I didn't know how to help them and I couldn't be there to suffer with them and to support them through it. It was just profoundly challenging.
Carrie:Sometimes life happens in a way where we have to walk away or step away from something that we don't necessarily wanna step away from, Right. Sometimes that's just what's supposed to happen, you know, at that point. And that's what you're supposed to do. I think that's just important for students to keep in mind: be aware of that as that's happening, it's not, I know you said the word failure and I hate to look at it that way. I can see what you mean and how it can feel that way. It's also important to do what you know you need to do for yourself.
Maggie:Yeah. I remember emailing my French professor, and the department chair and telling him I was gonna come home. It was a hard conversation with him cuz he wanted me to stay, he wanted me to stick through it. But I'm so glad nowadays that we talk about mental health, but that we also support each other's mental health and that we have resources for students. And I love that my students often use those resources. There's telehealth counseling thanks to the pandemic. We've created an infrastructure, thanks to the pandemic, that we can do telehealth counseling as well as in-person mental health counseling. That there are staff teams that support students of concern. But we didn't have that back then. And honestly, I was a lone ranger, just a little young student from Louisiana traveling in France. I remember, you know, reading local newspapers that would kind of share the devastation happening in Louisiana, from Katrina and Rita and just looking at this and feeling so separate and so alone. I got vertigo that semester when I was in France and I've never had it ever since, but I was very much depressed and alone and lost in where I was. I remember being so dizzy that I couldn't sit up in my own dorm room bed. There were just so many things that came from it. And so I know that leaving a semester early was the right thing for me, and I knew that I would be back. That wasn't a fear of mine. I just needed to get back and connect back with my community and my family. Yeah. So it was the right decision for me. But tough decisions, you know, however right they are, are still so tough to make. And as a 19 year old, as a young student, I don't regret it because it really did lead to a lot of other paths in my life that I wouldn't have had otherwise. Whenever I came back to Louisiana, I had to get a new roommate, midyear. And so I found a friend's friend who needed another roommate on campus. And from that, I made a new friend, that's been a lifelong friend. But I also got plugged into some other experiences on campus that have forever changed my path as well. So how lucky is it that out of such terrible circumstances, new paths came out?
Carrie:Totally. So can you talk a little bit about what some of those were?
Maggie:Yeah. I got plugged into being a student leader. The residence hall that I lived in, needed a student residence hall leader for their residence hall association. So I joined that. From there I became student leader in other organizations. By my senior year I was a college ambassador, as part of the maroon jackets. And I remember, you know, supporting some of the administration and student panels, speaking in orientations, being the president of the Residence Hall Association for two years after that. I really got involved as a student leader and that has what has also shaped where I am now today, is because I really loved that experience being a student leader on campus. It helped me grow in my confidence after hitting that really, really low, low. It helped me start to figure out where my confidence could come from and where my connection was. I think that's really helped me as the higher ed administrator that I am now today.
Carrie:Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of people who work in higher ed started Yeah doing something on their campus in some capacity. Right. Which can be totally life changing.
Maggie:Whenever I came back, I knew I wanted to go back abroad. One of the opportunities that I was able to plug into was getting a fellowship after my junior year. I applied for and got a fellowship with CDFL, which is the Council for Development of French in Louisiana. They have a fellowship with the country of Belgium. And so I received a fully paid summer fellowship study program, to Mol, Belgium. It included my tuition fees, program fees, include my housing and food. And I also got a small stipend to spend six to eight weeks in Belgium studying French language and really spending time with other louisianans in Belgium. And that was me going back abroad and wow, it healed so many of the wounds that happened while I was in France. It reminded me of my strength, of my passion for French, of my ability, of my interpersonal skills, connecting with other Louisianan students. And this program is so unique, Carrie, it had both Louisiana students and universities across Louisiana, but it also had French immersion teachers across the state of Louisiana who teach French two young students.
Carrie:Oh wow.
Maggie:I know. It was so incredible. So I was there with four other students and two other French immersion teachers. One of them I keep up with even now. She still teaches in a small town outside of Lafayette. That whole experience was really great. It was small towns across Belgium. It was a small class and it made up for all the tough times that I went through in France, that's for sure.
Carrie:Yeah. Yeah. So what was your average kind of daily experience there like? What were you doing?
Maggie:We all lived in our own rooms in this residence hall. We would all gather, in the morning to grab breakfast and the main dining room of the residence hall. And there were maybe like 50 rooms in this re hall. And then we'd walk across the little town, through the Grand Plaz, down a few different cobblestone streets, pass the waffle cart that hasn't opened yet, and the different cafes, that we, you know, pick out which one we wanna go to to eat for lunch. And we'd get over to the school, to the University of Moles and we'd go into the school building, which is, you know, ages old. and we'd take class for about four or five hours and then we'd have a break for lunch between classes and then we'd be done for the afternoon. We'd spend time exploring the town. We'd make plans for where we wanna travel that weekend. We would go grocery shopping or go take our laundry to the laundromat. I remember doing our laundry and popping over while it was washing to get french fries cuz you know, french fries are from Belgium and they were so good. And we'd just eat fries while we watch our laundry. We would plan our trips for the weekend and go to some of these small towns around Belgium. I remember going to Bruges one weekend. Antwerp another. But then we went to even smaller towns that had hidden caves on the sides of mountains and we'd take the train around. It was really fun.
Carrie:So did that particular experience, either change what you were thinking about your future or influence it? Like what do you feel like you took from that particular experience?
Maggie:I loved taking classes with other students from different universities around Louisiana there in Belgium and meeting with the French immersion teachers. And it made me think about how I wanted to be a professor. I wanted to be a French professor and so that really helped me think about how I loved working with people, talking about French teaching French, looking how you can teach French to others. I think that by that point, that locked in my idea of becoming a French professor, I could use my French, It was all intercultural. It was all global. So it was connecting all the things that I was really interested in. So that summer was really formative for me, but it was also, in a way, it was healing because I enjoyed being abroad. I felt good being abroad. I was proud of being there on a fellowship. And it was fun. I worked really hard growing up and I worked really hard in college academically, and I was a very strict student, and I had a lot of fun that summer. Not partying, but just being in community with other people who enjoyed being there, sharing meals, cooking together. We cooked a gumbo night together, which is really fun, for the other students who were local to Belgium. In a lot of ways, it was so helpful for me to grow up that summer, in my confidence and in my enjoyment of sharing in language and culture together.
Carrie:Yeah. I've heard a lot of people, once they go through a study abroad experience, talk about that kind of growing up piece. Mm-hmm. Because you are thrown into a situation where even if you're with a group of people, you're on your own in a sense, right? Mm-hmm. there's things you have to figure out, even just basic, every day. Life things. You have to figure out how to do your laundry. You have to figure out how to order a sandwich.
Maggie:You did have to negotiate a lot of those things that didn't come automatically to you. And one of the things I tell my students when I advise for study abroad is that going abroad, you're gonna be alone together. Yeah. You're gonna have those feelings of how do I? And you're gonna need to connect with other people to help you get through that experience. And that is such a beautiful opportunity. I did that whenever I was in France for this semester. I connected with other people alone together, and we learned how to travel and how to come back from the mistakes that we made. And then I was able to do that even more so in Belgium. We had that common bond of all being Louisianan and together and being, you know, the nerdy French folks that were there. It was so fun. It was also a really great opportunity to become more of an adult about travel. To become more of an adult, enjoying the language and the culture. And that's something that really happened that summer for me.
Carrie:Absolutely. I mean, and then the transportation. I think that's such a huge part when you study abroad. Cuz even if you are locked into like an institution where you're learning things or you're you know, living in an exchange house or something, you still have a whole transportation system. Sometimes multiple transportation systems. If you're doing, you know, Euro rail, if you're taking buses, if there's a subway system. Oh yeah. You know, it's like finding the maps. How do I get to where I'm going? Do I get off a subway and then get on a bus and then go, you know, like, what are the accommodations? How do I get tickets? Which kind ticket is best? Yeah. Like, do I buy this pass or do I just get this one time thing? But once you do it, you realize like, I can figure things out. Even if something is intimidating and brand new and in another language, and
Maggie:Even if I make a mistake.
Carrie:Yeah.
Maggie:I can navigate through that mistake. And that happens to be, I remember standing on the wrong side of a platform and watch the only train that day on the other side of the platform, stop, open its doors, and then leave again. And I didn't get on that train cuz I was on the wrong side of the platform. And so I've never been to Michelle because I was on the wrong side of the platform, but I will never make that mistake again.
Carrie:Oh gosh. Yeah. Oh wow.
Maggie:Yeah. So when I came back to Centenary my senior year, I was locked in. I was the French girl. I was doing all things French. I was part of the French newspaper that we had on campus. Another reason I picked Centenary.
Carrie:Wow.
Maggie:I worked with my Louisiana Literature class, and was one of the co-editors of our project that semester. Centenary has a French language press called tentamar, and they publish French books, from authors who in Louisiana. We put together an anthology of short stories. I was one of the two co-editors of the anthology that we did release. So I worked on the layout of the book and InDesign. I made sure to check everyone's Anthologies where they were collecting these different short stories and rewriting them from copies of copies of old newspapers from the 1800s. It was such a to be on. And then I did my own book of a compilation of poetry, from a French poet who moved to New Orleans and we're reprinting essentially all these old stories and poetry that were published in newspapers in New Orleans and the 1800s and 1900s, but that had never been published in books. And so I really dug into the French thing. I was on the leadership board of the French Honor Society, and I was a maroon jacket and I was doing a lot of leadership and a lot of projects. And I remember my process applying for grad school, cuz I was gonna go to grad school and I was gonna get a doctorate in French literature. And that was such a journey, but I had a great mentor through it. And so my French professor was my mentor in applying to grad school and I was using all of these experiences to put together a really strong portfolio of my grad school applications. This was a very intentional journey for me. So I applied to nine different grad schools and I got into seven. I was able to use kind of the benefits that you get of being a Pell Grant student to have your application fees waived or reduced. So I really appreciated that. Thanks. Federal government.
Carrie:Yeah, that's a thing for people listening. That is a thing.
Maggie:Definitely a thing. Cuz even at that point, my mom. I didn't get hardly any support from her because I couldn't get it from her. She wasn't in a place to support me financially. And so you gotta find these ways to connect to the resources to get you there. It is helpful if you have other faculty, staff, and adults telling you what resources are out there. So I hope y'all are taking notes on this. But I got a GRE cost waiver so I could take the GRE, at a more affordable rate. And then I got application fee waivers for some of the apps that I put in. But I wanted to have options for grad school. I had some great options and ultimately I ended up choosing Rice University. I was accepted to do a PhD in French literature, which wasn't on that really, really kind intro that you read about me at the beginning of the podcast. But I didn't hear at Rice University for French literature. This is the, the big pivot of my story, is this time at Rice and then my time leaving Rice. So I got into Rice and I knew that I wanted to get a PhD in French literature or in French, and to be a French professor. I had done these great French projects. I had loved my French language and grammar and culture courses. I also at the mean, in the same time, got a Spanish minor. And I almost completed a third. I almost completed an English minor as well, but I decided to take 12 hours my last semester.
Carrie:Sometimes you just need to do that.
Maggie:But I loved language and literature and I loved connecting the content and the meaning through different ways. And I just loved what I was studying. So I got into Rice, for a PhD in French, and I was one of two students admitted that year.
Carrie:Oh wow.
Maggie:Yes. It was a fully paid phD. I was supported for my tuition and fees and then I got a graduate assistantship at the language center, where students took their language tests and there was like a computer room. And so I was the GA for that space. It was a really incredible experience, but it was very tough for me. Because growing up in an immersion program, my focus was, and always will be, on communication. I was never perfect at grammar. And I was never perfect at writing cause I always just wanted to get the point across. And that's how we were, that's how we were trained in school. It was all about communicating. So if you don't know the word for grass in French, you say that green stuff on the ground and you get the point across Yeah. That's how I knew to communicate. And so I did great with the concepts and we were studying existentialism and we were looking at how art informed the politics of the time in France and we were looking at the Renaissance and how Avid talked about fighting the good fight, which is one of my favorite sayings now. And has been for, for years as fighting the good fight. I love the content of what I was studying, but my papers weren't perfect. And they needed to be perfect and perfection was expected. And it just wasn't where I wanted to be. I thought I wanted to be there and I loved the content, but what ended up happening through that first year is that I wasn't getting an A+ on everything. And because of that, essentially after my first semester, they let me know a little bit late that I was on probation cause I had a 3.2. And at Rice, you needed to get higher than that. I needed a 3.3 to continue on without any issue. The long story short is that I kind of decided that I wasn't in the right place. I didn't know how to say it out loud. And so I was in a little bit of a tough space for a few months of this doesn't feel right. This doesn't seem right. I'm not happy, but it doesn't make sense because I love what I'm studying and I love what I'm sharing and talking about and these ideas that I'm analyzing and developing and the different perspectives of them. I loved studying Proust's idea that the world's meaning of life is in a teacake And if you've ever not read Prust, you should read that. That's out of Swan's Way. I love talking about just the meaning of life out of a very simple moment, but, the perfection of it. It was just something I couldn't do anymore. I had been perfect in grade school and in high school and in college I had gotten all the grades and all the scholarships. And so ultimately I had a couple months where I, I stopped trying so hard and it made me realize this wasn't the right place for me. And so it was a time in my life or a major change of what does this mean for me? If I'm not perfect, if I'm not gonna continue on with this, where do I go?
Carrie:People can relate to this too, when you're put in a situation or you accept a situation where something I don't wanna say is being given to you, but I mean that in the sense of your tuition was covered, you know? Sometimes when you get a benefit like that, like something's paid for or you get a big promotion or you're handed an opportunity, even when you maybe know in your gut it's not the right thing, we still try to force it and push it because we're like, well, why would I not take this opportunity or not take this thing that's been given to me? Or why would I walk away from this? But there's so many people that do because they realize, yes, I have this incredible opportunity that other people would really want to have. But just because you have it doesn't necessarily mean it's right for you at that time or Right for you ever. And it's so important to listen to that cuz that's so hard to navigate that. Right. Cuz it's just this extra layer of pressure on yourself.
Maggie:Oh, so much pressure. Growing up on food stamps and benefiting from programs like Coats for Kids and getting scholarships and grants to be able to participate in things. You know, like you always wanna be grateful for what you're given and use it to its fullest extent. And that it's so challenging for students who get something, but it just isn't the right fit. How do you say, No, thank you. How do you say this isn't for me? Yeah. And lesson that I really learned then, and if anybody listening here can relate to this, I feel you. But if it is not true to who you are, you don't have to continue using it. You can respectfully decline. You can walk away. It was really challenging for me. I remember even having a conversation with my grandmother and my grandfather, who I was so close to, explaining that I was walking away from this fully funded seven year fellowship. And they just didn't understand why, but it wasn't right. And Yeah. And it was hard, but it was the right thing to do. Before I made the final decision, this was a big turning point for me. I went and met the Rice Study abroad director, and I thought maybe if I just get back to France and I work on my grammar a little bit more, I'll be able to, you know, connect the need for me to be perfect in my writing, the great opportunities to analyze these literature. You know, maybe I can connect it all. And I had about five minutes of the conversation talking with her about the opportunities to study abroad at about 55 minutes of the conversation about how she got her job and what brought her there. It immediately turned to, how can I do what you do? This is amazing. And that was the conversation that changed my trajectory. I don't even know that she realizes how much of that conversation changed my life, but it really did, and I figured out: this is where I wanna go. I can use my love of language, my love of culture, and my love of travel, and make a career out of it. And nothing is wasted. Nothing is wasted because trust me, I still love to go to museums and nerd out about art history and existentialism and how art informs social politics. So that year was not wasted on me. But that conversation changed my whole timeline. And so, I left Rice, at the end of that spring. It was a very hard decision. It was a little bit of a rough May and June, but by the end of June, I had kind of come out of it and been really excited to see what was next. But I decided to take a little bit of time. I wasn't gonna make a decision immediately about where to go next. My one year working out of higher education, I was a secretary at a mortgage company and all I did was go to work and come home and hang out with my friends and be a normal 22, 23 year old. It was fun living in Houston back then. There were so many concerts and shows and there were so many great restaurants to eat at that were more affordable than they're now. So I just had a really fun year. But about that winter time, I started thinking about what it was I wanted to do. And reflecting back on that conversation with that study abroad director at Rice, I applied to the master's programs at A&M and at UT for higher ed admin. And I got in at Texas. This former Aggie ended up after that year going to UT Austin. Now my whole wardrobe is half maroon, thanks to Centenary and A&M, but also half burnt orange. And that's where I got my master's in higher ed admin, and really started in my career here in higher ed. I had a great entrance interview there with, at the time he was the vice President for Student Affairs and he was one of the faculty in the master's program. And I went to his office in the UT Tower. And it was a little bit intimidating, I'm not gonna lie. And Doc G, Dr. Juan Gonzalez, very much appreciate everything of who he is and who he was to be then. And he was my mentor through my whole program. But when he first met me, the first thing he did was he had my resume in front of him and he looked at me and he said, French literature, And now here?
Carrie:I mean, it's a valid question.
Maggie:It's a very valid question. And I have a lot of students that are nervous about how to connect A to Z in their experiences, their trajectories. And I tell that story about Dr. G and how he just called it out. I'm thankful because if he hadn't have called it out, maybe I wouldn't have eloquently talked about that transition and my little pitch to him to join the program. I always encourage students to tell their stories holistically. You know, being really proud of all of the steps that you've taken. And so I got to tell that story about how I took this really big different jump from one place to another. That jump is what's brought me here today. So while I was at UT, I also got a full-time graduate job, 30 hours a week being a hall director. I really started my higher ed career while I started my Masters, honestly. I was able to be a student organization advisor to two different student orgs in that time, as well as being a supervisor to six student staff, managing a building of 200 plus. And it was also a living learning community, which was really cool. So it was first year students, and they were there to intentionally engage on the UT campus, which is huge. Mm-hmm. So it was a really wonderful environment to switch into. I felt so fortunate and lucky to be able to be plugged into the division of housing there. I worked with really great folks that were my mentors and my colleagues that helped me grow up professionally. I learned at UT as well about how to interact in diverse situations and how to be more of an ally and to bring DEI to the forefront of my professional efforts. It was really a wonderful space to grow and to work in while I was there.
Carrie:Well, and for students listening, I think this is a good way to talk about all of the different types of positions that exist on a university or college campus. Because they may be thinking of what is this degree in higher ed? Very generally speaking, when you work on a university campus, there is an advantage to having a master's degree. And obviously there's even more advantage to having a doctorate, which I'm sure we'll get to here in a minute. But, that master's degree, these days, is almost necessary, with applying to jobs on, especially, you know, if you're applying to a prominent university. That degree can be used across a wide variety of positions. Mm-hmm. in a campus setting. So Maggie, do you wanna talk a little bit about your experience in that graduate program and like the types of classes you experienced, and what you took from that moving forward?
Maggie:Absolutely. So, it's a two year degree, and I did it full time. I worked part-time and took courses full-time, but the degree is structured so that you can do that and you wanna get practical experience while you're taking your courses. My courses were in higher education history, law and policy, intercultural education and diversity education.
Carrie:Did you take any that had to do with study abroad specifically, or like global education or do they have anything like that?
Maggie:No, back then there wasn't anything for that. And now there are some specialized master's programs in intercultural and global education, which is so fantastic. There are some opportunities and some programs to take a global lens to things. And a lot of these courses nowadays will have a global lens to their perspective. So if you're interested in that, you don't have to do something specific to it, but you can always tailor your projects to study abroad or to global education or to international student support. And that's really what I ended up doing. I had to create my own adventure to gear it a little bit more towards global. And I did that by taking an internship, unpaid, while I was at UT. I had somebody connect me with the assistant director of the study abroad office there, and she said, Okay, sure. And she hooked me up with one of her team members that I reported to. And I just worked on some special projects for about six or seven months. That gave me a really great exposure to the world of study abroad, and to how they kind of support it administratively, how they prepare students for pre-departure, how they work with faculty. So I got a really great experience from a very unstructured opportunity. But the way that I did it was asking the question. You know, and I always encourage student. You never know what the answer's gonna be, but you should always ask the question, Do you need this? Or could I give this benefit to your office, or could I provide this service to you? And I'm so glad I did that. I wrote it to fit where I was at the time. So that meant the different hours and the different structure of the internship. It fit with my courses, but it also fit with my role as a hall director at the same time as well. I was able to also merge the two and do some study abroad programming in the halls. I was able to talk to my RAs about the study abroad opportunities there kind of informally. It was a way to connect everything that I was doing. But you know, also for the students listening, a master's program is another expense that you have to take on, but there are other ways to support it as well. And I didn't get my masters at UT paid for in any way. But I did get that graduate assistantship. So for the first semester of my four, I was a GA and the Dean of students office, for the Office of Intercultural Education. And I did intercultural education projects, different programming, things that we did out of the office. And then for the last three semesters, I was a hall director. The hall director position paid even more because it was more hours. But it also meant that I had free housing And a stipend for food. And so that was a really big support to me in finishing my masters.
Carrie:Yeah, free housing, that's huge. But also, if that's the master's degree you're getting in higher education, any of those on campus jobs or TA positions are resume items, too. I mean, you're in the industry, so to speak, of what you're studying.
Maggie:Yeah, so I, I left already having a year and a half of full-time experience plus a semester's worth of part-time experience, in different areas of the university, which is really beneficial as well to have that kinda crosstrained experience.
Carrie:Yeah, absolutely. Mm-hmm. So when you finished your masters, were you kind of laser focused on finding a job in a study abroad setting?
Maggie:I wasn't, because it's really hard to get a job in study abroad. The offices are small. There's not always a position open, especially back then. There were smaller roles and smaller offices, and so I was focused on just getting a job. I remember being unemployed for two months after I graduated for June and July. A couch surfed. I stayed at my friends' houses and apartments and slept on couches. Truthfully, I did, because my house for the longest time was the residence halls, but my job ended May 31st. And I didn't have a new job yet. So, I just stayed at friends' houses and applied and did phone interviews and did in-person interviews, and I got a job. And I started, in mid-July, I started being a hall director. So continuing on with the residence life experience that I was doing, I was a hall director and I managed a building, and then I managed a staff of student RAs. I also was a student organization advisor for two different student orgs again, and I continued my experience in housing. So I did that for the next two years. But if you've ever worked in housing, and Carrie, I don't know if you have, but. It gets a little, No, I haven't a while. Part of my job was emergency management, risk management, and I was the oncall person on our on-call rotation. Some nights that meant that you had fire alarms at two in the morning or you had students who were intoxicated that you had to help support. You had the police called because there was a situation and you needed to respond. If you know anybody working in housing or if you've ever lived on campus and were a little bit annoyed by your RA or hall director, I encourage you to take it from their perspective that it takes a lot of work to support that many students living together in a space, in order to do that in a safe and healthy way.
Carrie:And you have no idea what they went through the night before.
Maggie:Gosh. I remember going to meetings at eight or nine in the morning and I had just been up all night dealing with an incident and, I just got a little burnt out. It was hard work. But housing, I think, prepares higher education professionals in the best way to be really effective higher education professionals. I would recommend working in housing for a couple years to anybody who wants to work in a university campus in college. You interface with so many different departments across campus because you have to. And it cross trains you. It makes you really effective communicators. It makes you very good at networking cuz you need to network as well. I really love that I have that experience.
Carrie:And that's about as close as you can get to the student's daily life and what's going on with them. Right. I mean, you can't get any closer than that.
Maggie:Yeah. Whenever you need to walk to your car in the middle of the night in your pajamas, cuz you left something in there and you pass a group of students who were about to go out. It's definitely making your lives together. And I was ready to kind of grow past that point in my career. Cause I had done it at UT and done it for two years after that at another university. I was ready to move back to a big city, and I love Houston. I've always loved Houston. You know, Lake Charles is very close. Again, I said I grew up an Astros fan, too. And so, I found an anchor job. And what that means is I found a job that would anchor me back to the place I was going. It wasn't necessarily in the role that I wanted to be doing forever, but it was a way for me to get back to that role. And so I found a career counselor job at one of the universities here in Houston. And I was a career counselor for a year, working with students at a four year public institution. It helped me get back to Houston, and I really was glad for that. I'm also glad that I, I phrase this, Carrie, I say I served one year as a career counselor. I have such respect for the men and women that are career counselors. I'm just not meant to live in a skirt suit. I'm just not meant to do it. I taught resume workshops and interviewing workshops and taught students how to develop their LinkedIns and the importance of networking and, you know, hosted career fairs and met with employers and things like that. It wasn't ever my passion, but man, it was such a value add to my higher ed career to really understand that personal Oh yeah. Importance on careers. And so honestly since then I've done multiple projects integrating global and career and culture and career, because you need to be interculturally competent to be effective as a professional.
Carrie:Also have the language to effectively speak about your learning abroad experiences, like in interviews and how you can contribute and how that experience has helped you to grow. Right. And have a different perspective than perhaps other people do.
Maggie:Absolutely. While I was at that role, I saw a position open at University of Houston for a study abroad advisor. And that didn't ever happen. I never saw those jobs open up, so I applied. I really prepped my interview cause I wanted to wow them. I wanted to show them I could do this. I just really think the stars aligned cuz I got the role here at UH, and I've been here ever since, growing in our global office. And using all of these past experiences in my toolbox, so that I can pull from career and I can pull from intercultural education and I can pull from the networking that I learned and gained while I was in housing. I've been our learning broad risk manager now for years. And I just handed that off to somebody else on our team. But I was able to do well at that because I had already had that experience. And so all of these experiences combined have really brought me together to be a strong professional in my roles now.
Carrie:I wanted to ask you about looking back on it, but also how it was in the moment when you knew for a long time what type of role was your ideal role and what you wanted to do. I think a lot of us experience that that takes time to find our way there, right? Mm-hmm. So even though you were still in the right field, so to speak, you did have to go through a couple of other transitional times to kind of land that, finally this job opened, this is what I want. So what did that feel like when you landed there, but also what would you like to say to students who perhaps find themselves in that situation right now, or perhaps may find themselves in that situation soon where it's just taking time, you know, to get to the place where they wanna be?
Maggie:I love that question. I would tell student: if you're not there yet and you have this one specific goal in mind, I wanna encourage you to think about why that's your goal and what parts of it are most important to you? You know, in my time growing up, in working in higher education, my goal wasn't necessarily to be a steady abroad advisor or a study abroad director. My goal was to integrate my passions together. I loved supporting students and helping them grow and advising students. I loved connecting global and intercultural aspects to what I was doing, and I even did that in housing and in career. I loved bringing DEI into the forefront of my work and trying to increase access for students, low income students, students from underrepresented student groups in those areas. And so I found a way that at whatever moment I was in, I tried to find ways to connect my passions and my interests to what I was doing at that moment. Because it might take you time to get to where you think you're supposed to be. But if you are focused so much on what you think you should be doing, you're not focused on what you're doing right now and how that can really bring the change that you're trying to make.
Carrie:Yeah, I love that. Like finding how to use your situation to still accomplish some of what you want to accomplish and move in the direction that you wanna move. Cause we all can find ways in our current situation to connect some dots, right? You may not be connecting all of the dots.
Maggie:Yes.
Carrie:But you can make at least a connection to move in that direction.
Maggie:Exactly. And you know, even when I got here and was a learning abroad advisor, I felt pretty quickly that I was ready to be a leader in ways and even though that was a little bit of arrogance and a little bit of confidence and a little bit of, yes, I was prepared, I still needed to grow some of my skills and some of my professional abilities. So I found opportunities to plug into different ways to grow those proficiencies and those skills. I was able to shadow meetings with my boss and she was very supportive of me growing that way. I was able to take on new projects. I found ways to grow my confidence to bring up new ideas and to develop them and to see them through fruition. It was great to fully be a project manager, on a lot of things and grow and grow and grow in that. And that's what added to my competencies that helped me get that job of leading the learning abroad office and then ultimately to where I am today of overseeing multiple areas of global. You can be disappointed in where you are in the moment, or you can try to find as many opportunities as you can or notice that the opportunities aren't there and it's time to make a move.
Carrie:Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about your experience working in learning abroad over the years and some of the really meaningful moments to you and the exciting moments, like kind of pulling the highlights out of your work in this area. And then of course, before we end, I wanna make sure we fit in talking about study abroad in general for students who are interested in some of your advice for that and if there's particular resources you wanna shout out and things like that. So let's start with your journey in learning abroad, study abroad, learning abroad. Different universities call it different things, so, that may be called something different on your campus, so you'll have to look at that. But what has your experience been, after being a student who studied abroad, what has your experience been working in this area over the years?
Maggie:Carrie, I had the coolest job on campus. No doubt about it. I would go and I would do classroom presentations and I would talk to students about being able to travel and still complete your classes. It is such a fun job. What I would say to other people is that I felt like the dream maker. I felt like I'm able to show students, yes, you can do this and here are all the ways that you can connect these resources to help you get there. And I'm not being sarcastic and I know it's cheesy, but I really felt that way. It was so fun to be able to talk to a student, about what they wished they could do and it doesn't have to be a wish. Here's how you can get there. Some of the highlights of my role are just those one-on-one interactions with students, helping them to realize that they could apply for all of these scholarships and can combine them together and can use their existing financial aid and scholarships to help them spend a full semester abroad. Or maybe they just wanted two weeks on a faculty led, and they wanted to study this one specific thing. So I think the highlights are just those interpersonal interactions with the students, those advising sessions. The moments when I'm working with a student on a scholarship application essay, some of those scholarship essays need to get a little personal and I've numerous students cry in my office because they have gone through so much and they wanna share their stories and they need to share those stories in those essays, but they don't know how, or they're not sure if they should. To be able to be a space for the students to be vulnerable and to help bring to words those experiences that they've dealt with, and how they've grown from them. That has been an honor of my work. That has been a true honor of my work is to have the students be able to share that with me. I've had some really special students over the years. One of my closest students even now, his name is Johnny and he is a first gen student. He is Mexican American. His family came over from Mexico and he went to high school here in Houston and he was a Pell Grant recipient. And I've shared his story in many spaces, because he said that that is something he's happy to share cuz it can help other students realize they're like him and can go abroad. He put a lot of efforts in and got so many scholarships to spend a year abroad, and then he did a summer later on. He applied to some fellowships and got those. And he plugged into our office and to other offices that work with fellowships and other awards and he was able to be so successful and to watch him grow from it, and to have that relationship, that mentoring relationship that I still have with him today. He's gone on, Carrie, and he's just joined the foreign service. And he is wow. US diplomat now. He was one of my very first students that became a study abroad student, a global guide student leader, and then a fellowship student, and now has been accepted to the Foreign Service and just started this past year.
Carrie:That's amazing. And that's such a great example of an experience in college that is so valuable, but it's not a checkbox on your degree plan.
Maggie:Exactly. Exactly. And these were additional things that he wove together intentionally. And I think it takes that intentional weaving of these experiences and learning how to talk about them from different perspectives and even connecting with people to ask what else is out there that I can connect to. There are so many of us across the campus that can help students connect to these things. And we are trying to shout as loud as we can about them, but sometimes it just doesn't get to every student. And so encourage students to ask those questions too. But he's one of my favorite highlight examples of what can be done with these experiences here in college.
Carrie:Absolutely. Let's say students are sitting here listening and they're interested in this, not just in study abroad as a student, but as this career path, you know, like that you have had, What are some things that you would want to communicate to students about this career trajectory? The type of work that you're doing, the rewards, but also perhaps things that they should try to prepare for throughout their education other than, you know, obviously studying abroad themselves. But what are some other things that they can also think about that weave into what you do that would be helpful for them to experience, whether it's an experience or internship or it's coursework.
Maggie:I would encourage students to think about the what and the why of what you're trying to do, and not just to be a study abroad advisor, but you are interested in all these things and you want them to combine, to help others do them, or to connect students to these types of experiences or to even develop these type of experiences for students. There's so many ways that you can do that, and it starts with you having those experiences first. So encouraging students to go abroad or to engage in a global program. Sometimes students can't go abroad, but there are ways that they can engage globally here, locally. And we have a cheesy word for that. Glocal or glocally.
Carrie:What does that mean? You're gonna have to explain that.
Maggie:To go glocal is to go global locally. You know, And if we think about Houston here, we are such a large city, but with so many different pockets of culture, That students can intentionally engage with and have an international experience right here in our own backyards. But we often don't do that. We often don't get outta our neighborhoods and our normal routines. And so what we're trying to do in our office is to help students find ways to engage locally in different intercultural and international cultures here so that they can help those experiences without even getting on a plane. But I'd encourage students to figure out a way to engage in as many and as diverse of opportunities as you can. Because these experiences help develop you as a person, as a professional, as a student. They help you expand your knowledge and awareness of different cultures and of different countries and ways things are done differently in different places. And that really helps inform you of the different perspectives all around the world and all across cultures. It helps your curiosity grow even more. It helps your knowledge and understanding of different cultures grow, and that helps you then engage even more. It just becomes a cycle of becoming more globally competent and culturally competent, and that helps you professionally. It helps you engage in more diverse teams. It helps you be more effective on those diverse teams. And it also helps you as a person, you know, think about politics, think about communities, and the way that we interact with people. It helps you see people holistically and not just as one thing. I think it can truly change your life and the way that you interact with people throughout the rest of your life if you develop that global competence even more and more. That can live in so many different careers, right? It doesn't just have to live in study abroad.
Carrie:Oh, yeah.
Maggie:And it is essential for so many different careers.
Carrie:I know we both know people and perhaps people listening do too, where, you know, people are an engineer, or they're an attorney, or they work in advertising, or they work in fashion. I mean, there's all these different ways where wherever the spaces where you're working, says, Hey, we need to send a team to this place. Oh my gosh, didn't you study abroad there? Or don't you speak that language? You never know when some kind of opportunity's gonna come up. Mm-hmm. where they need you. They need somebody who's had that experience. Mm-hmm. to inform their team or inform the project that they're doing, or just they can be more confident in the person that they're sending to do it. I mean, there's all of these different contexts, like you're saying, and you never know. I mean, that can be literally almost capacity, any industry.
Maggie:As the world gets more global and as we get more interconnected, it doesn't even take us getting on a plane to go do a project somewhere else. It takes interacting on a Zoom call or interacting with a team member who's moved here from another place or who's come from a different culture. Even if you think about this, my story coming from Louisiana and not from Louisiana and coming from South Louisiana and being where I'm from is a completely different culture than a lot of other places in the United States. But being able to connect across cultures has been essential for me. Connecting with people from, let's say the Northeast or from the Midwest, you know, much less other countries. Those skills truly are skills, and your employer will see them, and you can demonstrate them in the way that you interact, even with your colleagues on the same level, the way you interact with your boss or you interact with a customer. It's seen by your boss and you can be that person that's the go-to, to help the other team members really learn how to interact better, how to be more effective. It just helps with your leadership and your professional life. Then it also helps with your family life, your personal life, kind of connecting across perspectives across your family and your community.
Carrie:So I know people who are listening are probably wondering this, so I'm just gonna ask you. How much do you get to travel with your job? Or how much have you gotten to travel? Cause I think that's probably what people are thinking. Oh, you're in charge of study abroad. So do you just get to go like wherever you want all the time or how, I mean that extreme comment, but you know, like what, what kinds of opportunities do you get in your roles to be able to participate in the travel?
Maggie:I will say, I'm around the idea of travel 24 7. So if you don't think I have three ideas of a vacation in my back pocket right now, you'd be wrong. But if you're getting into this job to travel, it's not the right space to be into. You're getting into this job to help others travel. But with that being said, in my time here, I have been able to travel for work, which has been so incredible. As an advisor, I was able to do two different site visits. I went to Peru and I went to Italy. I did week long site visits in each of those places to different cities to see all of the things that a student might experience while they're there. From the classroom space and the university space to the residence halls or residencias or home stays. The transportation that they would take, the streets that they would walk, some of the restaurants that they might eat in. It truly was incredible to do that as an advisor. That was able to help me do my job better to help them understand what are the spaces that they're going to be in. But then I can also translate that to the other countries where our students would travel. Now, in my role as director of global engagement, I'm able to go to site visits, starting out new exchange partnerships, where we've not been before and asking the hard questions. Are they ready to accept our students in and support our students abroad? What are they doing in terms of housing and in terms of risk management and safety and student engagement and support. And to meet the people as we start new partnerships. So that's where I'm at now in my career, is kind of going meet and establish new partnerships. So that's been really exciting for me as well.
Carrie:Do you have any other pieces of advice for people who are interested in this career path?
Maggie:I really do, and I would tell students that you don't have one exact way to get to one exact job. So if students love the idea of working in study abroad or love the idea of working in higher ed, you can make change and support students and develop programs in so many different spaces that are so fulfilling. You can use your intercultural skills in so many ways. If you're not sure if higher ed is this space for you, there are other places in the private sector that you can do this work. There are other ways to support students or to promote travel or to promote study abroad, that there's not one direct path. I think that I'd encourage students to talk the people in their lives and ask the questions or make new contacts so that you can ask questions about where you can go, but it doesn't have to fit one place or one specific role for you to be able to achieve that goal. There's so many different ways to achieve it and ways to connect your skills to achieving that goal.
Carrie:Yeah, absolutely. So if we could talk to students who are considering study abroad or learning abroad, what is your sales pitch to students who are on the fence about this or who are saying no what, you know, I can't consider that. I don't have time. I don't have any money to do that. I don't see how that makes any sense with my major. You know, all the different things that you hear. What is your sales pitch to students as to why any student or all students, should we say, should consider studying abroad?
Maggie:I think my sales pitch is really short and sweet at the beginning, and it's: Yes you can and we can help. You don't have to do this on your own. And when I tell a student that, then they get a little bit more engaged of, Okay, I'm listening. I need help to do this. And absolutely you do. I really like to tell students that there's an opportunity to continue to your degree plan and to still finish it on time while doing study abroad experience. And we call it study abroad, but also learning abroad and education abroad because there's different components to it. If you don't necessarily need to take a language class abroad, that's fine. You can potentially do an internship abroad for credit and get that work experience already on your resume. You can also do undergraduate research or graduate research abroad, and get some really unique experiences that otherwise you wouldn't have had with different labs and different ways of doing research around the world. But you can always take everything from an engineering course abroad to a political science, to a history course, and of course take your language abroad. And I think that that's one of the best ways to learn a language is to be immersed in that environment where that language is spoken. I like to tell the students about the opportunities that are there. It can be short or long term. It can be a full year like I was gonna do initially, or it can be a two or three week experience on a short term program. The main thing that I always end with is before you self select out because it's too expensive, come talk to us about the budget. Because, like my own experience, oftentimes it's not as expensive as you think it's going to be. For my time in France, I did take out one additional$1,000 student loan. I was supposed to be there for a full year, and that was gonna be my spending money for a full year. Granted, this was in the early two thousands, and I was very good at living cheap. But it doesn't have to be as expensive as you might think it is. There's a lot of ways to intentionally choose a program, to choose a country, and to choose a timeframe that would be more affordable for you. And actually that timeframe might be going for a semester because you already get a Pell and an academic scholarship. And you can combine those together, with other scholarships that are study abroad specific, so that you can make this happen for you and in a way that doesn't really disrupt your time in college, but that just adds to it. Ultimately my sales pitch is, yes, you can and we can help. And so come talk to somebody about going abroad, but you really should. And I can't tell you how many times I've talked to adults who say, Oh, I wish I would've studied abroad in college. And that doesn't have to be you. Your story can be actually getting to go on a study abroad program.
Carrie:Absolutely. Do you have some big picture advice for students as you look back over your journey? You know, things that you feel like are big lessons that you've learned?
Maggie:Definitely. I think my biggest lesson that I've learned is to not focus on the should. It's not necessarily what you should do and what you're expected to do by your family, by your parents, your own self expectations, but to dig deeper and find out who you are and who you want to be and what kind of change you wanna make and what you're good at. So it's who you are, what change you wanna make, and what you're good at. And how do you combine that to really bring yourself towards a truly fulfilling career, a way to kind of integrate all of your interests and your passions. I wish I would've moved further away from the should a lot earlier in my life. I may have gotten here sooner. You never know. I don't have any regrets. But I do know now that I don't focus on what I should be doing, but more on those other aspects of my values and how do I live a values focused life is really important to me.
Carrie:Absolutely. Maggie, thank you so much for being here with us today and sharing your story with us and giving this great advice, based on your journey, but also on your experience working in higher education and working with study abroad. We just want to give that last extra plug for students that if you have any interest in this, even just a little tiny seed has been planted here, go to the office on your campus or reach out to them via email if you're not on campus yet, if it's a school that you're looking to attend. If this is an important piece of experience to you that you want to study abroad and you are not yet in college, go ahead and email those offices in advance and ask them if there's a particular region of the world you're interested in. If it's the financial piece that you're concerned about, whatever it is, that would help you make your decision about where to attend, that can give you the experience that you wanna have to study abroad. You can email those people when you're just applying to schools. You don't have to be a student there yet. So go ahead and reach out and ask those questions.
Maggie:Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me, Carrie. This has been wonderful.
Carrie:It has. Thanks, Maggie. Do you know someone I should interview? Please DM me on Instagram@pathsinprogresspodcast and let me know who I should talk to. I would love to hear about how these stories are impacting your journey. Please follow Paths in Progress wherever you download your podcasts and leave a review to let me know what you think. You can also follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn at Paths in Progress Podcast. Our music is by John Grimmett and the artwork is by Edgar Alanis. Thanks again for joining me today.