The Countdown Begins

In less than 48 hours, I will be in my car traveling to Minneapolis to get on a flight to Philadelphia, where I will board our overnight flight to Amsterdam.  This trip, which has often seemed like a mirage on the horizon ahead of me, is becoming more and more real.

We will arrive in Amsterdam at 10 am and spend the day visiting the Van Gogh Museum and the Heineken Experience before heading to Cleve that evening.  Then it will be back to Amsterdam on Sunday, before settling in for the week in Cleve and getting down to business, our international exchange with Rhine-Waal University.

Monday through Friday will be packed with learning about post-secondary education and the vocational ed system in Germany and the Netherlands, including a visit to Berefskolleg Kleve (a vocational school in Cleve), ROC Nijmegen (a technical school in Netherlands), in addition to Rhine-Waal.  We will also tour PROBAT, a machinery and systems manufacturing company, to learn about dual education in the company, and the QConcepts Design & Engineering hub.

Today, due to the polar vortex, we are facing wind chills in the negative forties, so school is closed and I’m able to spend the day preparing for the trip.  This means getting online classwork together so that my students will remain engaged while I’m away, and beginning the large task of packing for this trip, which will require semi-professional and sightseeing clothing for 30 to 40 degree days, weather that sounds outright balmy compared to what we’re experiencing now.

Even though we will only be there for a week, I’m hoping that my time in Germany and the Netherlands will not only give me valuable insight about potential innovations to American postsecondary ed, but also lead to longer term relationships with the European educators that I meet, and deeper relationships with my program colleagues. Of course, I’m also excited to be going on this big adventure and hope to have plenty of laughs along the way.