WKU News

During this month’s three-week Winter Term, 20 WKU faculty are expanding their classrooms and helping WKU students create a unique global learning experience through Faculty-Led Study Abroad (FLSA) with 10 programs spanning four continents. From the jungles of Peru to the Great Wall of China to the plains of Kenya, students are making the world their classroom.

The Division of Extended Learning & Outreach (DELO) FLSA scholarship encourages students to create their own experience by developing projects to enhance learning and impact their world. Dental hygiene students Hayley Middleton and Ann Marie Adcock are traveling with their Global Healthy & Service Learning class to Belize to teach children about dental hygiene. They created a children’s book starring “DELO the Flossing Monkey” to encourage early preventative oral health.

“As future professionals, we want to make a lasting change in the dental field,” Middleton said. “This book is a good start, and the children can keep them to share with others once we leave.”

Middleton and Adcock made the books by hand and plan to distribute them to children in Belize. Each book is hand-made and unique, containing fun and visual examples of good oral health, like proper brushing, flossing and rinsing.

“We have learned how important preventative oral hygiene is,” Adcock said. “Now it’s our job to inform children and their parents who often don’t realize the importance of keeping primary teeth healthy.”

According to WKU Study Away Director Jerry Barnaby, Study Away administers WKU Faculty-Led Study Abroad programs in partnership with faculty, academic departments & colleges and WKU Study Abroad & Global Learning.

“The goal of FLSA is to help faculty expand students’ understanding of the world around them through global study,” Barnaby said. “The DELO award gives an added incentive to use the study abroad experience to make a difference.”

For information on FLSA programs, visit www.wku.edu/flsa/ or contact the Office of Study Away at (270) 745-2231. Or check out FLSA on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/WkuFacultyLedStudyAbroad and Twitter at https://twitter.com/WKUabroad

Faculty-Led Study Abroad Programs are administered by Study Away, in partnership with faculty and staff program leaders, their academic units, Study Abroad & Global Learning and the Office of International Programs. Study Away is a unit of Extended Learning & Outreach.

Contact: Jerry Barnaby, (270) 745-2231 or jerry.barnaby@wku.edu