The College of Arts + Architecture presents the annual Global Studies Exhibition, featuring work from student travel to Rome and Venice, Italy; Taipei, Taiwan; Tohoku and Tokyo, Japan; and Wroclaw, Poland.

The College of Arts + Architecture offers a broad range of international study programs and boasts the highest study abroad rate of any college at UNC Charlotte.

Each year, the Global Studies exhibition provides us with very tangible evidence of the importance that study abroad and other international opportunities bring to the curriculum and the student experience. The work displayed in the gallery represents the perspective, exploration, interpretation, cultural learning, and investment in a different way of understanding that can only come from stepping out of one’s cultural and social norm and into a new environment.

As Ansel Adams is credited with saying, “In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.” And it is exactly the exploratory aspect of an international experience that makes this such an important piece of a creator’s development. These students have explored their creative medium(s), their host environments, their own understanding of the world around them, and, perhaps most importantly, how they understand themselves as a person who arrived abroad from their home culture but now sees home through a different and broader prism.

Brad Sekulich (Director, UNC Charlotte Office of Education Abroad)