Every year, many UPrep students travel around the nation and the world on Global Link trips. They might go to Alabama, New Mexico, France, Lithuania, Taiwan or Colombia. The program director, Kate Williams, stresses the value of these trips. A former exchange student herself, she puts a heavy emphasis on the value of traveling abroad.

“I had a really eye-opening time living with a new language and a new culture and a new family and really adopting a new identity” Williams said. 

According to Williams, a key part of UPrep’s Global Link program is that the school has continuously sent and received students from schools for many years.

“We seek out our school relationships and maintain them for really long periods of time,” she said. “What that means is that the relationships that we’re building are really profound. I think, even though the students we’re exchanging each time are different, it’s a continuation of an already established relationship in our community.”

Williams believes that connections built on these trips supplant other reasons to travel.

“What Global Link is aiming for is relationships,” Williams said. “You don’t go to France to study French. You will learn some French while you are there. But that’s not the purpose of the program. The purpose is for you to learn about yourself and new environments.” 

She emphasizes that the three goals of the program are operations, relationships and learning goals. In other words, the content of the trip, the interactions between people of different cultures and languages, and the education which the attendees of the trip are supposed to take away. 

Those interactions are the focus of Global Link when foreign students arrive at UPrep.

“One of the things that’s neat about [Global Link] work is it’s not just me,” Williams said. “The students…aren’t here to meet Kate. They’re here to meet you.”