November 9, 2023 – Santa Fe College serves hundreds of military veterans each year who bring a rich set of international experiences to the classroom. How do they continue to grow as global citizens by taking college classes or participating in student clubs?
Dr. Vilma Fuentes interviewed Carmelos Brown and Charlotte Leavins to get a glimpse of how our military veterans experience college. Leavins told a story about learning that we’re all relatable no matter where we live.
“The Swedish students in my Sociology class that we’ve collaborated with on different projects,” Leavins said, “they really taught me that we’re not so different. They were mentioning during a Zoom conference meeting that they had a lot of gang-related activity that was happening. They had a rise in mass shootings in the area, too. The project that we were doing was comparing our gun laws and gun control regulations. During that whole meeting with them, I realized, ‘Wow. We have gangs in America. We have school shootings in America just like in Iraq. Just like in Sweden. We’re not that different.’”
Check out this episode (and the rest of the series) at sfcollege.edu/listen.