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Franke GLI Student Experience
The Franke GLI is a community of students making a world of difference, reaching across disciplines to explore global challenges through collaboration and hands-on experience. Your journey starts here!
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UM Yields Trio of Montana-Native Truman Scholarship Finalists
Two Franke fellows, Augusta Reinhart (left) and Lindsey Roosa, were selected as national finalists for the prestigious Truman Scholarship, the nation’s premier graduate fellowship for those pursuing careers as public service leaders. Lindsey plans to work as a foreign service officer for the...
GLI Students Support High School Exchange
This spring, Global Leadership Initiative students put their learning into practice by supporting the Mansfield Center's Vietnam-Montana High School Environmental Exchange. The two-way exchange funded by the U.S. Embassy in Vietnam allows UM to support the education and travel of 50 high school...
Green Housing for Sustainable Montanans
Sustainability weighs heavily on the minds of many students as they attempt to reorient daily practices into environmentally conscious behaviors. In a culture that has long benefited from natural resources, it can be difficult to drive a message of green living without definite plans from which...
From Elephants to the Alps
GLI student McKenna Jones reflects on her study abroad experience in Thailand and Austria, where she discovered that though people have many different cultures and practices, humans tend to share base values and desires.
From Mental Health to Borshch, the Complexities of Understanding Slavic Culture through American Eyes
Carly Zilge examines the differing perspectives on mental health between the United States and her study abroad country, Russia.
Outside My Comfort Zone: A Semester in Kyrgyzstan
Camryn Vaughn was first drawn to Kyrgyzstan for its mountainous terrain and beautiful scenery. With over 80 different ethnic groups, the country was also a great fit for her GLI theme of Politics and Culture.
Finding Truth in the Desert: Life on the Colorado Plateau
Isabella Butler spent two months traversing the backcountry of the Colorado Plateau by canoe and on foot while completing a semester with the Missoula-based Wild Rockies Field Institute as part of her GLI experience.
From Belgium to Bosnia: Reflections On Europe
UM student Taylor Gregory spent his fall semester studying European peace and security studies in Brussels, Belgium. Taylor intends to pursue a law degree focused on humanitarian law, an area of study closely related to his GLI theme of social inequality and human rights.
Leading in a Changing World
Having encountered topics that extend from decision making to experiential learning, the students in GLI’s Models of Leadership class discover new leader-oriented lectures every week. President Bodnar addresses the GLI class through a perspective based around UM’s continued mission to enhance...
Intentionality in Festivities, Food, and Fondness: A Galician Summer
Anna Potter explores the cultural environment and political atmosphere of Galicia, Spain as she studies Spanish and works with a nonprofit.
Southern Border Crisis Revisited
Freshmen GLI students researched and published an article that revisits the southern border crisis, particularly its original conditions and ongoing consequences. During the Migration and Refugee course taught by Dr. Gillian Glaes, these students focused their broad GLI theme of Social...
Giving Can Change the World
Concentrating within the field of sustainability, these GLI students chose four non-profits towards which they will award $10,000. Taught by Professors Gregory Larson and Sara Hayden, the course Can Giving Change the World? weaves the pragmatism of charity with the research of philanthropy to...
2019 Capstone Winners The Flow Nation
This year’s winning capstone team completed a project titled, The Flow. Educate. Empower. Change. The group wanted to address the stigma attached to menstruation around the world. They did this by creating a website, podcast, and video game, as well as provided global resources, to educate and...
Where Cultures Collide
Read about Franke GLI Fellow Abby Nurvic's semester abroad in Athens, Greece. While abroad she took the opportunity to learn more about the cultures in Greece, as well as surrounding countries Hungary, Austria, Poland and Italy.
Franke GLI Freshmen visit Fort Missoula
Often, Missoula feels distant from things like world wars and humanitarian crisis. On Thursday, Oct. 11, Franke GLI students in the Migration and Refugees in the Modern World seminar took a field trip to Fort Missoula to learn just how close those far off concepts actually are. During World War...
Searching for Muskox
Instead of floating the river, hiking around Montana, or enduring the ever-present August smoke, two Franke GLI students spent their summer following around Muskox in Greenland and analyzing microbiome samples in Denmark.
Charlotte Langer and Megan Franz spent seven weeks abroad as a part of a...
Taiwan: My first three weeks
Read about Franke GLI Fellow Elizabeth William's experiences in Taiwan. "As I reflect on the beginning of the first three weeks in Taiwan, I realize that I have experienced and want to share more than I thought I would. Through the TUSA scholarship I was able to experience a elementary school...
Capstone Students Create Recycling App
As an out of state student, Cheyenne Goetz was nervous about moving into the dorms and meeting new people her freshman year at the University of Montana. She jumped at the opportunity to join the Franke Global Leadership Initiative Living Learning Community.
Four years later, she and two other...
Oaxaca, México: My Second Home
Franke GLI student Audrey Brosnan describes her experiences in Oaxaca, Mexico.
"What do You Want to be When You Grow Up?": A Capstone's Storybook Approach to Career Education
Franke GLI’s capstone presentations kicked off Tuesday evening with four groups explaining their proposals. The proposals addressed a variety of topics, from coding education for elementary schools to mental health surveys to social media conversations about sex education. One group’s...
Alumna McKenna Andrews Interning for the German Mission to the UN
My Franke GLI experience began with the course "Can Giving Change the World?", and it concluded with the senior capstone "A Place to Call Home: Experiencing the Refugee Crisis through Simulation." Throughout my four years, I studied abroad for a semester in Karlsruhe, Germany, represented...
Alumnus Leland Hubbard Working Abroad in Zambia with the Peace Corps
Leland Hubbard recently found himself sitting in the Peace Corps Medical office in Lusaka, Zambia receiving a round of post-exposure rabies vaccines. This is far from Montana, but the Franke GLI equipped him with the skills necessary to take on work so far from home.
After graduation, Leland...
Lost in Japan
Franke GLI Student Renee Sanchez describes her search for stories and experiences in Japan.
Missoula's Congolese take stage for glimpse at refugee plight
There’s only so much you can tell people who’ve never been there about the miseries of a refugee camp.
Congolese families in Missoula are set to show us instead.
"Hidden Voices" Performance Exposes the Lives of Sex Trafficking Victims
Those who ventured up to the eleventh floor of Aber Hall on Thursday, April 20th encountered an environment both familiar and foreign. They found themselves touring empty dorm rooms occupied by a single individual, doused in red glow from the room’s only lit bulb. The dimness hid many...
Biomimicry in Business & Marketing: Dr. Jakki Mohr Presents Natural Resources Lecture to Global Challenges Course
On the evening of Monday, March 13, Dr. Jakki Mohr (UM School of Business Regents Professor of Marketing) presented a guest lecture on the topic of Natural Resources and Sustainability to the Franke Global Leadership Initiative’s “Global Challenges and Leadership” class. The Franke GLI...
Fall in the Swan
Franke GLI student Aspen Anderson shares her observations of natural and human life in Montana's Swan Valley, as well as the lesson in open-mindedness she gained.
Deliberative Democracy Seminar: Practicing Civil Discourse
One of the courses offered in the GLI program this fall was Deliberative Democracy, taught by Professor Cassandra Hemphill. Grace Dunnehoff and Canyon Hohenstein were two students enrolled in this course, which culminated in a deliberation session at DiverseU. Both Political Science...
"Bridging the Gap": A 2016 GLI Capstone Proposal
Students and faculty gathered in the cozily lit theater in the new Harold and Priscilla Gilkey building on two chilly evenings in December. These senior GLI students have been researching all semester to inform their project ideas, and anticipation mounted as they prepared to present their...
2016 Photo Contest Winners!
We are delighted to announce the winners of this year's Beyond the Classroom Photo Contest! Read about the winners' experiences and look through their photos.
Mayor Engen and Governor Bullock Share Leadership Advice with GLI Students
GLI students gathered in one of the Gallagher lecture halls on October 18th to absorb the leadership advice of Mayor Engen and Governor Bullock. Both were invited to speak in GLI’s leadership development course given their clearly defined leadership roles in the Missoula and Montana...
UM on track for largest single gift in history
The University of Montana Foundation recently has received a pledge from Bill Franke and his family in the amount of $24 million that will benefit the College of Forestry and Conservation and the Global Leadership Initiative. This will become the largest single gift ever received by the...
Introspection in Iceland
GLI fellow Natalia Boise explores her sense of self and comes to terms with solitude while visiting Iceland during her Beyond the Classroom experience.
2016 GLI Celebration Honors Graduates, Scholarship Recipients
The annual End-of-the-Year GLI Celebration honors Beyond the Classroom scholarship recipients, graduating seniors, and the Capstone projects that exemplify the ambitions of the program. This year, GLI gave 16 scholarships and nearly 70 graduation certificates to GLI Fellows.
Students completing...
Ted Talk Lecture Teaches Students to ‘Shift the Paradigm’
In the heart of Miller Hall, Professor Ekaterina Voronina stood in front of a group of first-year GLI students. On the screen was Siddhartha Mukherjee’s Ted Talk “Soon We’ll Cure Diseases With A Cell, Not a Pill.” Mukherjee talked about the antibiotic revolution and the need for new models of...