Eckerd students will have the opportunity to visit sites such as the Royal Exchange in London this August. Photos courtesy of Bob Jozkowski
Going elbow to elbow with people in the London marketplace and gaining a sense of the business community are now being filtered into one Eckerd College study abroad course in August.
Discover England: History, Business and Culture will be led by Bob Jozkowski, assistant professor of finance within the International Business program. From Aug. 2–22, students of any major who are sophomores or above have the opportunity to learn experientially and stay in Eckerd’s London Study Centre.
“If you want to get into finance, and I mean real finance at a big level, you need to sensate that,” Jozkowski says. “You can read about it from a distance—from St. Petersburg—but you don’t really know until you’re there.”
Jozkowski’s office walls are covered with Wimbledon tickets, photographs from past London trips and a Beatles poster. It’s safe to say he is a seasoned London traveler, and trip leader in general, having led other study abroad trips in Australia and Portugal.
Being on the faculty’s Global Education Committee, Jozkowski is passionate about the international travel program’s expansion. He questioned why August has to be dedicated to only first-year and transfer students’ orientation during Autumn Term. With the imagination of the Global Education Office, the ball got rolling on creating this August travel opportunity for upperclass students.
They believe this will be beneficial for students with more restrictive schedules too, such as athletes or those with less flexible majors.
Change Alley, where Londoners used to gather to trade in coffee houses
Assistant Professor of Finance Bob Jozkowski explores the historic defensive wall surrounding the town of Canterbury.
Students will immerse themselves in the city, learning about the London business world. Jozkowski will guide them through “Change Alley,” where before there was a London Stock Exchange, people gathered to trade in coffee houses, he explains.
The trip’s itinerary also features visits to Parliament, the Bank of England and must-see sites like Big Ben.
Only about a third of students who typically attend Jozkowski’s study abroad trips are business students, with the rest majoring in disciplines that range from the arts to STEM, he says. Students will gain a Global Perspective credit through this trip because they will study the macro level of the confluence of politics and business from a day-to-day standpoint.
“There are different depths or different angles to that nexus of business and the cultural general component of the trip, but we’ll be looking for both,” he says. “We’ll have our heads moving back and forth and making sure that we’re taking things in peripherally, so that we don’t miss one or the other.”
The iconic Tower Bridge in London
For instance, students may learn a new side to historic figures they’re already familiar with. Jozkowski tells the story of a man who was a warden of the British Mint, who figured out how to fix the counterfeiting coinage problem in England. “Isaac Newton was his name,” he says, adding that the class will visit the Tower of London, which has a coinage exhibition that features “our mathematics and physics friend Isaac Newton.”
Students interested in this trip must apply by March 15, and scholarships are available.
“It is very encouraging for me that Global Ed has been thinking very openly and creatively,” Jozkowski says.
“And what I know from speaking with Dean [of Faculty] Wooley, from President Annarelli, even from trustees,” he adds, “they think this is a great idea—to expand the experiential part of learning.”
