At SMU, you’ll expand your international perspective through global programs and learning opportunities on campus and across the continent. From spending spring break on a medical service trip to interning abroad, there are plenty of ways to learn while exploring new cultures.
Provide care for the indigenous population in a remote Panama village. Serve migrant patients at the U.S.-Mexico border. Donate medical and school supplies in rural Laos.
Medical service trips like these are just some of the ways SMU students and faculty members broaden their global perspective, build their cultural competence, and reinforce their choice of a vocation.
Often, these international experiences build relationships across disciplines. In 2018, for example, more than a dozen nursing, physician assistant, and physical therapy students, as well as faculty and alumni, traveled to Batata, Panama. Together, they set up and ran a pop-up health clinic.
Global outreach is not just about providing our students with international opportunities. SMU also hosts health professions students from other nations at our campus labs and research centers, including an annual undergraduate exchange program between SMU and Seirei Christopher University in Hamamatsu, Japan.
Open to students, faculty, and staff, this awareness-building and fundraising organization supports student travel.
An interprofessional group of SMU students and faculty traveled to the small village of Batata in Panama to provide three days of primary, ambulatory care at clinics for the indigenous people in the region.
From South America to Asia, SMU students trek the globe to learn and serve.
