Johnson Hall director heads out to sea for fall semester 2023
Asa Bailey will take her student life skills to the Semester at Sea program, visiting 11 nations in 56 days
Janel Shoun-Smith |
Asa Bailey, associate director of residential life, usually spends her semester engaging with and caring for the students of Johnson Residence Hall as its director. But starting on Sept. 6, Bailey will be spending the fall 2023 semester at sea.
Bailey has been hired as one of the six residence hall directors serving 550 students in the fall Semester at Sea (SaS) voyage, where she will tend to the needs of students while traveling on the MV World Odyssey from Antwerp, Belgium to Bangkok, Thailand, over the course of 56 days.
Semester at Sea is a study-abroad program founded in 1963 and managed by the Institute for Shipboard Education (ISE) through current academic sponsor Colorado State University. Throughout the years, nearly 73,000 undergraduate students from over 1,500 colleges and universities have participated in Semester at Sea, and in September Lipscomb will join that group for what is believed to be the first time.
While attending Pepperdine University for her undergraduate degree, Bailey’s own residence hall director took a semester off to work in the Semester at Sea program and she found it “impossibly cool!” Bailey, a Houston native, underwent a rigorous application and interview process to be selected for the SaS staff, she said.
The SaS shipboard community is its own college campus featuring classrooms, cabins, lecture halls, a theater, a library, fitness facilities, indoor and outdoor dining as well as its 40-person faculty, residential and student life staff, and counseling and medical teams. Faculty and staff, as well as many of the students, hail from locales all over the world, said Bailey, who has worked in Lipscomb’s student life department for three years.
Asa Bailey
While not yet well-traveled (She has one long-term study in Florence, Italy, under her belt from her undergraduate years), Bailey says she has an enduring love for learning about cultures and highly values global citizenship. “I really value being able to understand that perspectives shift from person to person around the world,” she said, “and I love where learning is embedded within travel.”
As a student in Lipscomb’s Master of Health Administration program, she will travel to the Netherlands this May to see a different approach to medical care. By the end of the SaS voyage, she expects to add Spain, Morocco, India, Vietnam, Malta, Greece, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia as well as Belgium and Thailand to her “done” list.
“Being able to see how things I am interested in – such as health care – play out around the world is so interesting to me,” she said. “I love being able to see God’s creation through people around the world.”
She also enjoys working with people to understand them as individuals. She says she uses her bachelor’s degree in psychology every day on the job at Lipscomb, where she also works with the Campus Assessment Response and Evaluation Team (CARE) to address the needs of students who need extra support or are suffering a personal crisis.
These experiences have made her attuned to students’ well-being and comfortable and calm in a crisis. Her flexibility and adaptability could come in handy on a floating university impacted by weather, mechanical problems, limited space and resources and maritime legal issues, she said.
The Semester at Sea's ship called the MV World Odyssey.
Bailey will be using her skills to the same work with the SaS students such as working with a CARE team, developing programming, conducting leadership training and nurturing interpersonal relationships with diverse communities. She believes that working with care professionals and with students from all over the world in a non-Christian environment could broaden her engagement toolbox for working with Lipscomb students from all types of faith and cultural backgrounds, making her contribution to Lipscomb’s diverse community even stronger.
Students on the SaS voyage earn between 12-15 college credits through academic partner Colorado State University. Coursework is geared directly toward the itinerary of each voyage, providing a unique course experience based on the expert faculty and the regions on the itinerary.
Past voyages have included internationally recognized faculty experts on social movements and media, environmental systems, international business, intercultural communication, and world cinema, as well as a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and a Carnegie Foundation Professor of the Year. Notable SaS alumni and contributors include Nobel Laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, and many other world leaders and global thinkers.