Holly Wise, Global News Team Headed to Guyana in January

By Kathleen Beverick Kmb187@txstate.edu

Holly Wise attends a news conference to discuss GNT

SAN MARCOS, Texas – Holly Wise announced that she and the students of the Global News Team are traveling to Guyana in January. This year, the team will be documenting the work of the Texas State Respiratory Care program.

The lecturer and her team of five or six students from the School of Journalism and Mass Communications will follow the Respiratory Care group as they treat the citizens of Guyana in clinics set up in churches and schools from January second through 13^th.

According to Wise there are several prerequisites that eligible students must meet in order to participate in the GNT trip. Students must first complete the Feature Writing and Multimedia Journalism courses in order to have the appropriate writing skills. Students approved for the trip must also have immunizations against Hepatitis A and B, as well as Malaria and Yellow Fever for some of the trips.

Although it is a study abroad “trip,” the program does not come without hard work according to Wise.

“You’re working. We usually have an early breakfast around 7 a.m. and in order to catch the bus, we all load up on the same buses […] and head out into the communities that the nursing students will be serving that day. So usually from about 9 to noon while the nursing students are setting up the clinics, my students, my team, are running around taking photos and videos, interviewing patients, [and] nursing students. We’re working with local doctors, so we’re interviewing them as well, and their teams,” said Wise.

During a previous trip to Nicaragua, the six students on the Global News Team at the time wrote over 60 pieces of media about the care Texas State Nursing School students gave to locals. One of the GNT students wrote and published a children’s book, which has since been translated into Spanish and redistributed to the children the team visits.

Although the application process for the 2018 trip is closed, Wise said she is still looking to fill the sixth and final spot on the study abroad trip. According to Wise, the cost of the trip is the same price as a standard study abroad trip - $2,804 – which includes airfare, two meals per day, lodging, international health insurance, and the application fee for the university and travel agency. However, these fees do not contribute toward tuition.

More information regarding the Global News Team study abroad trips is available from the SJMC website and Holly Wise at hlw24@txstate.edu.