Grow Into Global Leadership
The Global Leadership Minor allows NC State students to live and learn in cities across Europe, where they unlock their leadership abilities and gain a growth mindset that gives them an edge in the modern workforce.
Goodnight Scholar Safina Luu, a spring 2025 graduate in industrial and systems engineering, was drawn to NC State by the promise of a large university filled with opportunities. She found one of her most transformative Wolfpack experiences as part of a small, close-knit community: the students and faculty of the Global Leadership Minor (GLM).
“My Goodnight advisor told me about the GLM program and how my study abroad can be covered through the Goodnight Scholars Program,” said Luu. “I love traveling and I’d studied abroad before, so I went for it.”
The GLM program, a partnership between the Shelton Leadership Center and the NC State European Center in Prague, invites up to 15 students from any major to travel abroad during the spring semester on an educational tour through European cities. Participants study under world-class faculty and collaborate with local students and organizations at each site as they learn to work and lead across cultures.
A Crash Course in Cross-Cultural Leadership
The first overseas stop for all GLM students — after they complete a required course in creative decision-making through the Shelton Leadership Center — is the NC State European Center in Prague. The center is a hub for Wolfpack activity in the heart of Prague, Czechia’s river-crossed capital city with roots deep in Europe’s history.
Luu and her travel mates in the spring 2025 GLM cohort spent their first week abroad in Prague starting their capstone course, which they’d complete at the end of the program.
They used this week to learn about global competencies — skills and knowledge needed for intercultural collaboration — and to begin learning how to live, work and travel together. Each student also defined their personal goals for the program so they could move forward with a growth mindset: an eagerness to learn and improve through purposeful effort.
The cohort then set off for Innsbruck, a ski town in the Austrian Alps, for a two-week course in strategic communications led by Lynsey Romo, professor in the Department of Communication. There they completed a series of projects on the culture of Austria alongside students at the University of Innsbruck — who hailed from many different countries — to broaden their global perspective and become stronger intercultural communicators.
“We learned about different communication styles, conflict styles, and how to work more effectively as a group,” said Luu. “You’re reacting to these experiences with people from different disciplines, cultures and backgrounds, and you learn to grow from each other.”
After Innsbruck, the students journeyed to Glasgow, a riverside port in Scotland’s western Lowlands, for a course in organizational leadership taught by Jason Bocarro, Owens-Shelton Distinguished Professor of Leadership with a Global Perspective in the College of Natural Resources.
Bocarro and professors at the University of West Scotland guided Luu’s cohort as they engaged with businesses in the local events industry. The students’ mission was to learn how leaders align their teams around shared priorities and build bonds between their companies and the community. One site they visited was the Scottish Event Campus, a sports and exhibition complex that Luu called a cross between the Lenovo Center and the Raleigh Convention Center.
“We talked to leaders at each level of the business about their goals and how they tie into the overarching goals for the company, and also the future of the city,” said Luu. “It was my favorite part of the program. And afterward, we presented to them about our findings on their cohesiveness and business principles.”
The next stop took Luu and her cohort to Nice, a temperate tourist mecca on France’s Mediterranean coast, for a course on navigating sustainability as a citizen leader. They were guided by Seth Murray, associate professor and director of the program in International Studies, in partnership with faculty at Université Côte d’Azur.
The cohort then returned to Prague to finish their capstone project, which called for each student to present their learnings from the GLM program through the lens of their academic or career interests.
Coming back from the GLM program, I think everyone had a higher sense of confidence — a higher sense of self.
“Computer science students made websites about what they learned, public relations students created magazines and newspapers, one animal sciences student even compared the birth and growth of a pig to her growth in the program,” said Luu. “I did mine on how to make GLM even better by applying solutions in terms of Lean Six Sigma — a methodology that’s all about improving business processes.”
The GLM program, Luu said, provided a strong culmination to her undergraduate experience that prepared her to step boldly into her new role as a financial analyst with Bank of America.
“You learn so much about yourself, and ultimately you start to express your most natural self. Coming back from the GLM program, I think everyone had a higher sense of confidence — a higher sense of self.”
More Views from Safina’s GLM Journey:
A Springboard to Global Citizenship
Sarah Roskam, a 2023 NC State graduate, took part in the very first GLM cohort back in the spring of 2020. Five years later, she said her GLM experience not only helped her decide to pursue dual degrees in international studies and economics — it put her future on a global trajectory.
“The GLM program uses the words ‘global’ and ‘leadership’ in a really intentional way,” said Roskam. “Because you’re learning to be a global citizen, an intercultural leader. It really set me on an international path for my life — a global path.”
Roskam, like all GLM students, benefitted from starting her journey at the European Center in Prague. The center, the university’s only permanent year-round international facility, gives members of the Wolfpack traveling in Europe a gateway to make global connections and a space to find a sense of home amidst the culture shock of living abroad.
“You’re an outsider when you get to Prague,” said Roskam. “But then you’re welcomed inside a very Czech place — the people who work there predominantly speak Czech — where you can feel comfortable asking questions and getting to know the culture.”
As a first-time globetrotter, Roskam leaned on her more traveled peers and professors to build confidence in her own decision-making. The personal growth that happens in the GLM program, she said, doesn’t come from textbooks or rote memorization. It comes from learning to empathize and resolve conflicts with the people around you.
You’re really living abroad, even if it’s for a short time . . . it’s a unique bridge to becoming more globally and culturally aware.
“You’re not a leader because you’re in charge,” said Roskam. “You’re a leader because you’re reflecting the needs of other people, and people have different needs. The Global Leadership Minor attracts so many different kinds of people. It helps you understand other communication styles and how to work with people who are very different from yourself.”
Roskam’s travels in the GLM program, like so many experiences in early 2020, were cut short by COVID-19. The pandemic didn’t stop her from completing the program’s requirements, however, and it hasn’t stopped her from continuing along a global path. She recently completed a prestigious Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree in heterodox economics while studying in France and Italy.
She’s now living in Paris, and plans to expand her travels to South Asia. One day soon, she hopes to start her journey toward a Ph.D. She doesn’t hesitate to recommend the GLM program to any student looking to push their horizons to a planetary scale.
“You’re really living abroad, even if it’s for a short time, which is a much different experience than just being a tourist,” said Roskam. “It’s a unique bridge to becoming more globally and culturally aware.”
