The opportunity to study abroad inspired David Farland to look for someplace to explore some of his personal passions and the unique opportunity to surf for credit.

“I’m very outdoorsy,” he recalled. “I like the sun. I like nice weather. I just thought Australia was a nice fit.”

And then some. The semester the electrical engineering student spent in Queensland, Australia, was nothing less than a life-changing experience.

Whether you're a Frank Sinatra or Sublime fan, everyone knows the classic tale of school being out for the summer and finally getting a chance to relax. As my final "kid summer" comes to a close, my last summer not having a big-kid job, I realized that summer break is not what it used to be when I was younger.

I now work 40 hours a week on campus, and like myself many others are working just as much as I am on top of taking classes. Summers in college is a time to make as much money as possible so you do not end up broke in the middle of the semester or trying to catch up on your class load.

Fitchburg State’s storied theater program has resounded on the global stage. Since 2000, the university has taken part every three years in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. The trip typically involves more than two dozen students (with the high point being more than 30 students when the university’s production of The Laramie Project was exported).

The week-long trip involves students performing alongside theater companies from around the world. 

Steven Edwards, english studies assistant professor, was awarded $10,000 from the Massachusetts Cultural Council as one of its 2014 creative writing fellows.

Edwards has been an assistant professor at Fitchburg State since 2011. The award-winning author’s books include the memoir Breaking into the Backcountry (University of Nebraska Press, 2010), which tells the story of his time as the caretaker of a 92-acre homestead along the Rogue National Wild and Scenic River in southwestern Oregon. His writing can be found in recent issues of Orion, Electric Literature, AGNI Online, Terrain.org, and The Good Men Project.

Samuel Tobin, communications media professor, published Portable Play in Everyday Life via Palgrave Pivot in October, 2013. Despite the fact that the Nintendo DS is one of the most popular game systems of all time, theorists have largely ignored it.

When I entered college, I didn’t give so much as a passing thought to studying abroad. I was far too frightened by the idea of flying and living in a foreign country for an extended period of time. When I discovered that Fitchburg State offered a summer program in Italy, the one place in the world I wanted to visit the most, I came up with a variety of fears and excuses in my head as to why I shouldn’t go. However, the only reason I needed to make my decision was that I really wanted to take advantage of this opportunity. 

Chris Kibler’s first glimpse of Fitchburg State came on the track, and in a way he’s never looked back. He first competed at Elliot Field as a high school student from Bath, Maine.

“The facility was just gorgeous, so I looked into what programs the school had to offer,” Kibler recalled. He visited Fitchburg State three or four more times in the ensuing months. “Each time, it felt more like home.”

Brig. Gen. Frederick A. Henry’s long and storied military career has taken him across the U.S. and Europe, but he’s never forgotten the lessons he learned as an undergraduate at Fitchburg State. 

He grew up in an inner city environment in Cambridge, where by his own admission he wasn’t a strong student. 

“I constantly went off the reservation,” Gen. Henry recalled. “I would always go on another path.” 

As a teen, Gen. Henry was a part of the Upward Bound program, where he was encouraged to try attending Fitchburg State; if the experience didn’t work out, he was told, he could consider joining the Navy. 

Fitchburg State would prove a transformative experience.

The Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013 was a moment we will never forget, and for Katherine Jewell, economics, history and political science professor, it was personal.

Jewell, pushing her 3-year-old son in a stroller, was close enough to the second explosion to feel the blast and smell the smoke. In the tumultuous days that followed, Jewell turned to her training as a historian in an attempt to make sense of the experience, chronicling the details, locations and conversations that erupted from the chaos.

Teaching middle school was a career change for Tammi Chandler, who began her professional career in the private sector, training adults in California. But the prospect of working with younger students also appealed to her.

After visiting friends in Fitchburg she planted roots—including starting a family—in the city and eventually at Fitchburg State, where she was impressed by the strong connection between the university and the Fitchburg Public Schools. Soon she was teaching at the middle school level.

“It was so much more fulfilling,” she said. “I wanted to work with at-risk children.”