Personal and Professional Growth in Germany by Kimberly Packard, BioRenewable Systems major

BRS 499 took me and 7 fellow Penn State undergraduate students to Freiburg, Germany, to join graduate students from the University of Freiburg University on a tour of Germany's advancements and integration of sustainability. The facilities we visited bridged knowledge and application conducted between international research institutes, opening channels of communication for what we hope to achieve in our careers.

As we toured Germany, I took note of the costs of a single-use plastic grocery bag at the market, the proportion of roofs containing photo-voltaic solar panels, and the primary use of bicycles for everyday transportation. These practices are emerging in the States, and their successes in Germany reaffirm our desires to establish similar goals here at home.

I have wanted to travel abroad since high school and the opportunity offered to us by supportive study abroad programs and faculty/staff here at Penn State, at the department, college, and university levels, allow us to bundle it into our tuition and current studies to fully nourish our understanding of the program we chose. This has expanded my scope of possibilities for my future, personally and professionally.