Learn the stories of UMGC's overseas faculty as they launched programs for servicemembers around the world.
They call themselves "the Academic Foreign Legion," and they have stories to tell. Beginning in 1949, University of Maryland Global Campus hired "traveling faculty" and sent them around the world, stopping for eight weeks at a time to teach courses at U.S. military bases.
With the motto "Have Syllabus, Will Travel," these professors taught on installations from Iceland to Antarctica, from London to Okinawa, from the jungles of Vietnam to the deserts of Kuwait and Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan and Bosnia. They even taught aboard ships at sea.
Emmy Award–winning public television producer Lauren Cardillo created a half-hour documentary about an inspiring chapter in Maryland's higher education history. The film explores the triumphs, challenges, joys, and sorrows experienced by the academic visionaries who changed the course of higher education to make the dream of a college degree a reality for U.S. Armed Forces stationed abroad. The documentary draws from archival materials, as well as contemporary interviews with faculty, administrators, and alumni.
Over There: The Adventures of Maryland's Traveling Faculty aired on Maryland Public Television in April 2018. Watch the documentary online.
