BLUFFTON, Ohio—Bluffton University students travel to destinations worldwide each year for transformative cross-cultural experiences.

And the ones that are closest to home are as impactful as those elsewhere around the globe.

“Three weeks in Chicago has changed my life,” according to Brock Homier, speaking about his spring 2014 experience on Sept. 30. He and fellow senior Devin Hitchcock, two of the Bluffton students who went to Chicago, discussed it during the first of two campus forums devoted to student presentations about their cross-cultural experiences last May and June.

Joining them were three students who had spent time in eastern Kentucky—performing service, in part, in Mennonite Central Committee’s SWAP (Sharing With Appalachian People) program—as well as others who had gone to Colombia and Iceland.

In Chicago, students were exposed to various religions, visiting, for instance, a Jewish synagogue and a Catholic service that Hitchcock said seemed like “a shining beacon of hope” in a place where violence is normal.

Among other things, they also performed internships for the Chicago Center for Urban Life and Culture, met with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, saw an urban farm, attended arts performances and generally learned about cultural influences that have helped shape the city.

As a result, “I’m a very different person now,” said Homier, noting that he came to the conclusion “there’s not a lot of difference” between people in Chicago and those around his small hometown of Continental, Ohio. He learned not to “judge a book by its cover,” he said, and to embrace change.

With his eyes “opened to a world I didn’t know existed,” he is now more interested in what other cities have to offer, Homier added.

The Kentucky groups also had cultural time, discovering wood carving and other Appalachian arts, for example, and visiting coal mines. They also hiked in an old-growth forest with 400-year-old oak trees that have survived years of strip mining in the area, said Jessica Williams, a Bluffton senior from Genoa, Ohio.

The students spent time at the Hindman (Ky.) Settlement School and in Harlan, Ky. They did service work in and around a forestry camp and at a state park, as well as work on homes for a couple grateful residents.

In the process, they found out “about grace and what it really means to be thankful,” Williams recalled. “The impact those people had on us is going to last a lifetime.”

Danielle McQuillin, a senior from Delta, Ohio, said the Bluffton contingent “left Ohio as a group of strangers but returned as a group of friends” who had shared “the experience of a lifetime.”

And, she promised her student listeners, a cross-cultural experience “will change your life.”

The second Sept. 30 forum featured more students who had the Kentucky experience, along with travelers to Israel/Palestine and Arizona, where participants explored immigration issues and Native American culture.

Among the latter group’s destinations was Puerto Peñasco, Mexico—across the U.S. border from Arizona—where members worked on home-building with i6eight, a Christian organization. “Most of us had never traveled to another country, or even experienced the border before,” said Hannah Krull, a junior from Lewisburg, Ohio. “It went smoother than we imagined.”

The students also met with representatives of immigration-related organizations and visited Native American reservations, including a Hopi reservation and its mission school. “Much of our time was spent volunteering, whether in the classroom or outside doing grounds work,” added Jeremy Amstutz, a senior from White Pigeon, Mich.

To fulfill Bluffton’s cross-cultural requirement, students have two options in addition to the short-term, spring exploration of a different U.S. or foreign culture—the option chosen by 112 students last spring. Alternatively, students may take two semesters of a language or study for a semester in Guatemala or Washington, D.C., or through other programs.