Author: Jace Beckwith | Major: Chemical Engineering | Semester: Summer 2024

Swedish Midsummer

The summer after my sophomore year in 2024, I had the opportunity to study sustainability for six weeks in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway with These countries are renowned for their sustainability, and as a nature lover and chemical engineer, this topic is important to me both personally and professionally. During this time, I took two three-week, three-credit classes. The first was Sustainable Business Strategy in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the second was Engineering Sustainable Environments in Stockholm, Sweden, which included a weeklong study tour in Oslo, Norway.

When I first walked into my class in Copenhagen, it felt like stepping into a Danish fairy tale. With views overlooking the city, real, worn, wood flooring, and incredibly hygge natural lighting, I could have just sat and enjoyed the view from my classroom for hours. However, not long after, my professor walked in. He was an enthusiastic, sharp economist with a light Irish accent, who made the class laugh with his dad jokes from the start. He believed experience is the best teacher and immediately took us on a walk around the city, explaining the course’s goals and academics. Over the next three weeks, we would meet with industry leaders, learn about new sustainable economic models, and work in groups with a small business of our choosing to develop a sustainability strategy. Within the first two weeks, we visited Maersk, DSV, and Ramboll, three industry giants to learn about their sustainability efforts. Maersk, one of the world’s largest shipping companies, is pioneering a bio-methane fleet of ships. DSV, a logistics company, leverages its asset-light strategy to demand sustainable solutions from contractors, driving sustainability across the supply chain. Ramboll, a construction consulting company, offers sustainable redesigns at no cost to clients.

After each visit, we wrote about the lessons we took away from the perspective of “Doughnut Economics,” the sustainable economic textbook that we were studying, which argues that permanent GDP growth is impossible. After experiencing these industry leaders, we were cut loose to work with a small business to develop their sustainability strategy. We chose a local bookstore, and through collaborating and analyzing their business model, developed a sustainability strategy that we could deliver to them to increase their revenue and consumer engagement with a circular economic model.

After this already life changing class, I was only half-way through, and onto Stockholm, Sweden. In Stockholm, I focused on the engineering side of sustainability. On the first day of class, I walked in to see only five other students and knew that we would be a close-knit group. My professor was an incredibly intelligent sustainability consultant and PhD candidate, and on the first day, he immediately took us out to see the sustainability in the city. In this first tour, we saw Stockholm’s incredible recycling system and impressive building codes that prevent runoff pollution and flooding and related them to calculations we would do later in the class. Day to day, we studied calculations behind pollutants in water, greenhouse gas emissions, and renewable energy in the morning, and evenings were spent exploring the city. After a week of this, the study tour began with a flight to Oslo, Norway.

There, visited industrial sustainability facilities and met with the engineers, and later wrote about their processes. These visits included a wastewater treatment plant, a transit research facility, and a recycling station. The wastewater treatment facility, located in tunnels underneath the city, was focused on reducing nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in the treated water. The Institute of Transport Economics showed us research on traffic pattern adjustments to increase public transit ridership. At the Oslo recycling station, we learned about the three-bag system, separating plastics, organics, and residual waste with a complex automated system. With a week in Oslo under our belts, we returned to Stockholm for a final week learning more about sustainable engineering and wrapping up our lectures.

I loved every second of my classes during my study abroad, but just as impactful were the trips that I took with friends to Amsterdam and Bergen. At first, I hadn’t realized how easy travel within Europe was. However, after talking with friends I made in class, we planned an impressively affordable trip to Amsterdam for the time between the two three-week sessions. The canals, history, the Rijksmuseum, and the friends that I made all made the trip unforgettable. After boosting my travel confidence with the Amsterdam trip, I knew I wanted to travel again with friends during the second session. The perfect opportunity arose on the return from Oslo to Stockholm, where two and I booked a train across Norway to visit Bergen, the heart of the fjords. There, we hiked seven miles across a mountaintop to see out over the Bergen fjords in the pouring rain, laughing and having fun all the way. Exploring these cities with new friends was unforgettable experience, and I will carry these friendships and experiences with me for the rest of my life.

With these experiences, I have a bit of advice for students considering studying abroad. My top piece of advice is to start planning early, months if not a year in advance. I completed and read my paperwork long before departing, from class syllabi to scholarship applications, and the study abroad advisors that helped me through the process were saints. Another bit of advice to get the most out of any travel experience is to research the destination and chase interesting points on the map to get a mix of the most important things to see, and the destinations off the beaten path.

I cannot recommend studying abroad enough for any student, and my study abroad experience in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway was amazing. I left with a brand-new perspective on sustainability and engineering, new friends, and lasting memories. To study abroad and cross the world, is truly expanding your horizons.