The Foundation believes that learning can be strengthened when you leave home with a question in your pocket. The Sullivan Foundation’s next study abroad experience takes this belief and provides it with a usable structure that carries over into credits and credentials. In summer 2026, in partnership with the University of New Orleans’ Innsbruck International Summer School, students will study in Austria, earn six U.S. credits, and complete a new Sullivan Certificate in Leadership and Entrepreneurship. The work will feel familiar to anyone who has walked with us through Costa Rica or Panama, only now the outcomes are recorded in a way that graduate schools and employers immediately understand.
The design is simple and useful. Each participant takes two courses, Leadership for Impact and Entrepreneurship for Good, a pairing that connects purpose to practice. The session runs from July 3 to August 7, 2026, and applications open in October 2025. The program welcomes UNO students and students from other universities who maintain a 3.0 GPA. Fees include housing, weekday meals, excursions, and travel insurance. Airfare and most dinners are on your own, which leaves room for small adventures and unplanned conversations that often end up being the most durable lessons you take home.
If you have followed our path the last two summers, you can see how we arrived here. In 2024, a Sullivan cohort in San José, Costa Rica, moved through site visits and dialogues that connected big ideas to local reality. Around the same period, students explored month-long study in Strasbourg and a four-week program in Panama City, both built around fieldwork and reflective practice. Those experiences taught leadership in motion and introduced entrepreneurial thinking in the field. What they did not offer was a named credential. Austria does. The certificate signals that you did more than travel. You studied, built, tested, and can talk about what you learned with clarity.
Daily life in Innsbruck will have a pace that helps ideas take root. Classes run Monday through Thursday. Workshops and project blocks give teams time to plan, gather feedback, and revise as needed. Afternoons and weekends open the city and the region to you. A train ride might become a case study in public systems. A market visit could become a lesson in supply chains and storytelling. The daily structure does not smother the spontaneity that makes study abroad feel alive. It simply makes sure the learning is captured and credited.
Admissions and logistics are straightforward. Students from UNO and other institutions submit transcripts and a brief home-campus form that streamlines transfer credit. Housing is in modern residences, weekday meals are provided, and excursions are built into the calendar so you are not left piecing it together alone.
Leadership, in this program, is taught as a practice. You learn it by doing: observing a real problem, deciding on a course of action, testing a small solution, measuring what changed, then adjusting with your team. Faculty coach the process, community partners ground it in real needs, and each project produces tangible deliverables like a pilot, a brief, a budget, and a reflection on outcomes. The Austria program keeps the full practice cycle intact: identify a problem, plan a response, test a small version, measure results, and revise with your team. It also adds the academic credential that matters after summer. You earn six credits, build job-ready skills, and receive the Sullivan Certificate in Leadership and Entrepreneurship. The certificate documents what you did, what you learned, and the evidence you produced.
The road ahead
Applications open in October 2025. The session runs July 3 to August 7, 2026, in Innsbruck. The two courses are Leadership for Impact and Entrepreneurship for Good, together counting for six credits and the Sullivan Certificate in Leadership and Entrepreneurship. Eligibility extends to UNO and non-UNO students with a 3.0 GPA. Program fees include housing, excursions, weekday meals, and travel insurance.
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