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Experiences in Spain, Morocco and Italy helped the entrepreneurship student expand her perspective and discover what she can handle
Kaitlyn Klumpp loves traveling, but she also really loves being home.
The junior Central Michigan University entrepreneurship student grew up in Shepherd and stayed close to home for college. So even after deciding to spend three weeks studying in Spain and Morocco in summer 2025, leaving was not easy.
“I’m definitely a home person,” Klumpp said. “As much as I love to be abroad, I love to be at home.”
That tension between wanting to experience more of the world and feeling nervous about leaving what is familiar has followed Klumpp through her international experiences. Instead of stopping her, each experience has made the next challenge seem a little more possible.
Klumpp’s first CMU study abroad experience took her to Madrid, Spain, and Tetouan, Morocco, through a three-week faculty-led Honors Program focused on global citizenship, politics, religion and migration.
Klumpp had gotten a taste of international travel through a short cultural exchange in Germany during high school, but that experience did not eliminate the nerves that came with leaving home again. And while Spain felt relatively familiar, Morocco did not.
“Morocco was a culture shock,” Klumpp said.
Klumpp learned to write her name in Arabic, prepared food with members of a women’s collective and formed a friendship with a young woman from Tetouan whom she still keeps in touch with. The experience challenged her to consider how people in different places encounter the world from perspectives different from her own.
“I think specifically the Spain and Morocco course with Dr. Barco, the content of the program was transformational in just the way that I thought about things,” Klumpp said.
Morocco was also somewhere Klumpp said she likely would not have chosen to visit independently. That became part of its value.
“I would never have picked to travel to Morocco on my own,” Klumpp said. “That was an experience I would never have had.”
That first CMU experience gave Klumpp enough confidence to go abroad again. In summer 2026, she spent six weeks studying in Florence, Italy, through a direct-enroll program.
Klumpp took consumer behavior and retail management for marketing credit along with a course exploring Italian specialty breads and pizza that helped fulfill a global citizenship requirement through the Honors Program. The program also gave her more independence to explore outside the classroom.
One weekend, Klumpp and two friends traveled to Elba Island off the coast of Tuscany.
“My gosh, I’m 20 years old and I just went with my friends alone on this island in the middle of Italy,” Klumpp recalled. “This is awesome.”
That independence also meant dealing with things when they went wrong. When a delayed ferry threatened their transportation back from Elba, Klumpp and her friends had to adjust their plans and figure out what came next.
“If it was last summer and I had to deal with that, I would have been a nervous wreck panicking,” Klumpp said. “But after going through so many situations, you just have to deal with it and keep going.”
On another weekend, Klumpp and fellow CMU student Stella Friese, who studies logistics and purchasing and supply management, visited Vienna and Schladming, a town in the Austrian Alps. Taking a lift into the mountains became one of Klumpp’s most joyful experiences abroad.
The trip also tested their resourcefulness. When their credit cards would not go through, they had to carefully budget their limited cash for food and the return trip to Vienna, where they would fly back to Florence.
Unexpected travel problems had not disappeared. Klumpp had simply become more confident in her ability to handle them.
Klumpp said her entrepreneurship studies and experience with her parents’ businesses gave her confidence to take on study abroad. Studying abroad, in turn, strengthened her courage and ability to solve problems, meet new people, and adapt when situations change.
The experiences also expanded the range of people and perspectives she considers when thinking about business. Entrepreneurs identify problems and look for ways to solve them, Klumpp said, and encountering different communities can change both the problems someone recognizes and the solutions they imagine. That perspective feels particularly important to Klumpp because she grew up in a homogenous rural community.
“If you’re from a rural area, it’s even more important that you go and experience things like this,” Klumpp said.
Studying abroad gave Klumpp opportunities to encounter people, communities and ways of life that were different from what she saw every day growing up in Shepherd. For an entrepreneurship student thinking about the people behind a problem or business idea, that broader understanding has practical value.
“Business is global whether you intend it to be or not,” Klumpp wrote in a follow-up email, emphasizing the value of understanding consumers and navigating unfamiliar situations.
Klumpp’s experiences also show that studying abroad can fit within a student’s academic plan. Her programs allowed her to earn credits toward coursework and Honors Program requirements while gaining experiences she could not replicate in Mount Pleasant.
Students who are interested but unsure how study abroad might fit their degree requirements, schedule or budget can work with their academic adviser and CMU’s study abroad staff to explore programs, course credit and funding options.
Klumpp also cautions students against assuming that the people they see studying abroad simply are not nervous about doing it. Her previous travel experience did not prevent homesickness, uncertainty or difficult moments. What changed was her confidence that those feelings did not mean she could not do it.
By the time she left for Florence, Klumpp could draw on everything she had already navigated in Spain and Morocco.
“If I could handle Morocco, I could handle this program where I traveled by myself the entire way there,” Klumpp said.
Throughout both programs, Klumpp’s motto was to “lean in.” It reminded her that it was OK to feel scared, homesick, or intimidated, and that she could give herself grace while still trying something unfamiliar.
“The more you do it, it’s just like, we got this,” Klumpp said.
Klumpp still considers herself a home person. Studying abroad did not change that. What it changed was the size of the world in which she feels comfortable finding her way.
