Helle Sorensen, assistant professor in the Department of Hospitality, Meeting and Travel Administration, thinks people learn best by using all their senses. So, when she leads study-abroad programs, she thinks outside the usual tour box. Sorensen has led Metro students to smell for the presence of orangutans in Borneo and to feel the effects of the wind as they pull the hand-hewn oak oars on a Viking ship replica in Denmark.

"I've worked in tourism my whole life," Sorensen says. Born and raised in Denmark, her parents were teachers and her father led many study-abroad trips. "I would help out and sometimes go along. In fact, the motorcoach company I use in Denmark is the same one my dad used," she says, adding that with contacts like that you sometimes get special treatment.

A 1998 Metro graduate with a degree in geography, Sorensen went on to get her master's in cultural anthropology at CU-Denver. "I love that I really use both my degrees in what I'm doing," she says. "This is what travel is all about: experiencing nature and exploring new cultures."

Sorensen teaches a course in cruise management, and is planning to lead a group of students on a cruise to the Caribbean in spring of 2006. But the students won't simply cruise; Sorensen has been working to arrange tours of the engine room and other working parts of the ship, and to find local guides on each of the islands they will visit. "I generally give lots of assignments that require interaction with the locals," she says. After the trips, she requires her students to synthesize and analyze their experiences. Students take Sorensen's trips for credit, tied into an existing course or as an elective.

"I like finding a combination of the familiar and traditional with the odd and unusual," Sorensen says about the study-abroad trips she leads. "In Borneo (a Muslim country), they don't eat beef. There are no McDonald's. The students eat what the locals do. Of course, when we do find french fries, there's a mad rush."