Startup Treks are multi-city study abroad programs where students travel with professors through major global innovation hubs. Instead of remaining in a single location, the classroom itself moves, allowing each city to become part of the curriculum. Students earn accredited university credit while examining how innovation and entrepreneurship emerge in different contexts.

The experience begins with coursework at a partner university, where professors establish the academic foundation. Students are introduced to the region’s history, institutions, and culture, and begin exploring how these factors influence entrepreneurship and technology. This ensures they have the background needed to connect what they learn in class to what they will later encounter in the field.

The program then enters a travel phase, where students and professors move together through multiple cities. In each location, professional visits take students inside startups, companies, NGOs, and policy institutions. These visits are carefully selected to illustrate the program’s central themes — from regulation and competitiveness in Europe’s Single Market to resilience and innovation under constraint in Brazil.

Daily debrief sessions are built into the design. After a company visit or cultural experience, professors guide discussions that connect the day’s observations to the course themes. This structure transforms site visits into assessed academic work, rather than informal excursions.

By the end of a trek, students have experienced both classroom learning and applied fieldwork across several cities. They return home with transferable academic credits and a deeper understanding of how innovation systems operate around the world, along with practical skills in cultural intelligence, adaptability, and problem-solving.

Summit programs are credit-bearing and academically rigorous, offering up to 6 U.S. semester credits through our accredited university partners in Europe and Latin America. Courses are designed in collaboration with international faculty and structured to meet the academic standards of U.S. institutions. Each course integrates real-world learning experiences—such as company visits, expert guest lectures, and faculty-led fieldwork—ensuring students engage with both theory and practice throughout the program.

Professional and cultural visits are at the core of every Summit program. They are not “extras” or optional excursions — they are scheduled, prepared for, and debriefed as part of the curriculum.

In the professional track, students might tour a startup workspace in Berlin, sit down with a product team in Barcelona, or visit a policy institute in Athens discussing EU funding for innovation. These encounters allow students to ask informed questions, observe workplace dynamics, and see how local context influences decision-making.

Cultural visits provide the historical and social context needed to interpret those professional experiences. Exploring a neighborhood market in São Paulo, walking through the design district of Paris, or attending a performance in Athens gives students a lived sense of the values, aesthetics, and traditions that shape how people work and collaborate.

Each visit is integrated into coursework through preparatory briefings and post-visit discussions. Students connect what they saw to relevant theories, frameworks, and case studies, ensuring the experience is more than observation — it becomes applied learning.

These combined experiences help students see the full picture: the cultural foundations of innovation, and the professional environments where ideas move from concept to impact.

Recent University Partnerships & Course Locations: