The Great Ideas Tour

The Great Ideas Tour honors University of Alabama history professor John Fraser Ramsey by providing recipients the opportunity to travel Europe and discover their own sense of possibility and responsibility within a global humanity. The Great Ideas Tour helps recipients craft an informed, intentional Tour that provides authentic encounters and space for reflection, while embracing Doc’s joie de vivre.

Guiding Principles

Informed · Experiential · Reflective · Transformative

• Informed. (Preparation before the Tour). The Tour recipient should engage their sense of curiosity about the historical, cultural, and philosophical achievements of Europe and seek to learn something about the foundational ideas of Western Civilization that Dr. Ramsey studied and taught and that the Tour represents. It is carefully thought out, planned, researched, and engaged with intention.
• Experiential. (During the Tour). The Tour is neither casual travel nor casual tourism. The recipient should make an effort to achieve genuine human connection and gain both breadth and depth experiences. It is the recipient’s chance to experience firsthand the people, history, traditions, culture, and achievements of Europe.” Ramsey Family on Tour” – Alabama Alumni Magazine, 1999
• Reflective. (During the Tour). The Tour recipient should ideally take some time to be alone—physically or in thought—to reflect on and process emerging insights from the Tour.
• Transformative. (After the Tour/Effect of the Tour). The Tour changes the recipient’s life and career powerfully and permanently. The recipient in turn helps transform the world for the better.

About the Tour

Applicants for the award are required to submit a one-page essay on what the Great Ideas Tour would mean to the applicant. Upon receiving the award, the recipient submits a proposed itinerary and works with the GIT Team for workshopping, instruction, and advising to ensure their tour fits with the mission of the Great Ideas Tour. Past recipients of the award and other members of the Ramsey Family living in Europe frequently invite the current recipient to make a stop in their city on the tour.

Recipients have the option to take the tour in the summer after their junior year or wait until after graduation their senior year.

The $4,000 stipend for the Great Ideas Tour will be awarded when the recipient confirms his or her trip. During the trip the recipient is required to write reflections and post pictures in their personal blog for the Ramsey Family to follow, and check in periodically throughout the tour.

Upon return from the Great Ideas tour the recipient will present a short Great Ideas Tour Debrief and Mission Response to be presented at the annual awards banquet the following spring.

Reflections from Past Recipients