Global careers inspire couple’s gift

Kansas natives and honors program supporters Arlo and Dixie Schurle share a vivid memory of the moment that they knew their lives were meant to be spent abroad.

Having had just returned in 1980 from a Fulbright experience in West Africa, the couple was attending a faculty holiday party back in the States hosted by Arlo’s mathematics department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

“We were sort of in the corner,” said Arlo, “and we looked at each other and said, ‘let’s find some other place to go.’”

Thirty years prior, each had set out on the same first adventure: leaving farmsteads for the University of Kansas.

Both grew up near Clay Center, where Jayhawk fandom made them black sheep. Dixie listened to radio broadcasts of basketball games in her room by herself; Arlo was the only of five siblings to attend KU.

The two met in 1962 when Dixie arrived on campus and Arlo was a sophomore Summerfield Scholar. The two were married a year later, with Dixie putting her degree work on pause while Arlo finished a doctorate in mathematics.

“He asked me if I would marry him, and I said ‘yes, but you cannot ever talk about quitting before your Ph.D.,” said Dixie. “For as long as I’d known Arlo, that was what he wanted to do.”

Along with the Summerfield Scholarship, Arlo received needed support through the National Merit Scholarship Corporation and a NASA Space Grant.

“Our life was made a lot easier because of all that financial support,” said Dixie. “So we knew that, at some point in our life, we wanted to give back to KU.”

After earning his doctorate in 1967, Arlo joined the faculty of UNC Charlotte, which at the time did not have a sabbatical program. To obtain a break from his Charlotte teaching duties, Arlo would have to find another route — something he was committed to doing.

“We needed to take a year off, get away from what we were doing, and try something a little bit new,” said Arlo.

He applied for a Fulbright and, to his surprise, received the grant. The two packed up their pair of young sons and headed to Liberia for a two-year tenure — one that concluded amid a coup.

“It turned out to be a very, very difficult experience,” said Dixie, “but we came through it and we still loved it.”

After their holiday party epiphany, the Schurles spent another two years in Charlotte while Dixie earned her teaching degree, which she knew she would need overseas. The family then departed for their next destination: Saudi Arabia.

For Arlo, who chaired a mathematics department at a state university, the country’s often-literal gender divides — the academic hall was physically partitioned to separate men and women — were challenging, though math’s cross-cultural qualities acted as a bridge.

After teaching in a Saudi kindergarten their first year, Dixie transitioned to an international school, overseeing classrooms of 25 students who represented almost as many nationalities. “Every time I turned around, I learned something new,” said Dixie. “We thrived.”

Returning to the U.S. 18 years ago — and experiencing a “reverse culture shock” more difficult than the first — the Schurles continued to foster global engagement from their Austin, Texas home.

Arlo heads a group with Great Decisions, a world-affairs discussion program run by the Foreign Policy Association, and the couple hosts international entrepreneurs through Global Austin, part of the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program.

They also fulfilled “a lifelong dream” with the creation of the Schurle Family Study Abroad Fund, which supports honors students seeking global experiences.

Since the fund’s establishment, recipient testimonials have been an unexpected but cherished consequence, say the couple. “It’s wonderful to get the descriptions from the students of what this money has helped them do,” said Arlo. “It’s exactly what we wanted.”

“We just hope that, whatever experiences these students have, they won’t ever forget it,” added Dixie. “It will just be part of their life.”