A trip behind the Iron Curtain turned economics into reality for Gary Clayton, and nearly four decades later, he wants Northern Kentucky University students to have their own “whammy” moment abroad.
Longtime NKU Economics Department Chair and Professor Gary Clayton and his wife, Jonna Clayton, established a $1 million endowment to support study-abroad opportunities for NKU’s economics students.
The Claytons made the donation because of a shared love for travel. The couple has visited more than 100 countries together, and Gary Clayton said his experience traveling abroad in college was life changing.
He went to Europe in his junior year, during the Cold War and the Iron Curtain. The Iron Curtain was an imaginary boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas of Soviet influence and Western influence from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991.
Clayton traveled behind the Iron Curtain on two occasions, once to Budapest and once to Prague.
“The reason it was an eye opener was because it looked as if I was stepping back 20 to 30 years in time,” he said. “Nothing was new. The trains were belching smoke.”
Coming back to the states afterward, Clayton said he realized that a country’s economic system has a direct bearing on its prosperity.
“Wow, going behind the Iron Curtain, that was a whammy,” he said.
Through the couple’s $1 million endowment, Clayton said he hopes students gain a broader worldview and step out of their comfort zone.
“I think students today either don’t have the ability or the means or even the interest to go abroad,” he said. “It’s a big world out there, and there’s a lot of people just exactly like ourselves, only they speak a different language and spend a different kind of money.”
But, Clayton said, students can’t just go abroad for a weekend and get that experience. They need to go for four or six weeks or spend a semester abroad.
“What that does is that takes you out of your comfort zone,” he said. “I want students to become more aware of the world and the way our economies are linked, and the importance of our own economy.”
As NKU’s last Department of Business Administration chair before it became a College of Business, Clayton said he sought guidance from a Cincinnati top employer, accounting firm Arthur Andersen, on hiring. The firm told him that while nearly all applicants had perfect GPAs and letters of recommendation, the one factor that set candidates apart was study abroad experience. Executives found that students who had studied abroad were more likely to handle demanding, high-pressure assignments away from home and less likely to quit after extensive training.
That was in 1985, and Clayton said he carried that with him for his 42 years at NKU.
Clayton attended Nasson College in Maine, which has since closed. He and his wife are both Yankees, from an area about 20 miles south of Boston. The pair met in the third grade.
During their travels, the Claytons have often taken their five children along for the ride.
“We just enjoy going to the different countries and seeing how they function, yet at the same time, we’re impressed with how they care about the same things, education for their children, a good salary and a life without a lot of war,” Jonna Clayton said. “So, there’s a lot of commonalities, and that’s just fun to see it from a different perspective.”
Jonna Clayton said one of her top countries to visit, which the Claytons have visited multiple times, is Egypt.
“But hey, that’s something that not a lot of people have done, just see the pyramids, but we went inside one,” Clayton said.
He said one of his favorite countries to visit was Papua New Guinea, and Jonna Clayton agreed. They spent a week in the jungle, which they reached inside a twin-engine plane. Clayton said they experienced unbelievable food and visited some of the river tribes by aluminum boat.
Another one of the family’s most memorable trips was to Tibet, where difficult travel defined the experience from the start.
They couldn’t fly directly into Lhasa (the capital of Tibet) because of its extreme elevation. While in Lhasa, they visited the Potala Palace, which once served as the Dalai Lama’s residence.
The Clayton family found themselves gasping for air as they traveled across Tibet in a plane at the base altitude of Mount Everest. After crossing Tibet, they dropped into Nepal and came into Kathmandu. Clayton said the road from Tibet going into Kathmandu was “unbelievable,” carved out of the side of the cliff. He said their bus was just as wide as the street, and they had to stop traffic at one end just so the vehicles could pass.
“That was an interesting trip,” Clayton said. “I mean, at times I did wonder if I made a mistake bringing my family on that, but once the adventure was over, the idea was pretty good, right?”
Clayton said the couple ultimately chose to connect the endowment to economics students simply because he was a professor of economics, but he also said economics is a discipline that is more internationally oriented.
“This remarkable gift reflects [Gary Clayton’s] lifelong belief in the transformative power of global education and will have a lasting impact not only on our economics majors but on the entire Haile College of Business,” said Dean of the Haile College of Business Dr. Hassan R. HassabElnaby in a news release.
Why give the gift now?
The Claytons are retired and feel they have the means, even though it wasn’t easy.
“We’ve always had the philosophy that you’re not really making a donation unless it hurts,” Clayton said.
He also said the couple wanted to make sure everyone knew about the NKU economics program, and when they think about the university, that program comes to mind.
