The Harlaxton program has been running since 2016 under the direction of Ian Brennan, a marketing professor at CSU Pueblo since 2004 whose history with the Harlaxton Manor goes back to 1985, when he was a student there. The manor is a property located in Grantham, England and is owned by the University of Evansville out of Tennessee that hosts study abroad opportunities from schools across the United States.
Brennan, originally from the country of Wales, spent up to 10 hours a week planning the entirety of the 21 days starting in July of 2024. His goal remains to ensure students are able to reach the best parts of the area and experience the cultural highlights. Outside of the wonders London had to offer, the June 2025 group visited Cambridge, Bath, York, Salisbury, the town of Lincoln. Moreso, one group utilized their BritRail travel pass to visit Scotland for a day.
After navigating the London underground and the British railway systems, the group met at Paddington Station to embark on a train to Grantham and see the Harlaxton Manor in person for the very first time.
Brennan strategically planned an evening tour of the manor to help students stay awake through the evening and hopefully lessen the impending jetlag.
“It’s like when you see children on Christmas day, you know, they have this kind of sparkle in their eyes,” Brennan said, referring to the excitement he witnessed overwhelm students year after year when they see the manor for the first time.
Students spent just shy of a month with their own tour guide, walking the streets of London, exploring world-famous cathedrals, and touring city to city each weekend.
The first day in London was an instructor guided tour on foot starting with the streets lined with shopping opportunities, stretching to Buckingham Palace and through St. James Park before dinner at the Mayflower, which is named for its historical connection with the Mayflower that shipped to the United States. Visitors who are descendants of those families have the opportunity to sign their name in a book at the restaurant.
Kelly Brennan, Professor Brennan’s wife, is an approved staff chaperon for the trips each summer. Their history also began at Harlaxton Manor years ago, when they happened to be there at the same time.
Together the two of them worked around the clock to ensure students were safe and well informed for any solo travel. They also put in effort to ensure every restaurant met the needs of each student’s diet and offered the entire group unique experiences with European food.
Brennan has almost ten years of experience guiding students through the program, and an entire lifetime indelved in the country and its culture. He didn’t spare a single opportunity to relay the history of the land or the buildings and statues that decorate it.
The tour to the top of Salisbury Cathedral took visitors to the highest point accessible to the public, offering a wide view of Salisbury, a town with well-preserved history. The uniform architecture is stretched through its entirety. The cathedral in Salisbury was one of many stops on the schedule, others like St. Paul’s Cathedral and Lincoln Cathedral.
The Mottisfont property in Hampshire is a large home accompanied by a garden protected by the National Trust to preserve the beauty and history of England.
Several buildings and homes, and even entire cities are protected by Grade 1 regulations that do not allow for any alterations to the already existing structures and land, the country places high value in preserving their history.
After a walking tour of Cambridge, the group enjoyed traditional punting on the nearby river. Coincidentally, their guide was a graduate of Colorado State University Boulder.
“I always hope that having been there for three weeks and spent so much time out in London, in the in different cities and towns of Britain, getting kind of comfortable with the train system, getting comfortable with checking into British hotels, just gives people a confidence then that maybe later in life they’ll take their own family or they’ll take their own friends and they’ll lead it,” Brennan said.
The BritRail pass allows travelers to access any of the trains servicing Great Britain for the designated time of the pass with no additional fee. With that pass, students were able to utilize built in free days to explore areas that satisfied their individual curiosities.
The final Monday before departing, a group of six took the first train out, and the last train in to explore Edinburgh in Scotland. Brennan hopes to instill confidence in all of his students so that they can continue their exploration and travel even after the trip is over.
Week by week, the events and experiences created a bond amongst the group as they navigated a foreign country together; sharing meals at dinner so that everyone could share the experience, taking day trips together on free days, and inevitably racing to the taxicab with their favorite driver on the way out and into the manor.
Brennan’s vision to create an experience that empowers students to continue exploring the country and the world has already been fulfilled in many ways. Students from past trips have returned either solo, or with friends and family, some stay a few days or weeks after to meet with loved ones and show them around. Another student found herself so invigorated with the experience she returned to study for her master’s degree at the University of Bath.
Harlaxton is met with an invigorating sunset each night that lights up its gardens, perfect for evening walks with new found friends or facetiming with family back home. It is one of the features most favored by students year by year.
