Carpe Mundi was founded in 2008…

…under the name International Carpe Diem Foundation (ICDF) by Ethan Knight, founder and owner of Carpe Diem Education. ICDF was originally founded as a way to raise money for a scholarship fund for low-income Portland students to participate on Carpe Diem Education international semester programs. However, the organization quickly realized that the needs of low-income students were more than just financial.  

In 2012 ICDF hired an executive director and began the process of moving from a scholarship organization to a mentorship and scholarship organization focusing on the cohort model that we still have today. We changed our name to Carpe Mundi during this transition. The program design focused on three phases, pre-travel, travel and post-travel.  While we have updated elements of this program, the basic model remains the same. We started small, with the first cohort during the 2012-2013 school year engaging only five students. To date, Carpe Mundi has supported 118 low-income and primarily first-generation community college students. At least 70% of program participants are students of color. 

Our model depends heavily on the generosity of Carpe Diem Education, our primary partner.  Carpe Diem provides a tuition reduction to all Carpe Mundi students of approximately $6,000 per student to participate in their programs. In addition, Carpe Diem reserves places for Carpe Mundi students in their spring programs each year. This is equivalent to $100,000-$160,000 per year in lost revenue for Carpe Diem Education since 2014. We are incredibly grateful to Carpe Diem Education for this continued partnership. Our two organizations have a symbiotic relationship that has helped to improve the quality of programs for all parties.  

In 2021, Carpe Mundi started a second partnership with Where There Be Dragons, a similar international travel organization based out of Boulder, Colorado. In Spring 2022, Carpe Mundi will send two students on a program to Senegal through Where There Be Dragons on our first pilot program of this new partnership.