Location: Monteverde, Costa Rica

Program Type: Faculty/Teacher Led, Research, Service Learning

Semester: Summer

Focused on the latest innovations in sustainability and community-participatory research, students will study Spanish, train in the community-engaged research practices, and collaborate with rural or indigenous communities  – from the cloud forests of Monteverde to the coastal mountains of Talamanca in the Caribbean coast.

Students spend the first six weeks of the program studying Spanish at the edge of the world’s largest private cloud forest reserve, learning from the founders of community resilience and sustainability movements in Latin America and visiting with indigenous and campesinx communities throughout the country. Then, having learned arts and humanities-based community-participatory research methods, students will branch out across the country in teams to use the arts, oral histories, dialogue and other strategies to investigate and respond to sustainable development challenges faced by residents living among the Pacific mountains and along the country’s Caribbean coast. Following three months of study and experience, students depart with conversational fluency in Spanish and publishable research.