Brief forays offer lasting lessons to US students

She knew that walking around with her blond classmate, she'd stand out as American, despite her family roots in India. But she wasn't expecting the angry stares sometimes directed their way. Or the children seeing her and yelling "Abroonie," which means "white person."

"Walking around was more powerful than just sitting on a bus, because you are forced to be not just the observer, but to be observed," she says.

After students recovered from their shock, many returned home with plans to use what they'd learned after college, says English Prof. Elizabeth Schmidt, who helped lead the trip. Some, for instance, plan to teach high school history.

"It reconfirmed why I want to focus my energies on thinking about issues of poverty and disparity," says Bindra, who has already worked with nonprofits and policymakers focused on undocumented labor.

The course was developed by Caryl Phillips, an English professor whose own novels tackle slavery. "For me as a teacher, part of being in the classroom is trying to get the students to engage with each other around difficult subjects," he says. But when they met in a seminar only once a week, they didn't build up much trust. "People began to speak out more vociferously and more openly around these questions of race once they were in Ghana," he says.

Along with the sheer adventure, that is the dynamic he says students will most remember.

When young people return from Mark Radecke's service learning trips to Costa Rica and Nicaragua, they inevitably say it changed their life. But lately, the chaplain and professor has been probing into why. As part of his research for a doctor of ministry degree, he's interviewed a number of his students from Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pa.

The January trip includes an academic course on Latin American conceptions of Jesus, along with work and homestays in impoverished communities.

After finding out from contacts what kind of help is most needed, his students do construction projects and run health clinics and vacation Bible schools for children.

For some, the life-changing aspect is that it's their first time out of the country, or even their first trip on an airplane.

For all, it's a new exposure to places that are extremely poor by American standards of living.

"One student told me, 'It will not be possible for me to spend $40 for an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt anymore when I go back, because I know that $40 would feed a family for a month,' " Mr. Radecke recalls.

But the trip also highlights different forms of wealth.

"These people focus on what they can give thanks to God for, and not what they need. [They] focus on relationships with other people and not the material possessions that we often value," writes senior Becky Rowe from an Internet cafe in Cartago, Costa Rica, a few days into this month's trip.

When the students see dark-skinned depictions of Jesus for the first time, many are struck by "how another culture structures the Christian faith and imagines Jesus," Radecke says. "And then some step back and say, 'Wait a minute, my take on the Christian faith is a construct.'... And therein lies at least half the value - the lens through which they look at their own culture and faith gets corrected."

As with most such courses, the students do preparatory work before they leave, keep journals while they travel, and then write papers upon their return.

"In order for it to sink in, you have to come home and unpack it," Radecke says. "You don't get academic credit for [simply] having an experience."

Some of the two- to four-week trips US college students will embark on this winter term:

• Journalism, geopolitics, and wildlife photography in Antarctica University of Delaware

• China: Tradition and Change DePauw University

• Screenwriting in Antigua (two-way learning helps to boost the filmmaking industry on the island) Ithaca College

• Environmental and economic issues in Kenya and Tanzania Lafayette College

• Astronomy in Mexico: Mayan to Modern Elon University

• Theatre in London University of Rochester

• After Apartheid: Creative Engagement in South Africa Saint Mary's College of California

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