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STUDY ABROAD IN THE AMERICAS: COSTA RICA
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Program: Advanced Spanish Tropical Ecology Program / Pitzer College
Location: Alajuela, Costa Rica
Is This Program Right For You? Pitzer College’s semester and year-long study abroad programs are informed by a strong commitment to cultural immersion and sustained engagement in local communities. To help you connect deeply in those host communities, the Pitzer program model integrates classroom instruction with active learning experiences in a variety of settings, including homestays, volunteer internships, independent research projects, and study trips. This academically and personally challenging combination encourages you to think in ways that cross over disciplinary, cultural, and social boundaries. It combines cognitive and affective learning to allow you to live successfully and appropriately in new cultural contexts and recognize how you have been shaped by your own culture. It can powerfully transform the way you look at the world and yourself.
Four hours southwest of San Jose and two kilometers from the Pacific Ocean, the program is located in the tropical rainforest on land owned by Pitzer College. The 150-acre reserve, known as the Firestone Center for Restoration Ecology, is home to pre-Columbian petroglyphs, a harvestable bamboo forest, a riparian zone with waterfalls and streams, secondary growth forest in former pasture, intentionally replanted hardwood forest, original rainforest, a four-pond water catchment system, a seedling nursery, and a new Ecology Center with science and classroom facilities. With adjacent Hacienda Baru, a wildlife refuge of 800 acres to the west; the ecologically significant Osa Peninsula to the south; and Manuel Antonio National Park to the north, you have ready access to a variety of tropical ecosystems and rich biodiversity.
The first month of the program, you will stay in Alajuela near San Jose at the Instituto de Cultura y Lengua Costarricense. Here, you will be given an intensive 80-hour course in intermediate or advanced Spanish. As part of the integrated approach to the teaching of language and culture, you will also participate in a homestay with a Costa Rican family, receive lectures on Costa Rican culture, and take study trips in San Jose.
The Courses/Program: After your 80-hour course in Alajuela, the core course is conducted at the Firestone Center and focuses on oral proficiency in Spanish while deepening your understanding of Cosa Rican culture. It facilitates your integration into surrounding communities through ongoing interviews and ethnographic work with local families and community organizations and provides support for presenting your independent study project in Spanish to the community at the end of the semester. Using the Firestone Center as a biological field station, the course provides a field-intensive exploration of the terrestrial and marine ecology of the neotropical region, with an emphasis on Costa Rica and tropical restoration ecology. The course covers physical geography, biodiversity theory, and practical methods of data collection and analysis.
Other courses are designed to explore special topics in relation to the rich culture and ecological resources available at the Forestone Center, its neighboring communities, and local protected areas. Topics change from year to year and will include the following for 2007-2008: environmental policy, rock art conservation and management, and protected areas. A wide range of study trips to enhance the curriculum is an important part of the educational program. Destinations change from semester to semester but possible trips include: Panama’s Volcan Baru National Park, Natural Parks of Costa Rica, and an Indigenous Boruca Community. You may focus on one aspect of human or tropical restoration ecology to study in greater depth through an independent research project or internship.
Housing: Costa Rican host family stays provide a window into the culture as the families include you in their daily lives and introduce you to relatives from a variety of backgrounds. Through discussions with your family, you begin to give a human face to important issues and ideas covered in your courses. Often relationships developed with host family members turn into friendships that last long past the end of the program. You will have two family stays. The first will be for one month in Alajuela while you study Spanish intensively. Your second family stay for the remainder of the semester will be with a rural farming family.
Duration/Deadlines:
• Fall Semester: August to December/ Application Deadline: March 15th
• Spring: January to May/ Application Deadline October 15th
Requirements:
• 3.0 GPA
Program Cost Includes: Tuition, room, board, program-related study trips, a portion of the round trip airfare, evacuation insurance provided through the international student identity card (ISIC), and the overall supervision and administration of the program. Students should budget for their own personal expenses, passport fees, visa fees, medical insurance, etc. Please note: The information on this sheet is for reference purposes only. It is your responsibility to confirm details and deadlines.
Program: Sustainable Development Studies / SFS
Location: Atenas, Costa Rica
Is This Program Right For You? Costa Rica is currently undergoing a period of rapid economic and social change. As this resource-rich, wonderfully biodiverse country continues along a path of rapid development, it is increasingly influenced by global policy such as the Central American Fair Trade Act (CAFTA) and foreign markets. Costa Rica's economy has shifted from one predominately based on agriculture to one driven by ecotourism and technology exports. At the same time, brisk population growth is straining natural and developed resources. The country is at a critical juncture as resource management decisions are being made in an effort to keep pace with competitive global markets. Our goal is to study different development and resource management models that protect the biodiversity of Costa Rica's ecosystems while promoting socioeconomic benefits for its people.
Students will examine the effects of globalization on classic development issues such as agro-ecology, biodiversity protection, economic development, urban sprawl, population growth, waste management, and water resources. Students focus on evaluating the success of Costa Rica's world-renowned land and biodiversity management systems and developing alternative strategies for economic development and biodiversity conservation, such as land use planning, organic agriculture, and conservation outside of protected areas. Visits to cloud forests, dry forests, volcanoes, lowland rainforests, and plantations offer opportunities to examine management schemes, identify the benefits of protected areas, and determine which systems offer the best option for economic development, the maintenance of cultural norms, and the preservation of biodiversity. Understanding the forces that are driving Costa Rica's policies as well as those driving change will be key as students analyze potential solutions for Costa Rica, and throughout the Central American region.
The Courses/Program: The interdisciplinary curriculum informs students about the links among natural ecosystems and social and economic systems in Costa Rica. Courses in ecology, environmental economics, resource management, and language and culture lay the groundwork for research on sustainable development issues. Field trips introduce students to a diversity of ecosystems and social conditions.
Semester students are registered in five academic courses accredited through Boston University:
EE(NS) 377 Tropical Ecology and Sustainable Development (4 credits)
EE(SS) 303 Economic & Ethical Issues and Sustainable Development (4 credits)
EE(NS) 374 Principles of Resource Management (4 credits)
EE 491 or 492 Directed Research (4 credits)
(LS) 205E Language, Culture and Society of Costa Rica (2 credits)
Housing: The Center for Sustainable Development Studies is a small farm on a hillside with spectacular views overlooking the Rio Grande River in the fertile Central Valley. The field station includes a large house, an outdoor classroom, an organic garden, a patio, and pool. Students live in a dormitory (up to four to a room) with bathrooms. There is a classroom, small laboratory, and a library/computer room with internet access. The field station is part of the small neighborhood of La Presa/Los Angeles. The friendly town of Atenas is a short walk from the field station while Costa Rica's tropical forests, beaches, mountains, and volcanoes are within a day's travel.
Duration/Deadlines:
• Fall Semester: September – December
• Spring 2009: February – May
Rolling admissions. Early application submissions encouraged for acceptance into your program of choice.
Requirements:
• One semester of college level ecology or environmental science
• One college-level Spanish course
Program Cost Includes: All tuition, room, board and local travel. Fee excludes airfare. For more information: www.fieldstudies.org. Catalogues are available in ISAP’s Resource Rooms. Please note: The information on this sheet is for reference purposes only. It is your responsibility to confirm details and deadlines.
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Program: Tropical Ecology and Conservation / CIEE
Location: Monteverde, Costa Rica
Is This Program Right For You? This program is designed for students with biology-related majors who have completed at least one year of introductory biology and one elective in ecology and who seek intensive, sophisticated tropical field and course work in Costa Rica from both theoretical and taxonomic perspectives. All biology courses are taught in English.
The program in Monteverde is designed to give biology and related majors a sophisticated and up to date understanding of tropical ecology and its conservation. The goals of the program are to offer students a comprehensive and complex view of the tropical systems through theory, review of empirical patterns, hands-on exposure to an array of tropical eco-systems and conservation, taxonomy of major groups and direct experimentation. These goals are achieved through science course work in English and extensive outdoor travel to various ecosystems. Conservation is stressed throughout and combined with language and culture. The program also includes Spanish language courses at all levels and a one month homestay with a rural Costa Rican family, making for an academically challenging and enjoyable experience.
The setting of the program is ideal. The field station is situated on top of a beautiful mountain and is surrounded by a breathtaking cloud forest. You get to see gorgeous waterfalls, tropical plants, and intriguing animals. This program is not all about seeing new things, though. It is about learning their history and significance. The classes provided opportunities to witness the complex interactions between biology, ecology, and human consumption. The Costa Rican people are warm and welcoming and always happy to help you practice your Spanish.
The Courses/Program: The CIEE Study Center in Monteverde began as a summer program in 1989 and added a semester study opportunity in 1996. The semester program is open to biology and related majors who have completed an introductory biology sequence and one of the following electives: Ecology, Evolution, Animal Behavior, or Conservation Biology. All biology courses are taught in English. The program is also well-suited to graduate students and professionals in fields related to Ecology, Conservation Biology or Environmental Sciences.
Participants are required to take the following courses: Tropical Diversity, Tropical Community Ecology, and Independent Study in Biology, Spanish, and Humans in the Tropics. Enrollment in this program is limited to 25 students. This program is designed to provide a full semester of electives for biology majors.
The small, rigorous courses with a biological focus are offered for CIEE students only and contain extensive travel and research. The required courses combine classroom-based academics with field study. U.S. and Costa Rican biology professors teach and evaluate students in both the classroom and on field trips. Students should expect an academically intense experience and should be willing to learn in a variety of settings, including classrooms, beaches, waterfalls and treetops.
Housing: Housing and all meals are included in the program fee. For three months of the four-month program, students live in a biological station where all classes are taught. Students stay in four-person rooms (two bunk beds) with private baths and hot showers. Meals are taken at the biological station and served family style. Vegetarians/vegans can easily be accommodated.
A one-month homestay is included in the program, during which participants live and take their meals with local Costa Rican families throughout the Monteverde-Santa Elena regions. Homestays are assigned based on Independent Study research interests. All meals are included for the length of the homestay period.
Duration/Deadlines:
• Fall Semester (15 weeks): mid August- mid December / Application Deadline: April 1st
• Spring Semester (15 weeks): February –mid May / Application Deadline: November 1st
Requirements: (Language of instruction is English)
• 3.0 GPA
• 2 semesters of college-level biology
• 1 additional semester of ecology or environmental science recommended
• College-level Spanish recommended
Program Cost Includes: Tuition, housing and some meals, orientation, cultural activities, local excursions, field trips, pre-departure advising, and insurance. Visa not included. For more information: www.ciee.org. Catalogues are available in ISAP’s Resource Rooms. Please note: The information on this sheet is for reference purposes only. It is your responsibility to confirm details and deadlines.
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