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STUDY ABROAD IN THE AMERICAS: ECUADOR
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Program: Universidad San Francisco de Quito / Pitzer College
Location: Quito, Ecuador
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.
With a geography that encompasses tropical Pacific beaches, Andean mountain villages and Amazonian rainforests, Ecuador provides a dynamic setting for advanced speakers of Spanish to study the challenges of a developing nation and draw comparisons with another Andean region during a study trip to Peru.
The Courses/Program: Intensive Spanish is offered at the beginner and intermediate levels through the Academia Latinoamericana, one of Quito’s premier language learning institutes. Becoming fluent in Spanish, however, is not just a classroom exercise. Language learning is part of your everyday life through interactions with your host family, program staff, and field exercises that immerse you in the community.
Taught by Ecuadorian university professors, the core course integrates all components of the program, including lectures, study trips, and a volunteer internship in a local community organization and the family stay. It offers an important framework for understanding the social, political, economic, and environmental issues of development in contemporary Ecuador and the Andean region. At the Academia Latinoamericana, one of Quito’s premier language training institutes, you may elect to take an introductory language course in Quichua, (also known as Quechua) the language spoken by the largest of Ecuador’s seventeen indigenous language groups. Or you may choose from a selection of advanced courses taught in Spanish on topics including Ecuadorian literature, indigenous studies, or in the history of the region.
You can study ethnographic field methods in the Ecuadorian context, where you will learn and apply a range of ethnographic field methods including participant observation, person-centered interviews, designing and conducting a survey, writing field notes, and conducting a case study. Human subject research protocols and field study ethics will be emphasized. Direct independent study projects are also available and consist of an ethnographic study with one full month of field work culminating in a major paper written in Spanish. Topic selection may be limited by available resources and local conditions.
To deepen your understanding of topics covered in the core course, you will travel to various locations in Ecuador and Peru. Destinations may change from semester to semester, but past trips have included: Amazon Jungle- Tiputini Biodiversity Station, Machu Picchu, Peru, and Cotacachi.
Housing: Host families provide a window into the culture as they include you in their daily lives and introduce you to relatives and friends from a variety of age groups and backgrounds. You begin to give a human face to important issues and ideas covered in your core course lectures and readings.
You will have two main family stays. The first and longest will be in Quito with a middle class or professional family. Your second homestay will be with an indigenous highland family in the rural community of Cotacachi, near the market town of Otavalo. Families here continue to be deeply involved in agriculture and village life and are cultivating tourism to the region by taking visitors into their homes to acquaint their guests with traditional culture.
Duration/Deadlines:
• Fall Semester: August to December/ Application Deadline: March 15th
• Spring Semester: 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.
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