Spring Break Stretches Beyond the Beach as Students Pursue Service and Learning

Spring break at the University of Cincinnati leaves campus classrooms vacant the week of March 23, but it also brings the opportunity for dozens of UC students to make the world their classroom as they gain real-world experiences in service and on-site visits to the places they’ve studied over winter quarter.

Service-related trips are a tradition for civic-minded UC students. They’re also an example of why this month, the Corporation for National and Community Service named UC to the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll for exemplary service efforts and service to America’s communities.  

Another UC tradition is a University Honors Program service-learning trip to an Appalachian region of Kentucky – a depressed area even more devastated from January’s severe ice and snow storms that caused regions of Kentucky to be federally declared a major disaster area.

“What I hope our students take away from this experience is the wonderful aspect of Appalachian culture,” says M.J Woeste, a communication field service associate professor. “This is a culture that could survive a global catastrophe and flourish. This is a proud culture and a beautiful heritage. I want our students to understand that people from all cultural backgrounds bring something to the table.”

Students making trips abroad aren’t just reading about faraway places in their textbooks, they’re seeing them firsthand. College-led spring break trips will have students building a home in Guatemala and a clean water supply for a village in Kenya, as well as bring real-world experiences to business students on a global scale.

UC programs also traditionally work to assist students in offsetting the costs of the trips. However, national reports indicate that amid the troubled economy, airfares for spring break travel are down by more than 15 percent from last year. Overseas study covering the spring break time period is supported by more than $14,300 in funding from UC International to offset student costs. UC International reports the funding supported the trips of 33 students in nine different countries.

UC Alternative Spring Break Trips

The UC student organization Serve Beyond Cincinnati is organizing three trips. Serve Beyond Cincinnati (SBC) strives to build an emerging, civic-minded generation by providing national and international service experiences for UC students. All trips depart Cincinnati on March 20 and return on March 28.

La Libertad, El Salvador – Thirteen UC students will represent SBC as they join the Fuller Center for Housing’s 100 House Village Project. The project provides secure homes for families in need. Each of the students has raised $1,200 to cover their cost of the trip.

Reynosa, Mexico – Ten student members of SBC will travel to northern Mexico to assist in construction projects ranging from building homes and school buildings to building bathrooms and cultivating gardens. The cost of the trip per student is $1,100.

Minden, La. – Nine students will assist families in Louisiana as they help build and refurbish homes and assist with other projects. The cost of the trip per student is $300.

Campus Ministries Alternative Spring Break Trips

St. Monica-St. George Spring Break Mission Trips

St. Monica-St. George Campus Ministry is organizing four different trips for students to learn about the cultural and social issues in the regions. The combined budget for all of the trips is $9,500. All trips will depart Cincinnati on March 20 and return on March 28.

Spencer, W. Va. – Ten students will travel to the region to explore Appalachian culture and learn about the effects of coal mining on landscapes and people.

Gainesville, Fla. – Six students will participate in service at the Gainesville Catholic Worker House and learn about issues surrounding homelessness.

St. Louis, Mo. – Seven students will work with community organizers, local activists and volunteers as the students learn how these movements are transforming neighborhoods.

Savanna La Mar, Jamaica – Seven students will travel to the St. Joseph Church in the Westmoreland Parish of Jamaica. The students will visit mission parishes as they spend the week learning about the culture of Jamaica and the relationship of this sister parish to Cincinnati’s St. Monica-St. George Newman Center.

Collegiate Ministry

New Orleans, La. – The UC Baptist Collegiate Ministry first traveled to New Orleans to assist in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Pastor Ken Dillard says 20 students will return to the region to continue the rehabilitation from the hurricane. Students will depart Cincinnati on March 20 and return on March 27. Students will be working through community centers in the neighborhoods between downtown and the Garden District of New Orleans. Each student will pay $150 toward the cost of the trip.

Hillel Jewish Student Center

New Orleans, La. – Seven students will represent Hillel Jewish Student Center in New Orleans doing volunteer work including installing siding on houses, dry-walling, painting, roofing and cleaning. Students will also tour areas affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, take part in a communal dinner and meet with community leaders. The work will end in a student discussion examining underlying issues in New Orleans that resulted from the hurricanes, as well as end with students observing a restful Shabbat. Students depart Cincinnati on March 22 and return on March 29. The cost of the trip amounts to $125 per student plus transportation. Program director Heather Zucker says Hillel worked with the students to help raise funding to cover the costs of the trip.

Service-Learning Trips

Service-learning is defined by UC as a reflective educational experience in which students earn academic credit by participating in meaningful service activities. Service-learning experiences are designed to foster deeper understanding of course content and an enhanced sense of civic responsibility. Service-learning is an example of Experiential Learning, one of UC’s 21st Century Learning initiatives, which blends classroom theory with hands-on field experiences.

Cunen, Guatemala – As part of a College of Business three-credit-hour service-learning project with Habitat for Humanity’s International Global Village Program, 18 students will assist a Guatemalan family in building a home as the students improve their Spanish language skills and develop leadership skills. The students will depart Cincinnati on March 19 and return on March 28. The cost of the trip is $1,780 per student.

Otho Abwao, Kenya – Eight members of the UC student organization, Engineers Without Borders, will return to Kenya to complete construction of a water pumping, storage and distribution system for a village of more than 500 people. Students have been raising funds and designing a water system over the past two years, after taking an assessment trip to Kenya during their 2007 spring break. This trip will complete the construction phase of the project, transporting clean water from an existing borehole to access points throughout the village. Future trips will document the health and economic improvements to the village resulting from access to clean water. Students depart Cincinnati on March 14 and return on March 25. The cost of the trip is $1,700 per student.

Jackson County, Ky. – Fourteen students in a University Honors seminar course, “Appalachian Culture and Intercultural Communication,” will work with the Christian Appalachian Project (CAP) as they help build or rehabilitate homes in this region and as they explore intercultural communication theories as they apply to Appalachian culture in south-central Kentucky. The service-learning class, led by Communication Field Service Associate Professor M.J. Woeste, will depart Cincinnati on March 22 and return on March 27. The cost of the trip is $225 per student; the University Honors Program provided grants of $125 to each student to support the trip.

Additional University Honors Spring Break Trips

The University Honors Program enriches the educational experience of UC’s academically talented students through coursework and out-of-the-classroom activities – emphasizing the Honors themes of community engagement, global studies, leadership, research and creative arts. With an emphasis on experiential learning, the University Honors Program serves more than 1,600 UC students representing every undergraduate college on campus.

Florence, Italy – Twenty University Honors students will visit a number of landmarks including the Uffizi Gallery, Accademia, Bargello Museum, Pitti Palace, Palazzo Vecchio, Cathedral (Duomo) and Baptistery, Duomo Museum, Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria Novella and the Museum of the Medici Chapel as they complete their honors seminar, “Music, Art and Thought in Medici Florence.” From c1420 to the middle of the sixteenth century, Florence witnessed a remarkable synergy of music, art and thought financed by the Medici dynasty. Inhabited by such renowned artists as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, musicians Guillaume DuFay and Heinrich Isaac, and writers Angelo Poliziano and Niccolò Machiavelli, Florence was a vortex of Renaissance humanism. The city also witnessed religious fanaticism and French invasions ravage it for two decades beginning in 1492. In this interdisciplinary course, students are studying the political, economic, artistic and cultural forces that gave rise to Florence as a unique center of Renaissance humanism. Led by Stephanie Schlagel, associate professor of Musicology and director of the Early Music Lab, College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), the trip departs Cincinnati on March 20 and returns on March 28. The cost of the trip is $2,500 per student, and is supported by University Honors grants of $800 per student.

St. Petersburg, Russia – Ten students will visit the Kunstkamera Museum, Menshikov Palace, Hermitage Museum, Peterhof, Kronshtadt and more landmarks as part of their Honors seminar, “Giant Tsar: Russia in the Age of Peter the Great.” During the reign of Peter the Great, Russia experienced sweeping changes in everything from literature to economics and politics. This course, led by Associate Professor of History Willard Sunderland, examines Russian history under Peter the Great, paying special attention to his complicated legacy as the creator of modern Russia. Students will depart Cincinnati on March 20 and return on March 27. The trip costs $2,600 per student and is supported by University Honors grants of $1,000 per student.

UC International

Andalusia and Madrid, Spain – Eight UC students will take an arts tour as they visit the Islamic architecture of southern Spain and three great arts museums in Madrid. The trip will help students develop a well-rounded picture of Spanish culture and history. Students depart Cincinnati on March 21 and return on March 28. The cost of the trip is approximately $2,250 per student.

Czech Republic Study Tour – The Czech Republic is a country with a long history of progressive education. Four UC students will experience the Czech educational system first-hand by working with Czech mentor teachers, accompanying them to their English-language classes and learning about the similarities and differences in the educational philosophies and approaches of the U.S. and the Czech Republic. Students will also tour the most famous cultural sites in the country, including Prague, Cesky krumlov, Moravsky krumlov, Kutna hora and Brno. They’ll depart Cincinnati on March 13 and return on March 22. The cost of the trip runs approximately $1,700 per student plus airfare.

Athens, Santorini and Crete, Greece – Greece is a country that is filled with historic cities and buildings, ancient sites and a unique and fragile ecology. It relies on its beauty for its economic survival, which is based predominately on tourism. This two-week course will expose 21 UC students to urban and regional planning issues in Greece and the way planning is taking place in this country. The students will be hosted by universities and municipalities in Athens, Santorini and Crete, and will be given the opportunity to meet with professionals and academics working on planning and development and to visit project sites. Students will be exposed to the cultural context of these locations and learn how planning has been carried out both in conjunction with and at odds with this context.  Issues of sustainability, tourism, historic preservation, transportation, sprawl and landscape preservation will all be examined. The group departs Cincinnati on March 20 and returns on April 4. The cost per student is approximately $2,100.

Tikal, Guatamala – Students will be participating in a multi-disciplinary project examining ancient Maya water, land and forest management at the ancient city of Tikal and its environs. Tikal is one of the best known ancient Maya centers, but surprisingly little is known about how most of its inhabitants lived and the manner in which they managed their environment. This is the pilot season for the project. Four students will be conducting excavations in ancient reservoirs, mapping water courses, taking sediment cores (for paleoenvironmental analysis), excavating soil pits in a season wetland (to analyze patterns of land degradation) and mapping and sampling vegetation. Students will receive instruction in a variety of archaeological, geoarchaeological and paleoecological methods. The group departs Cincinnati on March 30 and returns on April 11. The cost of the trip per student is $1,100.

Querétaro, Mexico – Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) Campus Querétaro joins with the UC College of Business to offer a four-credit-hour international business course. Seventeen students will learn about doing business with Mexico and Mexican culture through university lectures, company visits, and presentations by industry experts, in addition to sightseeing and living with a host family. The group departs Cincinnati on March 21 and returns on March 28. The cost of the trip per student is $1,272.

Santiago, Chile – Universidad del Desarrollo, a College of Business partner in Chile, provides a program that focuses on Latin American and Chilean business and economic development (particularly the Chilean economic miracle), doing business in Chile, cross-cultural management, and history and culture of the region. The program includes a city tour, presentations and company tours. Twenty students will depart Cincinnati on March 19 and return on March 28. The cost of the trip per student is approximately $2,700.

Brussels, Belgium, and Paris, France – Fourteen of UC’s Kolodzik Business Scholars will build an understanding of the skills and knowledge needed to do business in the changing European market as they take part in presentations, company visits and conversations with expatriates at multi-national firms. The program begins in Brussels, the administrative heart of the European Union, where visits focus on the importance of the European Union as a trading partner. It ends with company visits to Nestle and the U.S. Embassy in Paris. The group departs Cincinnati on March 20 and returns on March 29. The cost of the trip is approximately $1,900 per student.

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