study abroad « OSU Abroad

Rosa Keller was drawn to Thailand because of her love for Thai food. In fall of 2014, she studied in Khon Kaen, Thailand, through CIEE. At Oregon State University, Rosa is majoring in both Nutrition and Anthropology. During her time abroad, she was able to integrate her knowledge of people and food by conducting a nutrition intervention in rural northeast Thailand.

Before traveling to Thailand, I had no idea how much I would learn about intervention planning, public health, and group work. Having so much freedom and knowing that the work we were doing was really helping people live healthier lives gave me so much motivation to do my best. The last couple of months of my time in Thailand were dedicated to conducting research, planning community visits, and finally, implementing a public health intervention based on community need.

Our group conducted a nutrition education and a diabetes screening intervention in a rural village Cuisine l Rosa Keller in northeast Thailand. We decided to focus on these topics due to an increasing rate of Type-2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) in Thailand, specifically in the northeast region. Our initial research concluded that Nonsang Village had a high prevalence of T2DM but a low rate of diabetes screening. Additionally, we observed a lack of awareness of healthy portion sizes and dietary practices. Our research in the community led us to develop our intervention.

First, we held a community dinner where we educated villagers on healthy portion sizes, mindful eating, and the biological and behavioral factors that lead to development of T2DM. All of the food that was prepared for the dinner was either grown or purchased from the village to ensure that the meal was sustainable. The menu included things like steamed veggies, chili sauces for dipping, omelets, and spicy green papaya salad, with fruit for dessert. The following day, we worked with the Health Promoting Hospital and village health volunteers to hold a T2DM screening session. For both events, there were around 30 participants in a village with a population of around 500 people, which was our expected outcome.

Overall, the intervention was a success; but, most importantly, through our experience we were able to build a strong relationship with the community. I truly hope that our intervention empowered the villagers to eat healthy and be more mindful of their dietary intake. Through this intervention, I was able to learn how community participation is an important asset to a successful intervention.

Marie de Rocca-Serra works and lives in Grenoble, France. As a Resident Director with Academic Programs International (API), Marie loves to share this beautiful city, located at the foot of the French Alps, with students.

What brought you to be a Resident Director?
I did an internship with API in Grenoble and loved it! I had found the job I wanted to do!

What are some unique aspects of your city and country?
France: Our history, art, cuisine, and French art of living!
Grenoble: Its gorgeous scenery, making it THE outdoor destination in France, its great location (3 hours from Paris and 3 hours from the Mediterranean), and its comfortable city size.

What is one thing most of your students may not know about you?
That I have 2 grandchildren (3 in August!)

What are some of your favorite aspects of being a Resident Director?
Being in touch with these young adults, seeing how they grow from their arrival to their departure, and making them love France even more!

What are some of the challenges of your job?
Always being dynamic and enthusiastic even if it’s my 50^th time at the Eiffel Tower!

What have you seen as the biggest challenge for incoming students?
Trying to be immersed in French culture when they’re so connected to home via social networks!

What is your advice for students planning to attend your program, or to study abroad in your country?
Be ready to go out of your comfort zone, and be curious and motivated to learn another language.

What is one thing you think students shouldn’t forget to pack for life in your country?
Hiking shoes and warm jackets.

What do you think is the most important take-away for education abroad students?
Developing their curiosity and interest in others and the world.

To learn more about attending Marie’s program, follow this link!

Maria Nelida de Juano was inspired to be a Resident Director for AHA International after her time studying abroad in Portland, Oregon. Now, she lives and works in Rosario, Argentina and has been helping students experience it’s beauty for fourteen years.

What brought you to be a Resident Director?
I was an exchange student in Portland, Oregon, many many years ago, so I experienced the importance of a study abroad experience in my own life. It was definitely a life changing experience for me! While I was working at UNR as a teacher in 2001, the opportunity arose to start creating study abroad links with Oregonian universities. We have been receiving 4 groups per year (during Spring, Summer Session 1 and 2 and Fall), ever since.

What are some unique aspects of your city and country?
Rosario is located on the shore of the beautiful Parana river that comes from Brasil and overflows into the Rio de la Plata. It is about 3 hours distance from Buenos Aires. This is a very rich region of the Pampas to grow soy and other grains. Argentina has been heavily influenced by migration coming from European countries, so it is different in some ways to other Latin American countries, and at the same time, shares some trends with them. Students will have a unique experience here, different from what they have in mind for a typical Latin American life.

What is one thing most of your students may not know about you?
Before they come, they do not know I keep dear friends in Oregon from my time as an exchange student, and that I have warm feelings for the landscape there- for Mt Hood and the Willamette river! I will help them learn to love our culture as I learned to cherish the Oregonian culture.

What are some of your favorite aspects of being a Resident Director?
I feel I have the possibility to be in touch with a student’s spirit for some time, while they are away from home. Our team knows that we are dealing with this very precious material, and if we can help the students to walk through this experience successfully, the whole world will be open to them. So I feel responsible for helping them to do so!

What are some of the challenges of your job?
Sometimes students are stuck to the images of experiences they bring from home that were told to them by their friends. I insist on explaining them that each study abroad experience is unique, and they must be open to live their own!

What have you seen as the biggest challenge for incoming students?
The language! Especially when they come with very little knowledge of Spanish.

What is your advice for students planning to attend your program, or to study abroad in your country?
To be interested in living different experiences from the ones they have at home, and to be flexible and open to new things. They will make many new friends here and they might act differently form their friends at home.

What is one thing you think students shouldn’t forget to pack for life in your country?
Friendship. Argentinian people are very sociable and they easily make friends that last.

What do you think is the most important take-away for education abroad students?
Students should be open and interested in making friends and understanding the society and culture.

To learn more about attending this program, follow this link!

Esteban López lives and works in Costa Rica. He works with Academic Programs International (API) overseeing programs in San José and San Joaquín de Flores, Costa Rica. In this entry, Esteban tells us about the beauty of Costa Rica, and reminds us not to forget a good attitude and a baseball cap when traveling to his country.

What brought you to be a Resident Director?
I used to teach Latin American Literature for U.S. college students. When API was looking for someone to work as their Resident Director for their Costa Rica programs, I got the opportunity to participate on the interviews and at the end, I was lucky enough to get the position as Resident Director for API.

What are some unique aspects of your city and country?
Costa Rica was the first country in the world that abolished the army in 1948. Costa Rica has reserved lots of areas for natural conservation, National Parks and reserves. Costa Rica is rich in flora and fauna and has many different climate zones within a small country.

What is one thing most of your students may not know about you?
They don´t know I have a big passion for books and classical music. Also, that I used to have a pony tail for more than 20 years. 🙂

What are some of your favorite aspects of being a Resident Director?
Being a RD keeps me young, also thanks to my position I have had the opportunity to explore my own country and culture along with my students. Their questions keep me always researching to learn more about Costa Rica. Also, the most rewarding thing is by the end of the program, we send the kids back home with their backpacks filled up with nice experiences, love for this country and people, and so much personal growth. To know that I was a little part of that makes me very happy.

What are some of the challenges of your job?
Dealing with personal issues of my students is always challenging. We all are different and I have to be wise whenever a difficult situation arises for one of my students. You always need to remember that being abroad could be difficult for some of them, and to remind them that you are there to help them no matter the nature of their problems

What have you seen as the biggest challenge for incoming students?
Perhaps the Costa Rican ways of doing things. At the beginning of the program learning about streets, addresses, directions could also be challenging. Depending on their Spanish level, this could be also a challenge. And of course, every students feels culture shock to a different degree.

What is your advice for students planning to attend your program, or to study abroad in your country?
I recommend this program for students that love to do outdoors activities; that rather prefer open air morning activities than going out at night. They have to be also ready for sunny hot days and rainy cloudy days, in our country this changes doesn’t depend on the seasons, it could change from one day to another, from one hour to next, hahaha.

Also it is important to come to the country with an open mind for social and cultural differences and to deal with a Central American society, where things may not be as structured as they are in the U.S. This could confuse you if you are not ready.

What is one thing you think students shouldn’t forget to pack for life in your country?
A baseball cap (hat) and umbrella!

What do you think is the most important take-away for education abroad students?
Humbleness. Once you see the world, once you go out of your small bubble, you realize how big the world is and little you are. How many lives there are, how many life histories, and how many people. You see how diverse and beautiful the world and people are. You start thinking less about yourself, but at the same time, you appreciate more what others do for you, and their friendship.

If you want to learn more about Esteban’s program, follow this link!

Amanda Freeman is a director with The School for Field Studies (SFS). She works in the Centre for Rainforest Studies, which covers 153 acres in the northern part of Queensland, Australia. Every day, she is surrounded by wildlife, nature and amazing students!

What brought you to be a Resident Director?
I had been an SFS faculty at this centre for several years when the Resident Director position became vacant. I was keen to take on a different role in the organization; one with more opportunity to facilitate SFS involvement in the local community and to play a greater part in research planning.

What are some unique aspects of your city and country?
Well, it’s certainly not the city. We live and work in a beautiful rural area surrounded by tropical rainforest. We’re also lucky to live in a very vibrant and friendly community. Of course our wildlife is unique – where else can you see platypus and tree-kangaroos for instance?

What is one thing most of your students may not know about you?
I once got lost on my own study site – so when I am drilling home those safety messages I am talking from experience!

What are some of your favorite aspects of being a Resident Director?
Every programme I get to meet another group of enthusiastic young people who are experiencing our environment through fresh eyes. It makes it seem fresh, new and exciting for me too. I also love working to find more ways that our staff and students and the local community can work together and help to make more opportunities for our students to be actively involved. On a day to day basis the work of a RD is also very varied; I’m certainly never bored!

What are some of the challenges of your job?
It is sometimes challenging to work with different nationalities and different generations. On the other hand, that is also one of the most satisfying and interesting parts of the job. Of course, being on the other side of the world in a different time zone I can’t just pop down to a HQ colleague’s office for a quick chat so communication is sometimes a challenge. Weather is sometimes challenging but we work around it.

What have you seen as the biggest challenge for incoming students?
A few students struggle to let go of home for a while. It is challenging for students to be fully involved in their time here while still trying to keep up with all their friends and family back home.

What is your advice for students planning to attend your program, or to study abroad in your country?
Like most things in life, you reap what you sow. Get involved, make the most of every moment – you may not come this way again.

What is one thing you think students shouldn’t forget to pack for life in your country?
Their sense of humour.

What do you think is the most important take-away for education abroad students?
Be open to new experiences and different points of view. Everyone has their story.

To find out more about Amanda’s program, follow this link!

Gerardo Avalos lives in Costa Rica and works with The School for Field Studies (SFS) helping to spark student’s interests in ecology and sustainability. Atenas, Costa Rica, where Gerardo’s program is stationed, is small, yet beautiful. Gerardo invites OSU students out of their comfort zone, and into Costa Rica.

What brought you to be a Resident Director?
I served as a Tropical Ecology Faculty for 6 years before moving into the Resident Director position. By training, I am a plant physiological ecologist with interests on multivariate statistics. Being a scientist is different from being an administrator, but I wanted to develop the SFS Center in Costa Rica in new directions. In addition to consolidating our academic program, I wanted the center to be a model farm and an effective research institution to generate information about the management and conservation of natural resources for our clients in Costa Rica (national parks, protected areas, and local communities) so that our students could get not only an authentic educational and research experience, but leave behind a positive footprint on the country.

What are some unique aspects of your city and country?
The center is located in the town of Atenas, just 40 min away from the airport and the capital city of San Jose, and about 1 hour away from the nearest national parks (Poás Volcano in the Central Mountain Slope and Carara along the Pacific coast). Atenas has only 20,000 inhabitants, but despite of being small, it has all the basic services. It maintains a very traditional Costa Rican community, with coffee farms covering 40% of the area. Here, students can see a representative part of Costa Rican rural communities, traditional coffee production, and the celebration of local holidays like Independence Day and the ox cart parade. Atenas also has a very diverse international community. This area of Costa Rica presents some of the most pressing problems of the country as a whole, such as water production and conservation, urban expansion, waste management, and conflicts between these issues and biodiversity conservation. Costa Rica has maintained a leading tradition of democracy and political stability in Latin-America as well as of biodiversity protection. It is also one of the most biodiverse countries in the Neotropics with about 5% of the estimated number of species concentrated here. In terms of running a program like ours, these conditions have many advantages. Field trips could span strikingly different ecosystems in one day. Students can compare and contrast different agricultural models and different community profiles superimposed on different ecological conditions. This is an ideal country to study environmental issues and analyze the balance between biodiversity conservation with economic growth.

What is one thing most of your students may not know about you?
I spent one year at the School of Fine Arts at the University of Costa Rica studying history of art before switching to biology. I have an artistic side, and still do a bit of pastel and water color painting. I can also do cartoons, and have illustrated a children´s book. I did a bit of scientific drawing as an undergraduate student at the Biology Department at the University of Costa Rica.

What are some of your favorite aspects of being a Resident Director?
Observing the transformation of our students when they first come to the center and seeing how much they change and have learned from the program before they leave is very rewarding. Students could move on to graduate school, or to jobs that employ an environmental component, so you can see that the program has had a critical impact on them.

What are some of the challenges of your job?
This is mostly a balancing act. This goes across the board in terms of making sure the program works in all aspects. We plan our semester way ahead of time, looking at lecture schedules, community outreaches, field trips, and our week-long trip in Nicaragua. A program this complex is not an easy feat to accomplish. It requires experience and team work. Keeping a good team is critical for the program, the consistency of the educational quality we provide, and the professional development not only of our faculty, but of all our staff members. We are talking about a staff of 17 people, 9 of which function to support the program in terms of maintenance, cleaning, and cooking. It takes a long time and effort to form a good team.

What have you seen as the biggest challenge for incoming students?
This is a residential and very structured program. Students need to adjust to community living. They compromise to change certain behaviors for the benefit of the internal community, and abide by the sustainability contract (which a previous group of students proposed a few years back). Implementing down-to-earth changes (improving recycling, water, and electricity use, for instance) could be hard, representing a compromise and a more conscious awareness on the consequences of our actions on the capacity of our planet to provide services. Being less resource-demanding does not mean a decrease in our quality of life. Being closer to nature has multiple benefits that improve your perspective on life. Unplugging from the internet and decreasing the use of your gadgets and social networks is also an important challenge for many students.

What is your advice for students planning to attend your program, or to study abroad in your country?
Be open to new experiences; do not have preconceived expectations because every session is different and unique. What you positively learn from this will affect your life in the long-term.

What is one thing you think students shouldn’t forget to pack for life in your country?
A good pair of binoculars and a digital camera.

What do you think is the most important take-away for education abroad students?
Humankind is very consistent across the board. We have an amazing capacity for ecological and cultural adaptation. However, we also have a puzzling aptitude to repeat the same mistakes. Learning that deep inside, across cultural borders, we are all the same, and have invented ingenious ways to adjust to challenging ecological conditions (hopefully without repeating the same mistakes) is the key to a more sustainable future. Respecting and appreciating the diversity of ways to relate to nature is something you cannot learn from textbooks. You need to step outside your comfort zone and see the world.

To find out more about Gerardo’s program, follow this link!

Aynn Setright lives and works in Managua, Nicaragua. Aynn is an resident director for SIT study abroad programs. She has been a director for 16 years and is currently overseeing the SIT Nicaragua: Youth Cultures, Literacy, and Media program.

What brought you to be an Academic Director?
Well, I’ve lived in Nicaragua for nearly thirty years now! For the first ten years, I lived in rural Nicaragua and worked in community development. When I moved with my family to Managua in 1994, I started graduate work at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN- Managua) which introduced me to the academic world. By the time SIT opened a program in Nicaragua in 1996, I was working on linking activism with academics and I served as the rural coordinator for the first SIT Study Abroad groups. Then I was named Academic Director in 1999, and here I am!

What are some unique aspects of your city and country?
Nicaragua is a great place to experience Latin America with an edge. Because of its turbulent past Nicaragua has not grown much in terms of tourism, though it IS the safest country in Central America.

The country is divided into three regions, the Pacific where the colonial cities and program base of Managua is located, el Norte (The North) where most of Nicaragua’s coffee and tobacco is produced and the Caribbean, where the Afro-Caribbean influence is the strongest. We visit all the regions of the country on academic excursions and travel to Havana, Cuba for a 10 day comparative study of Youth and Cultural Expression.

Our program site in Managua is said to be the inspirations of U2s’ song “Where the Streets Have no Names” because of the 1972 earthquake the streets have no names, but on nearly every corner of Managua there is a story to tell from the Insurrection and Revolution of the 1980s-1980s. The country is also a young country with 35% of the population under the age of 15.

What is one thing most of your students may not know about you?
I’ve never studied Spanish! I learned Spanish completely by immersion have interpreted Spanish for years but know very little about Spanish grammar!

What are some of your favorite aspects of being an Academic Director?
I love turning students on to Nicaragua. This whole country, and the people in it, make a great classroom. And I love introducing Nicaraguans to engaged, intelligent young people from the United States, so Nicas can see it is not like on TV.

What are some of the challenges of your job?
Helping students understand the need to be autonomous and independent, but at the same time representatives of and part of SIT Nicaragua. We’ve worked very hard to establish solid, respectful relationships in Nicaragua – we need our students to understand that they are a part of that!

What have you seen as the biggest challenge for incoming students?
It is hard to get adjusted to the heat, and the rhythm of going to class in Managua. Students are exhausted at the end of the day for the first couple of weeks, but it is important for them to develop habits to take care of themselves. Some helpful habits are getting exercise, staying hydrated and spending time with their homestay families and to not fall into the trap of free time connected to Facebook and friends or family in the USA. It is a challenge sometimes for students to really embrace being in Managua, because it is not familiar.

What is your advice for students planning to attend your program, or to study abroad in your country?
Come with an open mind and be ready to embrace Nicaragua – it’s hot, sweaty, and complicated! It is a country that gets under your skin, which is the title of the Nicaraguan author, Gioconda Belli’s autobiography – Country Under My Skin.

What is one thing you think students shouldn’t forget to pack for life in your country?
A sturdy water bottle!

What do you think is the most important take-away for education abroad students?
The most important take away is to gain understanding and appreciation for different perspectives. Things are complicated, there are a lot of nuances to understanding these different perspectives. Be open to understanding and don’t make your time studying abroad just about travel, make it about learning.

If you’d like to learn more about going on Aynn’s program, follow this link.

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Tag Archives: study abroad

Nutrition Intervention in Northeast Thailand

Meet a Resident Director: Marie

Meet a Resident Director: Maria

Meet a Resident Director: Esteban

Meet a Resident Director: Amanda

Meet a Resident Director: Gerardo

Meet a Resident Director: Aynn

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