Across the Gulf of Mexico, more than 3,000 miles away from campus, a group of 12 Illinois State University students spent a portion of winter break picking pineapples and building stoves and showers in a rural Costa Rican community as a part of a service trip through the Alternative Winter Break (AWB) program.
A group of 12 students from ISU and 2 students from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale spent spring break 2023 in Costa Rica on a study-abroad program sponsored by the Department of Politics and Government and the Office of Sustainability and focusing on fair trade and the fair trade movement.
When you think of winter break, you probably don’t associate it with working on community development and service projects in Costa Rica. But for 14 Illinois State University students and one faculty advisor, this is exactly how they spent a portion of their time between semesters.
From January 3-13, Assistant Professor Dr. Mike Hendricks, Katie Sebok (graduate student) and Maddie McNab (undergraduate political science minor) spent 10 days with a group of ISU students in Sarapiquí, Costa Rica on an Alternative Winter Break trip.
ISU students spent one week in Costa Rica over spring break with Politics and Government faculty Noha Shawki and Julian Westerhout.
In an effort to continue expanding study abroad opportunities for Illinois State students, the Study Abroad Office has established a new Latin American partnership with Universidad Veritas in San Jose, Costa Rica.
Kinesiology and Recreation students enjoyed short cultural immersion trips to Russia and Costa Rica in May.
Alternative Breaks, a student organization supported by Leadership and Community Connections, provides students of Illinois State with opportunities to enact social change.
For 10 days over the Thanksgiving break, 12 students in the School of Biological Sciences came eyeball-to-eyeball with tropical monkeys, snakes, and ants in one of the liveliest places in the world.
This is the final story in a five-part series on the School of Biological Sciences’ trip to a Costa Rican rain forest. STATEside is along for the adventure as the students and professors of the Rain Forest Ecology class spend 10 days over the Thanksgiving break at La Selva Biological Station.
