Student’s Travel Bug Creates New Adventure for Education Students

Isabella Boland caught the travel bug in Tanzania a few years ago and it never left her. Now the Duquesne senior has created a first-of-its kind adventure for students in the School of Education.

Working with professors Dr. Launce Brown and Dr. Anne Marie FitzGerald, Boland developed the Maymester Education: Trinidad program, which will immerse students in the educational and musical contexts of the culturally diverse Caribbean island. During the four-week program, education students will visit a variety of local schools, experience the island’s varied music culture and attend classes on social justice and global diversity.

Boland, who is majoring in elementary education, credits her student trip to Tanzania as inspiration for the Trinidad program. “Going to Tanzania opened me up to seeing a new culture,” she said. “I saw the value of learning multiple perspectives and the importance to seeing all sides of an issue.”

After developing a proposal for the program, Boland collaborated with Trinidad native Brown to create a syllabus, research excursion sites and school locations, and work on logistics. The two of them, joined by FitzGerald, visited Trinidad this past summer to plan the new program.

“I’ve never met a student who was so persistent with a project,” said Brown, professor and chair of the Department of Educational Foundations and Leadership. “She wants to open up these types of opportunities for other students. She will be graduating before the trip, so it really is an act of selflessness.”

Trinidad serves as the perfect location for education students, given teachers today work with an increasingly diverse population of students from different races, religions, gender identities and socioeconomic backgrounds, said FitzGerald, an assistant professor in the School of Education. Trinidad also is home to some members of the Spiritan congregation.

“Trinidad is a mostly cosmopolitan area. You can see a variety of religious structures—Hindu temples, churches, mosques—within a five-mile radius,” Brown said, adding that each religion has a major public holiday celebrated in the country. “In Trinidad, people live close together and co-exist peacefully, which may seem like a distant concept for other countries.”

For more information on the new program, visit the Maymester Education: Trinidad website.