2024-2025 Study Abroad Preview

Providing students with opportunities to exercise and strengthen peacebuilding outside the classroom is central to the HPI’s purpose. One way students can “practice nonviolent collaboration and conflict transformation at the personal, interpersonal, family, community, inter-group, national, and international levels” (HPI Mission Statement) is through study abroad. By taking what they learn into new contexts, students make meaningful connections and learn to apply their knowledge to real-world issues using various peacebuilding approaches.

While students can have memorable experiences through a wide range of study abroad opportunities, two programs led by HPI core-faculty are bringing students face-to-face with reconciliation, conflict management, and peacebuilding in countries and communities that have faced violent conflict.

This Summer, HPI Board member Dr. Shannon Peterson (Political Science), is taking a group of students to Rwanda to learn about genocide and reconciliation. This course seeks to help students understand the impact of genocide and its lasting impact (psychologically, socially, economically, and politically) on a country and its people and, more importantly, their unique and continuing path towards justice, reconciliation and peace.

Next Spring, Board members Dr. Jennifer Peeples (Communication Studies) and Dr. Charles Waugh (English) are leading a semester-long program in Vietnam. This eye-opening adventure will include visits to locations important to understanding the war and postwar reconciliation between the US and Vietnam. Students will explore Vietnamese culture, literature, history and environmental issues, while at the same time gaining transformative skills.

 

Interested in Experiential Learning? Check out the Heravi Peace Scholars program for funding opportunitites!