CDAE in the World brings students, parents, alumni, faculty, and administrators together to celebrate

CDAE’s Jonathan Leonard and the Haywire String Band play in the background while students, alumni, and faculty reunite around shared experiences in CDAE’s international service-learning courses. (Photo by CDAE student Caitlin Thomas)

Connected by shared learning experiences abroad, over 100 guests convened at the University of Vermont for the Community Development and Applied Economic Department's celebration CDAE in the World held Wednesday, April 23. Buttons highlighting Honduras, St. Lucia, Dominica, and Belize identified the groups of faculty, alumni, and students reuniting and celebrating surrounded by colorful cloth and project posters, student photo essays, live music, and Caribbean-inspired hors d'oeuvres.

After traveling from Pennsylvania to attend the event, Ayana Douglas, proudly wearing her Dominica button, mingled with the audience holding a letter from her father, Permanent Secretary for Community Development in Dominica from which she later read to the gathered audience.

Time to celebrate as a department and a campus

CDAE has been a department in UVM’s College of Agriculture and Life Science for more than 30 years. The key to its success in training students how to use skills and tools to strengthen communities is instruction both in the classroom and out in the real world. Recently, CDAE has led the way on campus with the development of international courses that are designed to promote student learning through activities that address human and community needs. UVM officially designates courses that offer this form of structured experiential learning as "Service-Learning."

What makes CDAE’s international service-learning courses so unique is the long-term commitment to specific communities in different countries such as Honduras, St. Lucia, and Dominica. Whether students participate once or repeatedly, they all benefit from previous groups of students experiences and progress.

Student excitement for CDAE’s international courses has spread by word of mouth across campus. And because faculty actively encourage participants from a variety of majors from art to engineering to environmental studies, CDAE in the World was as much a campus-wide celebration as a departmental one. A sampling of recent CDAE international courses tallied students from 35 of UVM’s 90 academic majors.

"These aren't your normal faculty-led courses abroad," said Jane Kolodinsky, Chair of CDAE, in her opening remarks, "they connect students and communities in a much more intimate and mutually-beneficial way."

One size does not fit all

Kolodinsky also highlighted another feature of CDAE international courses -- the range of options and experiences. Not every student can afford (either financially or academically) to spend months abroad. CDAE also offers a range of options from working in more or less developed countries and countries where English is and is not a commonly used language.

Long-term project-based courses have been developed by CDAE faculty in Honduras, St. Lucia, and Dominica. These semester-long courses spend time in Vermont planning and preparing with two weeks in-country implementing development projects in a variety of areas including (but by no means limited to) sugar production, ecotourism, renewable energy, and water management.

CDAE, in partnership with Continuing Education, has developed two faculty-led study abroad courses in Belize. One is a semester-long in sustainable development offered every spring partnering UVM students with Belizean students at Galen University in service-learning projects. A spring break course titled “The Intercultural Experience,” offers students an opportunity to explore and learn without the semester-long commitment.

In addition, in partnership with the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, CDAE faculty have participated in what are called "ateliers" or problem-based workshops in a variety of countries including Ukraine, Ethiopia, and Costa Rica.

An overview of the approach

It is not by chance that these courses and their projects have been so successful. Ever mindful of the experience of students and local communities, these courses are continuously improved over time by faculty members, like Assistant Professor and event presenter Dan Baker, who has published this approach to community development through service-learning in the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement.

Baker recounted the story of initial trips to Honduras in 2000, sketching plans for projects with local people on notepads. Years later, still working with the same communities, his partners pulled out the same (but now worn) pieces of paper, illustrating how very important it is to keep promises made to people. Starting small and building on small successes is how his students’ projects in Honduras have evolved and grown over time.

A career-altering (and enhancing) experience

Presenter Nicole Mason '07 and current graduate student, recounted how she became involved in Baker's Community and International Economic Transformation course in Honduras as an engineering undergraduate. Although she hadn't initially considered graduate school immediately after graduation, Nicole Mason decided to advance her engineering degree with a Masters Degree in Community Development and Applied Economics, seizing the opportunity to continue her work and research in the area of Jaitique, Honduras.

Undergrad Lena Forman recounted her URECA-funded research on the island of St. Lucia that helped her identify her career path. Forman will begin an internship as a Program Manager with Grassroots Soccer based in Cape Town, South Africa upon her graduation from UVM this May with a major in community and international development.

A letter from afar

Ayana Douglas tells the audience the positive impact CDAE’s international courses have had on energy efficiency in her home country of Dominica. (Photo by CDAE student Caitlin Thomas)

Ayana Douglas, engineer and native of Dominica, drove almost six hours to participate in CDAE in the World on behalf of herself and her father, Eisenhower Douglas, Permanent Secretary of Community Development, Culture, and Gender Affairs and Information in Dominica. Reading from the letter written to the University of Vermont from her father, she recounted details of how CDAE's Renewable Energy Workshop course led by Gary Flomenhoft since 2003 has helped transform energy policy and stimulate energy independence in her home island of Dominica. "The relationship between the University of Vermont and the Small Island Developing State of Dominica could be characterized as a mutually beneficial partnership," read Douglas as she concluded.

Douglas, herself an engineering, worked on a micro-hydrological installation as an undergraduate at SUNY-ESF in January 2005 together with Alvin Chan ('07 in electrical engineering and 2005 Service-Learning Student of the Year) and other students from the University of Vermont.

Immensely proud

UVM Provost John M. Hughes wrapped up the event discussing the importance of the international experience for students at UVM. He said he was "immensely proud" to represent a university whose students put their privilege to work helping others throughout the world. Recounting his personal connection to the island of Dominica, Hughes reconfirmed the University of Vermont's commitment to offer students the structured opportunities to explore and learn from implementing projects in other countries.

Personal Space

The winning entry of the CDAE in the World photo essay contest was Carmen Jaquez G'07 with her poem titled "Personal Space" inspired by her trip to Awassa, Ethiopia in 2006. Jaquez requested that the $200 raised by the event go toward CDAE's scholarship for international course participants, specifically earmarked for UVM international students. Jaquez's photo essay can be found here.

Contributed by Anna Masozera, CDAE Communications Coordinator (amasozer@uvm.edu; 656-2606). Special recognition to Public Communication students and event organizers Jen Rispoli and Caitlin Thomas.

UVM’s the View has published numerous articles about CDAE’s international courses:

• Sugar Technology Goes South (by Jeff Wakefield on July 21, 2004)
• A Learning Journey (by Cheryl Dorschner on September 30, 2003)
• Steady Flow (by Jon Reidel on September 18, 2007)
• Spring is for Renewal (and Renewable Energy) (March 31, 2004)
• Student Engineers Launch Alternative Energy Project in Dominica (by Kevin Foley on January 26, 2005)
• Belize Program Turns Field into Classroom (by Kyle Lovell on May 1, 2007)

For more information on CDAE’s semester in Belize: http://learn.uvm.edu/travel/belize/

Trading Places: International Partners Plan Next Visits by Cheryl Dorschner

From St. Lucia Press: http://www.stlucia.gov.lc/pr2008/january/ministry_of_commerce_hosts_18_from_vermont_university.htm