Studying abroad is an incredible opportunity that can shape your future in ways you never imagined.
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Cultural Immersion: Immerse yourself in a new world of diverse cultures, languages, and traditions.
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Personal Growth: Studying abroad challenges you to adapt to new environments, make friends from around the world, and embrace unique experiences.
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Academic Excellence: By studying in a different academic setting, you'll gain access to unique courses, innovative teaching methods, and expert faculty members.
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Career Advancement: Employers highly value the skills and experiences gained through studying abroad. It showcases qualities like adaptability, cross-cultural communication, and a global mindset.
Energy and Environment in Costa Rica
A project-based course examining energy conservation, monitoring, and applications and providing team-oriented project experience. The project addresses energy and environmental challenges related to economic and social development. Students will engage with resort employees, managers, and owners to identify, implement, and recommend solutions for issues concerning energy, the environment, and resort operations. Each student will select a project to work on before arriving in Costa Rica and will complete it during the three-week course. Students will collaborate with advisors and mentors throughout the project, including JMU professors and resort managers in Costa Rica.
This project-based program offers the opportunity to work on Global issues tailored to Costa Rica's specific needs.
East Africa Field School - Swahili and Human-Environment Interactions
Designed to serve majors from different disciplines, JMU’s East Africa Field School incorporates extensive travel, homestays, lectures/class discussions, readings, and a variety of other assignments into studies of Swahili and human-environment interactions.
All students are required to take six credit hours of Swahili language at the appropriate level (beginner to advanced options are available) and six credit hours of “Human-Environment Interactions and Perspectives on Development” (abridged as “HEI”), totaling 12 credit hours. HEI provides breadth and depth of understanding of how “Kenya” and “Tanzania” came to be, and it connects with the Swahili courses.
For the HEI courses, we focus on the following interconnected topics: diversity of cultures in East Africa, impacts of colonialism, meanings of post-colonialism, education and ways of “knowing,” nationalism, development, dimensions of rural life, impacts of major cities, varied land uses and pressures on the land and water bodies, use and potential of renewables.
