HECUA then and now
There’s a black and white photograph of HECUA students taken in 1970. The students are looking into the camera, their faces full of expectation and a certain amount of steely courage. A few months earlier, four students from Kent State University had been killed and nine wounded by National Guardsmen during a campus protest against the Vietnam War. In 1970, the turbulence that had rocked American society during the 1960s seemed to have no end in sight. And yet, the students in this long ago photo had chosen to leave their campuses for a semester. They came to face the issues of power and...
From the Archives: No Easy Answers
Michaela Grenier, a student from Denison University, majoring in international and women's studies, wrote this reflection at the conclusion of HECUA's The New Norway semester, based in Oslo. Although Michaela realized over the course of the program that Norway wasn't a wintry utopia, her internship placement left her with hope, and a strong belief in the potential for change in all communities.
Read on for more from Michaela.
My experience studying abroad in Norway with HECUA thus has been wonderful [I'm at right in the photo below, with a fellow classmate]. I’ve gotten the chance to see...
From the Archives: Past Shaping Future
Danny Castillo, a 2013 graduate from Colorado College, and an environmental science major, was one of the first students to enroll in HECUA's New Zealand semester. Read his mid-program reflection on the first year of that program (now based in Wellington) below.
Being part of the first student cohort for HECUA’s New Zealand Culture and the Environment: A Shared Future program has been remarkable. I didn't really know what to expect when I initially applied. I knew that we were going to travel throughout the North Island for the first part of the program and that then we would be placed at...
From the Archives: Complexity & Connectivity
AJ Zozulin graduated in 2014 from Macalester College, with a degree in Classics, and an Environmental Studies minor. In the post below he writes about his whirlwind semester long off-campus study experience as part of HECUA's Environment and Agriculture (now Agriculture and Justice) program during the summer of 2012.
I'm a rising junior at Macalester College and this past semester I got tired of doing all my learning in classrooms. When my interests took a turn toward agriculture, I dug out a poster for HECUA's Environment and Agriculture (E & A) course and knew immediately this was...
From the Archives: No Longer a Victim of Comfort
Jackson Zoellner is 2013 graduate of Gustavus Adolphus College, with a degree in Political Science and Coaching. This short post is a reflection on his personal transformation as part of the Democracy and Social Change in Northern Ireland semester long study abroad program in 2012.
Jackson writes:
Our program director Nigel asked to us to reflect on a song he played for us entitled: “Victim of Comfort” performed by Keb’ Mo’. Victim of comfort is a term that reflects what I had become while living in the Midwest. I had become content with the rise and grind of the average undergraduate...
From the Archives: Learning to Unlearn
Jay Saper, graduated in 2013 with a degree in Sociology/Anthropology, and a minor in Education Studies from Middlebury College. He was part of HECUA's spring 2012 program MUST: Poverty, Inequality, and Social Change (now Inequality in America). We caught up with Jay after a particularly powerful visit to the Mni Sota: Reflections of Time and Place exhibit at the Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota.
Read Jay's memory of that day here:
On the first day of our HECUA program we went around in a circle to discuss why we were drawn to study poverty, inequality, and social change. It was...
From the Archives: Sketching City Arts
Trung Le Nguyen is 2012 graduate of Hamline University with a Studio Art major, and a minor in Art History. Beyond the sketches submitted for this piece, Trung also maintains a graphic story online, complete with his own illustrations. Trung was awarded HECUA's Scholarship for Racial Justice to participate in City Arts (now Art for Social Change) spring 2012 semester long off-campus study program.
Trung writes:
My passion for racial justice is spurred by a composite of many lessons grounded in an essentially American experience. My status as an American citizen is a guarded, precious...
From the Archives: Back Home in Quito
Rachel Armstrong, a St. Catherine University alumna, granted permission for HECUA to share a link to her personal blog, Rachel Goes to Ecuador, in which she talks about her experiences on HECUA's Community Internships in Latin America semester long study abroad program in Ecuador. In her own words she introduces her travel and study blog as, "...how scared I am to go to Ecuador, what happens to me while I'm there, and what happens next if I decide never to come back to the US and instead spend my life studying turtles in the Galapagos."
Back "Home" in Quito
A few weeks ago when I was still...
From the Archives: Got Chicken?
Two University of Minnesota graduates, Claire and Mikhail, 2011 participants in HECUA's Environmental Sustainability off-campus study program, spent their semester-long internship at the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture. Part of responsible farming is humanely raising and slaughtering animals. Claire and Mikhail shared with us their innermost thoughts before, during, and after slaughtering 180 chickens in one day.
Read Claire and Mikhail's reflections below:
Two words. Slaughtering chickens.
The morning went like this: I arrived at the Andrew Boss Lab of Meat Sciences...
From the Archives: A Profound Approach to Writing for Social Change
Emma Nelson, an English major at the University of Minnesota, participated in the 2011 off-campus study semester Writing for Social Change. This post is her response to a reading by Nuruddin Farah, a prominent Somali novelist, who was a featured author in a Hennepin County Library reading series.
Emma writes:
What is perhaps most appealing about Nuruddin Farah is his straightforwardness. When he emerged on stage at the Hennepin County Library on Tuesday evening, wearing a scarf over his dress shirt and peering out curiously from behind the podium, I could sense the crowd warming to him...
