BSW Program Director Takes Students to Trinidad

Bachelor of Social Work Program Director Don Schweitzer led twenty-one students from a variety of majors to Trinidad, one of the southernmost islands of the Caribbean.

The winter study abroad course was meant to provide students from a variety of disciplines international experience.

“The history of European imperialism coupled with extreme ethnic and religious pluralism lend Trinidad’s social environment well to the kinds of issues and processes explored by anthropologists, social workers, and other social sciences such as, power differentials and individual agency, class inequality, ethnic and religious conflict and cooperation, and structural inequalities of gender, race, and class, to name a few,” said Schweitzer.

“It's one thing to read an ethnography in class and talk about the concept of field research, but it's another thing entirely to get to do that research for yourself. It was so unbelievably beneficial for me as an anth[ropology] major,” said a student who attended the trip.

According to Schweitzer, students were able to gain valuable experience in engaging with people from Trinidad about social and cultural processes in a way that may not be possible in the United States’ bureaucratic way of life.

“This was a very fun trip! I learned a lot about traveling and field work and made memories and friendships in the process,” said another student who attended the trip.