June 4, 2004

Seeing is believing: Puerto Rico trip provides education through experience

When spring term classes ended on May 4, Morningside College students were packing their bags and finalizing travel plans. But some weren’t getting ready to head back home for summer vacation. Instead, they were gearing up for a two-week study trip to Puerto Rico.

As part of the class, “Seminar: The Commerce of Puerto Rico,” offered May 9 through May 24, the summer session tour afforded a unique learning opportunity that stressed education by engagement and immersion into a new culture.

“It’s the way people learn,” said Dr. Pam Mickelson, professor of business and economics at Morningside and one of four faculty members who accompanied the students on the trip. “You can’t study international business without actually seeing what goes on.”

Funded by a two-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Title VI-B program, the Morningside trip was the second of its kind to the Caribbean island. Activities focused on exposing students to Puerto Rico’s commerce system and included a host of presentations and tours of government agencies, small businesses, entrepreneurial ventures, and industrial facilities such as Pfizer, the Puerto Rican Industrial Development Company, and the Small Business Development Center. The group also visited various points of interest, including the Camuy Caverns, El Yunque Rain Forest, and the Ponce Museum of Art.

To prepare for the trip, students had attended a one-credit-hour course that focused on researching the geography, history, and culture of Puerto Rico, among other things. While in Puerto Rico, the students were required to conduct between seven and 10 interviews of local business owners or entrepreneurs during the trip in order to achieve a greater understanding of Puerto Rico’s economic climate.

“Puerto Rico is an island that values education. They have a high rate of high school, college, and post-graduate level education,” said Mickelson. “But unemployment is very high, and the economy is very poor.” Consequently, entrepreneurship and the profusion of small businesses are prevalent.

That smaller corporate atmosphere was attractive to Shelby Terrell, now a senior at Morningside majoring in corporate communications and one of fourteen students on the trip. But it also raised Terrell’s consciousness about the global economy.

“It forced me to look outside the box, to see that other people are affected by the attacks of Sept. 11 and are experiencing a recession,” said Terrell, of Ottumwa, Iowa.

Experiential education like the trip to Puerto Rico is immeasurable, said Mickelson. Terrell agrees: “[Research] doesn’t compare to first-hand experience at all.”