The Undergraduate Research Study Abroad program (URSA) allows students to design and complete their capstone research project in Morocco. This popular program involves preparing a research proposal in spring, then traveling to Morocco to collect data while living with local host families during the summer, offering a deep cultural immersion experience.
Tell me about your studies/projects you completed as part of your experience? / What influenced your decision to study abroad/ travel to Morocco?
The Undergraduate Research Study Abroad program allowed me to create my own academic research project and carry it out in Morocco. So for my project, I created a study that looked to see which languages middle school students learning English employed in their English classes. The goal was to see if different social situations and conversations influenced which languages the students used, with a notable emphasis on their usage of the English language. The study was a huge success! I am currently working on publishing my work, and my study with URSA was one of the big factors in my admission to graduate school here in France, where I am doing the same study in a new context.
How did your studies prepare you for your time abroad? Was there anything from your course work that came in handy that surprised you? How did your experiences shape your thinking about your studies going forward?
As a Spanish and French major, the language skills acquired in my courses were obviously essential during my time in Morocco, as all regions of the country use Spanish and/or French in daily life. Apart from communication skills, my courses did a lot for preparing me for my research paper that I had to prepare for URSA. Additionally, many of my courses put a heavy emphasis on cultural interpretation, which really helped when needing to create a methodology that respected the social context of my study. It also helped me enormously when I was on the ground conducting my research. It must be also said that after being accepted into URSA, we needed to attend courses throughout the spring semester before leaving that helped us learn about Moroccan society and prepare us for conducting our research. Our professors, Dr. Dana Lindaman and Dr. Ryan Goei, did a wonderful job in teaching us how to professionally create and conduct an academic study.
How did it affect your perspective or your worldview?
Before partaking in the URSA program and going to Morocco, I had lived and travelled in several countries, so I was not daunted by the prospect of spending an extended amount of time abroad. But the exposure to a new culture that was very far removed from any in the places I had lived in before was an absolutely invaluable experience. Understanding how a different culture interprets the world around itself and creates a society that reflects their values taught me a lot about the diversity in our world. I have taken a lot away from my time in Morocco and I truly believe that it strongly reinforced my belief in never being afraid of saying "yes" to something new. Additionally, the URSA program taught us all how to work together as a group and how to depend on one another in order to accomplish our goals. We all brought something to the table that was unique and valuable and we were able to identify our own strengths and how they can contribute to the group in large.
Tell me about what you learned about Moroccan culture/values? How did that connect to the culture/values of where you're from?
As I touched on before, I learned a lot about the importance of community, but also spontaneity. Community is a very important aspect of Moroccan society, both in the community one currently has but also the community that one learns to create for themselves. This was something that was evident from day one for me, and only grew more prevalent as time went on. Spontaneity was another quality of Moroccan society that I immensely appreciated and encountered every day. I would often find myself in conversation with someone I didn't know at a café or invited to an event by someone I met an hour beforehand. It really allowed me to live in the moment rather than worry about a schedule, which can often be the case back in the States.
Tell me about two or three of your favorite experiences while traveling abroad? And, what did you learn about yourself?
My favorite memory from my time in Morocco was from a day that one of my friends in URSA and I went to a town over from Rabat to look for some second hand shops and buy soccer jerseys (a common pastime of ours in Morocco). Whilst in a café in this town, we asked some locals to point us in the right direction, to which one said that he would guide us around and show us the different shops. We ended up spending the day with him and going back to his mother's house to have some tea. Before leaving, he invited us to have lunch with his mother the following weekend, to which we obliged. The next time we went, his mother made us all a huge plate of couscous and we all spent the afternoon together. It was a great memory and a perfect example of the cultural exchanges that can happen out of nowhere! Another great memory of mine was when a friend I had made during a Model UN event invited a few of us to come play soccer at a local pitch. We spent the evening playing soccer with people we had just met on this pitch right by the ocean. I think the most "spectacular" memory I have is of when I spent the night in the Sahara. A friend in URSA and I were not feeling well, so we were brought to our camp ahead of the rest of the group and so we had an hour or two to kill before the others arrived. So we trekked up a sand dune to watch the sunset, where we were met by a dog. We spent the time hanging out with our new, furry friend while watching one of the most mesmerizing sunsets I had ever seen over the dunes. It was one of those moments that didn't quite feel real, and still really doesn't!