Honors students travel to Panama

Horseback riding, exploring bat caves, snorkeling the coral reef, visiting indigenous tribes and zip-lining in Panama, 11 University of West Florida students, led by Klaus Meyer-Arendt, chair of Environmental Studies, received the cultural experience of a lifetime mixing these opportunities with their recent Honors seminar. Hosted by the university’s Honors program, the seminar combines an interdisciplinary focus with a vision to integrate content that fosters creative and innovative critical thinking.

The two-week excursion to Panama gave students from a variety of majors the opportunity to explore another culture and also hear about life first-hand from UWF alumnus Don King, BS Marine Biology, ’81, founder of the non-profit organization Soluciones Biotecnologicas Tropicales (SBT). The organization develops biotechnical solutions for issues in the province of Bocas del Toro, Panama and provides education and training, as well as environmental awareness, for local tribes.

“Students in the Honors program report that the international seminars are life-changing opportunities,” said Greg Lanier, director of the Honors program. “Nearly all students who have participated have said they would go back if they could and learn more.”

The UWF students spent one week in Bocas del Toro investigating social and environmental issues, ascended into the Chiriquí Highlands for three nights in Boquete and spent three nights in Panama City, where they toured the Panama Canal. Students also had the opportunity to visit a natural hot spring, take wild-life tours and had days in which they explored on their own.

“They definitely were an outgoing and dynamic group that wanted to do something new every day,” said Meyer-Arendt. “I wanted to expose them to those three corners of Panama, the city and the canal, the coastal areas and the mountains. It was a great little adventure.”

To conclude the seminar, the students presented research projects derived from various aspects of the trip to Panama. Each student had the opportunity to show her perspective on the trip and the topics and issues she researched. Topics included issues from ecotourism, cultural ecology and the nutrition of Panama to research about certain cultural places the group visited. Emerging themselves in the culture and history of Panama, it was apparent that each student came away from the seminar with their own experience.

“With my major being social work, I realized how little social services are available in that country, and yet those services are necessary to educate and help those people about how their lives can be,” said Alicia Berta, sophomore at UWF. “It just reinforces my decision to go into this major and that decision was made to help people.”

Charity Vander Wall, a freshman anthropology major, is already working with King to start a program at UWF to aide his organization. Hoping to attract volunteers through the Honors program and eventually the whole university, Vander Wall wants to find volunteers to conduct help with fundraising and research efforts.

“This trip gave me new ambition to start the project at UWF to help out SBT and a lot of personal insight and discoveries,” said Vander Wall. “I love traveling and I find that I learn more about myself when I am in a totally new environment than I ever could have back home.”

For more information, contact Meyer-Arendt at (850) 474-2792 or e-mail kjma@uwf.edu. To find out more about the Honors program, visit uwf.edu/honors. To find out more about SBT, visit solareef.com/index.php.

By Megan Tyson, University Marketing Communications