Program Dates
(subject to change):
Spring Semester
January 28 - May 8
Application Deadline: November 10
Fall Semester
September 2 - December 11
Application Deadline: April 15
About the Program
Our semester program focuses on concepts and practices of sustainable living in Senegal and assembles students, faculty, experts, staff, and villagers to engage in a learning process that focuses on ecovillages in which indigenous populations with varying Senegambian traditions live. American and Senegalese students create learning families with teams of villagers while carrying out projects in which they strive to apply the skills, indicators, and theories needed to define the principles of sustainable development and to actively create community development programs and networks. In this sense, the ecovillages themselves are the most important classrooms and learning laboratories for the program, as they provide the conceptual frameworks and concrete results defining sustainable development and its limitations. Village work is interspersed with academic learning and research in classroom settings, in the form of rigorous courses presenting theory and examples of sustainable development, research methods used in program design, development facilitation skills, and language classes.
Following successful completion of the Sustainable Development Semester Program, all registered students receive 16 continuing education credits from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Most American universities permit students already enrolled in their own programs to transfer these credits to their existing transcripts. Learn more and apply through Living Routes, click here.
Main Components
- A course in sustainable international community development providing the theoretical and cultural backbone of the semester.
- A real development project in which students and their village learning teams apply the theories and practice of sustainable development in areas of mutual interest.
- Language classes and other communications and facilitation tools.
Objectives for Participants
- Increase language and cross-cultural communications skills. Create and reinforce paradigms for multicultural communication, global citizenship, and the construction of a sustainable future.
- Learn the principles and the techniques of sustainable development, utilizing a practical and theoretical vision of the capacities of international development programs and the activities of traditional local development that promotes sustainability in Senegal.
- Maintain a satisfactory balance between independent individual experience and group learning. Contribute to a cross-cultural living and learning experience in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
- Hone group-building skills and work effectively as a team in tackling sustainability issues in Senegal. Create overlapping communities of students, staff, home stay families, and village co-workers that come within the scope of the experiential “living and learning” framework.
- Implement development research projects with ecovillagers. The projects serve the needs of the existing population and create practical supports.
"People from very different places came together and found common interests. These common interests were all coming from positive places, improving quality of life and betterment of the world."
- American student from the Fall 2009 Semester Program