Study-Service TermGoshen College’s Study-Service Term is one of the quintessential aspects of the institution. Follow our coverage as the program changes and grows.
Goshen College’s Study-Service Term is one of the quintessential aspects of the institution. Follow our coverage as the program changes and grows.
January 15, 2015
New Leaders for SST
Each year faculty members are given the opportunity to apply to lead a Study Service Term. According to Tom Meyers, Director of International Education, a committee reviews faculty applications and then Meyers makes final decisions with the academic dean, Dr. Anita Stalter. For the 2015-2016 academic year, three SST destinations will be offered: Peru, Cambodia and Senegal. While Peru units would normally have been offered in fall, spring and summer, the fall unit has been cancelled due to lack of interest. Assistant Professor of Biology Kris Schmidt and his wife Kathryn will lead the remaining spring and summer units. The...
November 13, 2014
Nicaragua Returns As SST Option
The Nicaragua Study-Service Term unit is back on the schedule for this summer. The Nicaragua SST unit for this summer was previously cancelled; however, due to students being adversely affected by the cancellation, it was brought back. According to Tom Meyers, director of international education, the previous cancellation meant class conflicts for some students, which would have altered their graduation dates. According to Meyers, this summer’s unit will be financially stable due to the number of students enrolled in units this summer; however after this summer the Nicaragua SST destination will be put on hold until overall enrollment in the...
November 6, 2014
Students Share Experience From Tanzania
The Study Service Term students who went to Tanzania organized and presented a bonus convocation to share their experiences. Though there was no official time slot in the convocation schedule, Jared Zook, a senior, took the initiative and worked closely with Beverly Lapp to arrange the event and get it approved for convocation credit. "We wanted to share [our SST] experience with everyone and include the whole campus in our story," Zook said. "There was no way we weren't going to!" While Zook lamented the difficulty of trying to squeeze several months of SST into a 40-minute presentation, Ida Short,...
November 6, 2014
The SST Stories Project: An Open Call For Stories, New And Old
Dear SSTers, There’s a new project about to unfold, but it cannot begin without you. An initiative to collect essays and snapshots from Goshen College’s study service term is underway. The SST Stories Project will aim to capture the varied experiences, spanning nearly 50 years, of current students, alumni, leaders and host families around the globe. The program has been transforming groups of people for nearly half a century, but there isn’t yet a collective place where these experiences have been published or shared. SST is different for each person, but all experiences are valid, and many deserve to be...
September 10, 2014
Cookbook Created For Charity
This summer, two students created a Peruvian cookbook, “Los Sabores del Peru,” to sell for charity. Gretchen Geyer, a senior studying social work and business, went to Peru for Study Service Term (SST) in the spring of 2014. During the Service portion of her time, she lived in Ayacucho, where she worked to prepare food at the comedor, a free soup kitchen hosted by the church Luz Y Vida. There, she and two other chefs worked, “essentially making food for 50 to 60 little children from the ages of 3 to 14,” said Geyer. For Geyer’s final project, she studied differences between food preparation in...
April 9, 2014
Three-Month SST Stay Leads to One Year More
Three seniors will return to their SST country, Cambodia, after graduation Although they’ve only been in the States for about a year, three seniors will return to their SST locations with the SALT, Serving And Learning Together, program. Sara Klassen, Audrey Thill and Henry Stewart, all seniors, will travel back to Cambodia this coming fall, following their graduation. They will spend an entire year in the country. Klassen is especially excited to be working in a position where she will be able to utilize the skills from her major. Henry Stewart “In my SALT assignment with Interfaith Cooperation Forum’s School...
December 5, 2013
International education changes made after domestic SST canceled
After five years of operation, the Latino Studies domestic Study-Service Term program will be canceled due to scheduling complications. In its place, students seeking to substitute their international education degree completion requirements with something other than SST can choose to take classes on campus. “Domestic SST will be canceled as we know it,” said Stan Miller, registrar. “It will be replaced by alternate options.” According to Miller, students previously enrolled in Latino Studies SST courses struggled to fit them into their course schedules between other requirements for their majors. Five years ago when the Latino Studies domestic SST program began,...
November 8, 2013
Students plan alternatives after SST units canceled
Students planning to spend study abroad semesters through Goshen College’s Study-Service Term in Morocco during fall 2014 and in Nicaragua during summer 2015 are rearranging their plans after hearing that those options have been canceled. Tom Meyers, director of international education, visited students preparing for Morocco SST during their prerequisite Arabic class taught by Paul Keim, professor of Bible and religion, on October 24. Meyers told the class that the SST program in Morocco would be canceled in fall 2014 due to low enrollment. “Given the college’s precarious financial situation with lower enrollments, we simply can’t afford a unit with...
September 25, 2013
The ‘Ingles family’ returns
The Ross Richer kids could tell you what it’s like to hike Huayna Picchu in the rain and the best way to make a frozen chupete popsicle. If you asked, they could also tell you, in a matter of minutes, how many students were in their parents’ SST groups – 184, to be exact. It’s been almost a month since Jane and Jerrell Ross Richer and their children, Sierra (14), Naomi (12), Teresa (10) and Jordan (8), returned from two years of SST leadership in Peru. The family has a total of three years under their belt, with four semesters...
January 24, 2013
ASL students see signs of love in Peru SST
Rosa Wyse began her mornings in Peru with a mug of chamomile tea, a salted avocado and a conversation with her deaf host parents, Rosio and Rolando. Knowing little Peruvian sign langauge, Wyse struggled at first to communicate with her parents–especially her dad, Rolando. Over time, though, Rolando warmed up to Wyse and loved to tell her Bible stories and Peruvian folk tales. “He would get all puffed up and sign ‘I’m an Incan warrior!'” Wyse said of her host dad. “He loved telling stories and being goofy. He reminded me a lot of my dad back home.” Wyse...
January 17, 2013
From the Peace Corps to Ecuador: tales from winter break
Karina Kreider, a junior, decided to make good use of her time–and hands–over Christmas break. Inspired by the idea that hand-made crafts and knowledge are a dying art, Kreider and her dad built an entire toboggan by themselves. The sled was constructed from old floorboards, rope and ash wood. Though Kreider said the structure of the toboggan was fairly simple, the process was more intricate than she had anticipated. “Between the two of us,” Kreider said, “we probably both spent 15 to 20 hours on the toboggan.” The largest complication, Kreider said, was figuring out a way to curve the...
October 18, 2012
Nine semesters, five countries, one family
It may be that the prospect of living abroad and working in diverse cultural settings is as much a selling point for staff as it is for prospective students. Keith Graber Miller, professor of Bible, religion & philosophy, certainly thinks so. Of current faculty, Keith Graber Miller is the most ambitious SST leader on campus. He and his family have led four units to the Dominican Republic, one unit to Cuba that had to be relocated to Costa Rica, a unit in China and two units in the southeast Asian country of Cambodia. This Dec. they head to Cambodia for a...
September 12, 2012
Summer around the world
Four students–one SSTer, one Maple Scholar, one camp counselor and one Ministry Inquiry program participant–share their warm weather experiences. “This summer I had the pleasure of leaving the flat farmland of Indiana behind in favor of the much more dramatic Colorado Rockies as I worked at Rocky Mountain Mennonite Camp. I was a counselor and was able to work with kids from third grade through high school. We went on three hikes every week, to valleys, waterfalls and mountains, including 14,110-foot-high Pikes Peak. We occasionally had to coax campers into making it all the way to the end, but I...
September 12, 2012
A new country, a new language for fall SSTs
This fall, two Study-Service Term units are pioneering changes for the SST program. Both the Peru and Morocco units, which departed September 5, hold significant new components. Though Goshen College has traveled to Morocco twice with the “Spain and Morocco” May Term, there has never been a full SST there, according to Tom Meyers, director of international education. Morocco SST students had originally signed up to travel to Egypt, where a unit ran in 2010. Egypt 2010 was “very successful,” Meyers said. However, two months after Goshen College students returned from Egypt, a revolution made the country unstable. Meyers...
March 28, 2012
Domestic SST program undergoes major revisions
Starting in fall 2012, Goshen College students who choose not to take an international Study Service Term or a study-abroad equivalent will be required to do the domestic SST: Latino Studies program instead. Incoming students and current first-years will no longer have the option of taking SST alternate courses on campus. Unlike previous domestic SST units, the revised program will now last an entire school year as of fall 2012. Before, students in the program had to cram all 13 credits into a single semester, but now they will take seven credits in the fall and six in the spring....