The Local Indigenous Cultures and Perspectives SST course hosted its first cohort this year. This was due to several misfortunes with Goshen College partners in Arizona, which meant that SSTers were not able to immerse themselves in the culture of the Navajo and Hopi people. With the number of changes that had been undertaken before the group was supposed to depart, Jerrell Richer, co-director of global engagement, and his colleague Kendra Yoder quickly changed direction and were able to find connections locally. “[The group] started the program by living at Camp Friedenswald across the state line in Michigan,” Richer said....

By Atty Montague • November 20, 2025 • Features

Jan Kauffman and Kristin Waltner received a message two weeks ago that came as a surprise: Duane and Karen Stoltzfus said that they needed to withdraw from their roles as Study-Service Term faculty leaders in Ecuador to focus on a personal health crisis. Kauffman, associate dean of student success, and Waltner, registrar, accepted the offer to lead the Ecuador SST for the 2026 trip. “I visited Ecuador over the summer and loved it — the people, culture, diverse landscape, and variety of activities. The country offers so much, and the people are so warm and open,” said Waltner. The two...

By May Boudreau • November 13, 2025 • News John Eash-Scott • November 13, 2025 • News

Students signed up for the Navajo Nation Study Service Term were informed on Monday that they are no longer going to Arizona. Instead, they will be spending May Term locally, with most of their time at Camp Friedenswald in Michigan, focusing on the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi and the Miami Tribe. This abrupt change comes after a fire at Diné College on April 14, where the group was going to fulfill the study portion of their SST experience. The fire caused significant damage to their Student Union Building, and there is an ongoing investigation into the cause. Last week, AZ...

By Mackenzie P. Miller • April 27, 2025 • News

Leaders for the Ecuador and Indonesia Study Service Terms in spring 2026 were announced recently by the Global Engagement Office. Global citizenship is one of GC’s core values, and one of the ways it is fulfilled is through semester-long SSTs which are led by a faculty director and a resident director.  For the Indonesia SST, Luke Beck Kreider will act as faculty director, and his spouse, Janie Beck Kreider, will act as resident director. In Ecuador, Duane Stoltzfus will act as faculty director, and his spouse, Karen Stoltzfus, will act as resident director.  Jerrell Ross Richer, professor of economics and...

By Annabelle Bartz • February 13, 2025 • News

Since 1968, the semester-long Study Service Term has been a staple of the Goshen College experience. With its 50-year anniversary in 2018, program leaders took the initiative to build a year-long study to assess how the program could be more equitable and accessible for students.  Kendra Yoder, professor of sociology, the chair of the religion, justice and society department and co-director of global engagement, said, “What we saw was that fewer and fewer people were able to do the full semester program, and the SST alts were just a series of courses that had some kind of global theme, but...

By Mackenzie P. Miller • February 6, 2025 • Features

In 1983, at the height of Goshen College’s Study Service Term program, 82% of that year’s graduating class went on a semester SST and GC ran three to four programs each semester. Now, this past academic year, only 36 total students went on the three semester programs that were offered, which were Ecuador (twice) and Indonesia.  A multitude of factors are at play in why exactly the numbers have drastically dropped so much — such as price, athletic responsibilities and overall appeal — but Kendra Yoder, co-chair of the Global Engagement Office, said that after attending a global education conference...

By Kate Bodiker • November 14, 2024 • News

It’s been nearly a year since I got back from Ecuador, and I still think about it practically daily. I’ve done a lot in my four years here at Goshen, but I found SST unquestionably the most impactful experience. I have so much I want to say about it, and I just don’t know where to start. I could talk about the language barrier, which was super difficult at times (such as when I thought my host mom was screaming at me “HOLD ON” to a half-ton cow dragging me face-first through a field, when she was actually saying “LET...

By Daniel James • April 4, 2024 • Features

The Study-Service Term slated to go to Senegal in summer 2024 has been canceled. There were nine students registered for the unit, ultimately falling short of the 12 students needed to run the semester abroad, according to the global engagement office. “I’m very sad,” said Jan Bender Shetler, director of global engagement. “It’s a great SST. It’s a great location, and it’s a great place to learn so many things.” The cancellation came down to “a financial decision,” according to Shetler. SST requires many things to fall into place for any unit to run, and Senegal is no exception. Language...

By Sarah Miller • November 30, 2023 • News

A group of 21 Goshen College students traveled to Ecuador to experience their Study-Service Term (SST) this past summer. Ecuador is a popular SST destination for students, and while many experiences are shared among the groups, there is always something that makes their time abroad unique. The group arrived in Quito, Ecuador’s capital city, on May 6. During the journey there, Joel Yoder, class of 2022, began to think: “What am I doing? This was maybe a mistake.”  “It was hard for me to realize I was actually going to another country for such a long time,” he added. “The...

By Sarah Miller • September 30, 2022 • Features

One of the things I’ve been struggling with this semester is the awareness that, when I graduate in the spring, I won’t have completed a full Study-Service Term semester.  My requirements will have been met — don’t worry, faculty advisors — but I won’t have the experience of spending an entire semester in another country. And that feels strange, because SST has always felt like something of an inevitability for me.  When I committed to GC my senior year of high school, I told several GC alumni at my church that I would be attending. Their initial responses usually involved...

By Augusta Nafziger • September 15, 2022 • Features

16 GC students and two faculty leaders departed for their 13-week Study-Service Term in Senegal in early May. The group returned in late July.  Goshen College’s Study Service Term (SST) is a program that each GC student experiences in some capacity, whether through SST alternate courses, hybrid semesters or a 13-week semester studying and serving abroad. SST contributes to GC’s motto, “Culture for Service,” and core value of global citizenship. When the group arrived in Senegal, they strapped luggage to their bus, traveled an hour to Thiès, and stayed in a small dormitory the first few nights.  “I remember getting...

By Sarah Miller • September 15, 2022 • Features