#morethanstudyabroad USU Brazil Initiative

The summer before the 2016 fall semester at Utah State University, 12 students accompanied by three professors from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences traveled to Salvador, Brazil to carry out research projects that examined race and class.

CHaSS rewarded the three professors its first ever international initiative grant that allowed them to create a unique program that would expand upon the average study abroad catalog.

Francois Dengah, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at USU, said he started a lunch club with Jason Gilmore and Marcus Brasileiro where they brainstormed potential ideas, projects and trips until they reached the finalized plan that became the USU Brazil Initiative.

“The three of us came up with this plan to go and take a dozen students to Brazil for three weeks to go and look at race and class, something that both myself and Jason are very interested in,” Dengah said.

Gilmore is an assistant professor of communication studies at the university and has enjoyed his past job experiences as a professional journalist and editor, but he said academia was the career he had always wanted to pursue.

“We got the grant basically to create something that wasn’t quite study abroad. It wasn’t just to go abroad or learn a language, but it was to expand upon that,” Gilmore said, “We chose Salvador specifically because it’s not Rio and it’s not these classic locations. It is the roots of Brazil.”

The twelve students that were chosen to embark on the Brazil initiative were ones that were interested in conducting research and exploring different levels of communication.

“We were looking for students who were self-motivated and ones that were specifically interested in building skills for themselves. We wanted students that were interested in the subject matter, in research and in engaging in campaigns,” Gilmore said.

Throughout the trip, the students had to apply a couple of different interviewing techniques and communication skills. One of the techniques, referred to as the life history interview, required the students to ask locals about their experience with racism and how they feel it has positively or negatively impacted their life and the life of their friends and family.

Felicity Hughes, a student majoring in communication studies, said it was really interesting to see the features that people use to determine what race someone is.

“In Brazil, it’s not just black and white. How much money someone has influences their perception of race as well,” she said.

Gilmore said they saw a lot of similarities between perceptions of race between the United States and Brazil. They observed the conventional idea that the darker your skin color, the more susceptible you are to violence, poverty and missed opportunities. He also said the history of race in Brazil changed the way it was talked about on national level.

“Race is very complex and it is very complex in different ways there than it is here in America,” Gilmore said, “It’s very different because it’s so embedded in their national identity.”

The three professors encouraged the students to develop all of these ideas into whatever different products they wanted to.

“One of my favorite things I enjoyed was actually working with the students. They were amazing and they inspired me constantly. We allowed them to have control over the projects and to develop their own ideas and their own initiatives,” Dengah said, “We set the bar pretty high and the students just bounded over it.”

Ryan Jensen, one of the students that went on the trip, created short videos that outlined the trip and brought the culture they experienced to life.

Hughes specifically focused on the social media aspect of the projects. She said she posted profiles of the people they interviewed and shared their stories with the followers the initiative had gained on their social platforms.

“We wanted people to see that these were people that we were getting to know,” Hughes said, “That was probably one of the coolest parts about being in Brazil. Getting to know these people and hearing their stories and hearing their experiences with racism.”

Intercultural interaction between the students and the locals became a valuable element of the trip. The interviews and the constant communication with them created an unforeseen familial connection amidst the different perspectives and the contrast in skin color.

Gilmore said the point of the trip was for students to engage in this reciprocal learning that had started to take place between the incredibly diverse and complex people of Brazil.

“The community that we lived in enveloped us before we realized it,” Gilmore said, “Our students were actually sitting down and saying ‘we want to hear your story.’ They had made such deep connections with the community that we were in, so the community started to embrace us and take care of us.”

During their time there, the traveling group of students and professors lived in an inn, referred to as a pousada in Portuguese, that was similar to the living standards of an average college student’s double-decker, 4-bedroom house at the bottom of Old Main.

Hughes said compared to their glorified house, the locals’ living standards were a lot lower.

“Where we were was beautiful and I loved it, but it wasn’t necessarily the most safe situation,” Hughes said, “I couldn’t really go places by myself.”

Despite the difference in living standards, crime rates and even water purity, the people of Brazil welcomed the students as if they were family. The people of the surrounding neighborhood by the students’ little inn began to recognize what the students were doing and accepted them with open arms.

“There’s something about a collectivistic society, something about Brazil, that is about taking you in and making you feel at home,” Gilmore said, “None of us knew exactly how this was going to go and we all walked away with this feeling of connection. We were connected with the people there.”

Upon coming back from the three week long trip, the students participated in a public talk on campus titled “Roots of Brazil” where they told of their experiences and applied everything they had learned to their lifestyle in America.

“The public talk made them refine their understanding of this experience by requiring them to present it to the public,” Gilmore said.

Dengah said the feeling of leaving was sad, especially for him because he had to stay a week longer than the rest of the group.

“Before there was always laughter and people joking and people going up and down the stairs and then it was just very quiet afterwards,” Dengah said, “The community members told me that they missed the students.”

The empty feeling was mutual among the students, especially since many of them had created such great relationships with the families in Brazil.

“Brazil is such a beautiful, beautiful place full of beautiful people that have so much to teach us even if they do have racism and all these issues with class,” Hughes said, “I was able to find home while I was there and that made me feel so much more at peace.”

One of the students coined the phrase #morethanstudyabroad that became a popular expression among the group and throughout their social media platforms.

“Study abroad cultural experiences are a lot more planned, whereas ours was so organic,” Hughes said. “It wasn’t about being with another university or being in classroom, it was about getting to know the culture and the people as much as we could.”

—isabel.forinash@aggiemail.usu.edu

@imforinash