Redlands students will spend May exploring Japanese gardens, considering expressions of gender and sexuality in India and testing their leadership skills on a month-long camping trip.

From snorkeling in Palau to studying medial ethics in South Africa, from exploring ecology in Australia to walking in Wales, students are embarking on adventures and explorations during their May Term.

Many of the classes offered during this academic session that’s designed to allow students to do in-depth work in one course include going abroad or to destinations throughout the country. Travel, classroom instruction and community service are often combined.

 “May Term is exciting because it gives our faculty an opportunity to work with a small group of students in an intensive environment, doing something they just couldn’t do on campus,” explained Sara Falkenstein, director of the university’s study abroad program.

“It’s a chance for our students to see, touch and experience what they would normally just see in a book or discuss in a classroom,” she said.

May Term courses for 2008 include:

• Studying sustainable development and environmental threats in the islands of Palau, a scenic location popular for its diving
• In Rwanda, learning about the country’s genocide, its challenges with sustainable development and helping a rural village to develop a sustainable water supply infrastructure
• An outdoor adventure course, where students will develop leadership
  and communication skills on the road in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest while they backpack, rock climb and kayak
• An archaeology class, where students will do work on a Hopi 
  reservation in Arizona, learning to identify ceramics from
  different time periods and regions
• An English and women’s studies class, where students will travel to India to observe ways that sexuality and gender can collide with religious traditions
• A philosophy class where students will examine ethical questions raised by the AIDS crisis in southern Africa, Swaizland and do relief work
• The Japan and Its Gardens course, where students will explore a Japanese garden and consider the difference that the gardens make in the lives of Japanese people
• An Armenian and Turkish literature class, where students will stay at the American University of Armenia and receive training in Armenian, while also providing English tutoring to the community
• A tour of Stratford and London, England, to take in live theatrical performances of Shakespeare’s works and explore his world during the Elizabethan Golden Age
• Discovering Ecuadorian culture; exploring the unique ecology of Australia and New Zealand
• At the university’s campus in Salzburg, Austria, the study of human biology, and of Christian history
• Exploring human-animal ethics and animal care at the nation’s largest no-kill sanctuary in Utah
• A study in San Francisco of the history, theory and practice of the “Slow Food” movement and its philosophy of a “good, clean and fair” food system
• A journey to San Diego to explore scientific authority through fieldwork in local communities involved in climate science and climate change.