Description

Experience the critical environmental and social issues affecting one of the world’s most diverse ecological systems.

This program provides students an immersive opportunity to study tropical ecology up close in one of the world’s most diverse wildlife and plant environments. Topics of study include: tropical forest ecology; marine and wetland ecology; community resource conservation; indigenous resource use; human-natural resource interface; and the Panamanian environmental movement. Learn more about the program’s coursework.

Engage in seven weeks of field study. Study at world-renowned research institutions.
The program includes courses at the highly regarded Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Bocas del Toro and Barro Colorado Island and at EARTH University in Costa Rica, the foremost sustainable agricultural college in the hemisphere.

Interact with NGO leaders, subsistence communities, and indigenous groups.
Students meet with NGO activists and local community members, including subsistence farmers, to gain an in-depth understanding of how issues related to development and conservation affect lives and livelihoods within local communities. Excursions include visiting coastal fishing communities, a sustainable coffee farm in La Amistad International Park buffer zone, an organic agroforestry chocolate farm, and an industrial banana plantation. Learn more about the program’s excursions.

Learn or improve existing skills in Spanish through language study and homestays with Panamanian families.
Language instruction, conducted in small group formats, is provided at beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels. Homestays with host families in both urban and rural settings give students a rare, personal experience of the country, its cultures, and livelihoods. By living with local families in rural mountain villages, coastal communities, and lowland areas, students learn about subsistence living and conservation in central Panama through firsthand experience. Learn more about the program’s homestays.

Discover the advantages to studying in Panama.
Panama has long been known as "the crossroads of the world," linking not only North and South America but also the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The country has eight unique indigenous groups, a strong Afro-Caribbean cultural influence, a Caribbean archipelago comparable to the Galapagos Islands, more bird species than are found in all of North America, and the last great roadless wilderness in Central America.