The Latin American Studies program offers students several opportunities to study abroad in Ecuador or Brazil. Students who participate can earn their TEFL in Cuenca, Ecuador or study at the Tropical Disease Institute in Ecuador. The opportunity to study in Brazil allows students to spend five weeks in the country to learn Portuguese and study the culture. All programs are offered during the summer through the Office of Education Abroad.

Please note: to study in Florianopolis, Brazil during summer 2011, applications are due to the Office of Education Abroad on March 25. For more information and to find the proper forms please click the above link.

If you internship will be overseas, be sure to complete the Education Abroad documents. Please visit  http://www.internationalstudies.ohio.edu/student-info/internships.html.

Scholarships and grants

Scholarships and grants are available for Study Abroad and Research Abroad. Below are some suggestions for these resources.

Student Enhancement Awards
The Student Enhancement Award is a competitive award to support undergraduate, graduate, and medical student research, scholarship, and creative activities. Awards of up to $6,000 support research and travel for a student to attend a professional meeting to present results. For complete information and guidelines, please visit: http://www.ohio.edu/research/sea.cfm.
 
Education Abroad Scholarship
For more information, visit http://www.ohio.edu/educationabroad/Students/scholarship.htm.
Please note that there are also travel grants available for international students.

LAS Travel Grant
Please see the director of LAS for more information

Georgia Alexander spent the summer volunteering with an organization called Fundación Rehab. The organization is a Christian based group that dedicates time to help rehabilitate victims of the sex industry. The organization offers counseling, English lessons, and skills training in cooking, sewing, computer technology. Also, Fundación Rehab offers free day care for the women. The majority of my time was spent in the nursery. Each day, I would spend as much as 6 hours in the nursery, playing games, working on arts and crafts. For the second half of my stay in Costa Rica, I worked with two other graduate students writing grants for the organization to receive more funding. Specifically, the funding was planned for the organization's goal of opening up four more centers in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Chile, and Dominican Republic.

Christina Stanek studied abroad program in Florianópolis, Brazil. She studied at a university with Brazilian linguistics professors, and after the five weeks of intense instruction.

"I would say that these expected language learning goals were met. However, the best things that I got out of this program were the things that I learned that I did not expect to."

Click here for Christina's study abroad experience.

These are a few of the photos that I took over the 2 months that I spent in Brazil this past summer. The photos were taken in Florianopolis, Foz da Iguacu, and Belo Horizonte. The photos were part of my experiences on a study abroad and getting to know Brazilian culture.  I was not able to capture every moment on film, but these photos show the diversity in the types of experiences that I had and show the diversity of landscape and people.

Luísa Campos studied abroad to Loja, Ecuador this summer as part of the Tropical Disease Research Program. The program offers students the opportunity to provide help to low income communities that face Chagas.

Click here for Luisa's experience.

Tracy Navarro spent her summer participating in an internship and to conduct thesis research, which took place over the span of two months in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. The site in which she worked was Akumal, Quintana Roo, just 90 miles south of Cancun.

Click here for Tracy's internship experience.