FGCU Students Participate in Ethnographic Research Expedition in Honduras
5/19/2005

FORT MYERS, FL - For a second year, Florida Gulf Coast University students participate in the FGCU Ethnographic Research Expedition on Roatán Island, Honduras, June 19 through July 24 as part of the Meftah International Internship Program.

FGCU operates the research expedition on the largest and most developed of the three main Bay Islands off the northern coast of Honduras in the Western Caribbean Sea. With three centuries of interaction between England, Spain, Africa and the Americas, Roatán is a cultural crossroad and provides students an ideal setting in which to collect and share information, explore, and grow through anthropology.

The FGCU Ethnographic Research Expedition in Roatán is a three-year program launched last year to coincide with a $60,000 gift from the Meftah Scholarship Foundation of Naples. The gift funded the internship program to help FGCU students learn, work and travel abroad. The program gives students hands-on learning and the opportunity to better understand another culture.

The six-week summer program provides up to nine credit hours of coursework taught by faculty in the FGCU anthropology program, who also conduct research on the island. This summer, students enrolled in three courses will learn about Roatán Island and the cultures of Latin America, and participate in an ongoing ethnographic study on changes in island foodways.

In addition, students take part in intensive Spanish language instruction, work under the supervision of faculty researchers to develop skills in anthropological research, and immerse themselves in the life ways of Roatán.

"The program is the most affordable international learning experience available at Florida Gulf Coast University," anthropology instructor Felicidad Noemi Creagan said.

Participating FGCU students become Meftah interns and receive partial scholarships to offset facility, logistics and program costs, and two students receive full scholarships. Following the expedition, scholarship students have the opportunity to present the product of their work at an academic conference.

According to the Library of Congress, "an ethnographic field collection is a multi-format, unpublished group of materials gathered and organized by a cultural researcher to document human life and traditions. Although each item in an ethnographic field collection may have individual value, it gains added significance when viewed in the context of the other materials gathered by the collector in interaction with the people and activities being documented."

For more information, media representatives should contact Creagan at (239) 590-7426.

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