Welcome to UGalapagos Fall

UGalapagos is a unique program that couples small, intensive courses with a deep immersion in a foreign culture.  It surpasses programs offered by others that are usually confined to cruise ships with only episodic contact with island flora, fauna and people.  In UGalapagos, you live with families and engage in community service activities defined by the community.  The immersion in a foreign culture is unusually deep and effective, since  the first course in each term is taught by an anthropologist who studies the Galapagoan people.  She rigorously places you in the Galapagoan cultural, political and social context. You learn about and interact with Galapagoan farmers, fishers, shopkeepers, pioneering residents of the islands and their descendents. 

The UGalapagos program takes place in a unique environment, the Galapagos islands, where the flora, fauna and people are emblematic of biological and social processes that act universally, but are most evident in this harsh environment that has molded living beings.  The people are subject to third-world pressures and politics and the demands of an environment that has limited resources, most of which need to be imported.  The islands’ severe natural selection pressures have produced emblematic species that are both intriguing and accessible.  The reptiles and birds ignore humans:  You can stand within six feet of them and watch as they live their lives, feeding, mating, raising their young.  You can easily discriminate and study ecosystems, from a mangrove fringe to a low arid zone of desert-like plants, an intermediate zone of arid forests and at higher elevations humid zones of tropical grasslands and forests.  This accessibility enhances learning, so that lectures merge directly into field work and back to analysis, assessment and writing.  The Galapagos is an open laboratory for critical thinking.

UGalapagos offers a full term of courses that are taught sequentially.  It is centered in the Isabela Oceanographic Institute on Isla Isabela, the largest Galapagos island, in the small community (<3000 people) of Puerto Villamil.  Spring terms focus on the marine environment; Fall terms focus on terrestrial ecosystems; Summer terms focus on public health internships.  The classes, while demanding, leave students time for socializing, surfing and snorkeling with seals, marine iguanas,  diving birds and penguins.