A group of Elizabethtown College students and faculty embarked on a 10-day trip to The Gambia in January 2023, where they immersed themselves in a new culture and learned about contemporary issues with the faculty of the University of The Gambia (UTG) and other community leaders.
Professor of Engineering & Physics Dr. Kurt DeGoede, along with Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies Naomi Kraenbring ’98 and seniors Lauren Comly ’23 and Marc Ramson ’23, spent their time at the Mennonite Educational & Horticultural Development Associates (MEHDA) farm and training facility in the Pirang Village. As part of the Mennonite Churches of The Gambia, MEDHA is a Christian NGO whose efforts focus on initiatives like community crop gardening, child education, adult literacy, health & nutrition, and family care.
“The trip mostly allows us a window into another world, and we can begin to understand a culture and way of life completely different from our experience in the U.S.,” DeGoede said. “Students are impacted by the joy and generosity of the Gambian people and are forced to wrestle with the balance of needs and wants in their own lives.”
After spending the 2010-11 academic year as a visiting professor of physics at UTG, DeGoede started this trip to provide Etown students with an opportunity to visit West Africa without committing to an entire semester away. This trip supports students of all majors working on a capstone or Honors in the Discipline project that would benefit from a site visit to a developing nation.
The College also has a collaborative partnership with UTG to tackle challenging societal problems in West Africa through engineering.
While in The Gambia, the group led a climate action simulation for students at the GREAT Institute (Gaining Research Experience in Africa for Tomorrow). The climate simulation, developed at MIT Sloan, is a role-playing game designed to help participants understand the dynamics of climate change and develop a feasible strategy to keep global temperature rise below 2◦C. Comly and Ramson were able to collaborate with over 20 UTG students and alumni that participated in the simulation.
“The climate stimulation was phenomenal,” Comly exclaimed. “I was able to interact with some of the students from the GREAT Institute, and I was able to experience what climate change means to the Gambian people. They were upfront with the discussion and how there was hope to improve their practices.”
As an Engineering major with minors in Interfaith Leadership Studies and Physics, Comly was able to apply various aspects of the interdisciplinary education she received at Etown while in The Gambia.
“On the engineering side, my education at Etown has always incorporated real-life scenarios into our classes,” Comly said. “From the religious/interfaith dialogue side of my Interfaith Leadership Studies minor, my classes at Etown have done a phenomenal job at teaching me to listen and to take in different cultures. This prepared me to converse with the Iman of the local village and local people openly but respectfully about their faith.”
DeGoede is looking forward to offering the trip more broadly again starting in January 2025. He is also working with Kraenbring and exploring shifting the trip to a Core Curriculum offering that would include a four-credit course.
