In the past year, more than 60 students have traveled to 30 countries on six continents as part of Discourse Beyond Dartmouth, a program that helps students dig deeper into social issues in the broader world.
Projects and itineraries vary greatly. Each is designed by a student or group eager to explore places they would not otherwise be able to see, says Edward McKenna, director of civic engagement, expression and learning.
“Participants are inspired either by their academic coursework, personal interest, or both, and in many cases that hands-on experience is going to shape the rest of their lives,” he says.
Undergraduate and graduate students can apply for up to $5,000 in funding for up to two Discourse Fund opportunities while attending Dartmouth.
Reece Sharp ’28, from northern California, traveled to her parents’ homeland, Jamaica, to interview farmers reeling from the devastation of Hurricane Melissa, which made landfall on the island last October. Among those affected was her own grandfather, who produces ugli fruit, a natural hybrid first grown by the Sharp family in the 1930s in Clarendon, a parish in central Jamaica.
“I got this long message from my grandmother saying my grandpa was overwhelmed,” Sharp recalls. “The roof of the packing house came off. Trees came down. Sugar cane was waterlogged. I realized that the hurricane had affected many other farmers on the island, and I wanted to look into its impact on agriculture throughout Jamaica.”
During the month of January, Sharp braved nearly impassable roads to see the damage for herself and interview growers. In Black River, one of the most heavily hit communities, she talked to a farmer who grows peppers, practicing companion planting with bananas, among other crops, to maximize yields.
“All the greenhouses were completely torn down in the hurricane,” Sharp says. “He had to restart from seed. The water treatment plant that he used was completely flooded and the electronics were ruined, so he had to completely build back from the beginning.”
Jamaica’s signature export also suffered a severe blow, says Sharp. “It’s really sad to see how the sugar industry has been affected in Jamaica, not only by the hurricane and climate change, but also by globalization.”
Sharp is creating a website to present the findings of her Caribbean trip. And in March, she went on another trip funded by Discourse Beyond Dartmouth. With six other students and Randall Balmer, the John Phillips Professor in Religion, she visited landmarks in Alabama and Georgia to explore the role religion played in the civil rights movement.
Among the sites they visited were the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.; Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta; and President Jimmy Carter’s birthplace near Plains, Ga.
“Overall, our experience was truly transformative as we were able to explore countless museums and historic sites led by our professor, who added so much color, depth, and context to each story and location,” Sharp says.
Mary Ford ’26, who majors in quantitative science and Jewish studies, spent the break between fall and winter terms visiting towns where Nazi concentration camps still stand as monuments to brutality. She wanted to learn why and how Germans choose to live in communities where horrific events took place, and to understand why, in several of these locations, far-right political groups are gaining traction.
“I was interested in the dynamic between the towns and the memorials in response to this rightward swing and in the advocacy work being done by organizations like the Volksbund. What was I hearing, and what was I seeing, and what could I bring to the conversation?”
Volksbund, the German War Graves Commission, is a humanitarian nonprofit organization which works on behalf of the federal government, searching for and recovering war dead abroad, giving them a dignified burial, and caring for their graves.
Ford made gut-wrenching trips to several memorial sites, including Oranienberg, home to the Sachsenhausen camp, the Neuengamma network of camps in Hamburg, and Dachau, sometimes participating in discussion groups about atrocities committed long ago.
“Sachsenhausen is at the end of a residential street, and just down the road from the entrance of Dachau is a kindergarten,” Ford says. “I found it disturbing, because I could never imagine being raised here, or being an adult who has children here. But then, you have to step back and realize a few things about Germany.”
For example, she says, Germany has long faced a severe housing shortage. The homeownership rate is below 50 percent, and many Germans choose to remain living near their families.
“All of that requires you to kind of recalibrate how you’re entering these rooms, understanding that your presence as an American can sometimes be interpreted as an accusation,” says Ford. “You learn to be sensitive to how you’re asking your questions, and how much you’re asking at the start, when you’re first meeting someone, and walking into this place knowing, ‘I’m a visitor, I don’t live here. I don’t know the full story.’”
Even though Ford has read extensively about the Holocaust, she says, “It gets a lot more complicated when you’re sitting across the table from someone who’s lived in that town for 60, 70 years, or who has family who’s lived in that town, and remembers when the baker was the person who did deliveries to the camp and delivered the bread.”
To navigate emotional hills and valleys, Ford spoke openly and often with her host family, with whom she has grown close.
“My host mom turned to me one day and said, ‘You know, we talk about this all the time, about doing the right thing, and living in these communities, and doing this, and doing that.’ And she said, ‘I really hope I would have done the right thing.’”
Several other students have posted testimonials on the Discourse Beyond Dartmouth website, which also provides guidance for successful applications. Carter Anderson ’26 and Amol Bhingard ’28 took part in a legal research and education experience in Taiwan.
“This experience allowed us to gain an up-close and personal view of Taiwan’s legal nongovernmental organizations. Leaving Taiwan, Amol and I were equipped with a personal, nuanced understanding of how the mechanism of democracy is built and sustained through public advocacy, legal work, and NGOs working on the ground,” Anderson says.
Sophia Sims ’27 traveled to Kathmandu, Nepal, to attend the eighth annual Global South Coalition for Dignified Menstruation, “where we engaged with activists, researchers, and practitioners working to advance menstrual equity. I also had the opportunity to meet the author of a book I have studied across multiple classes, which made the experience especially meaningful,” she writes.
Fatma Al Arbawi ’27, who studied how health care in Guatemala could benefit from electronic medical records, wrote in a thank-you note to Discourse Beyond Dartmouth, “I’m currently working with doctors from the trip to turn an EMR system I built into an app for the medical NGO Humanity First…I truly am beyond grateful and will ensure this experience makes a positive impact for these patients.”
Meanwhile, Discourse Beyond Dartmouth continues to grow.
“With every conversation, every application, I’m just blown away by the spirit of the students who do this work, whether it’s in Brazil, or Togo, or Australia, or wherever they choose, exploring places they’ve never been, and engaging in meaningful activities and conversations,” says McKenna.
“It’s brave and really impressive.”
