By Raul Reis
Picture yourself on a beautiful Brazilian island. The sun warms your body on this cool morning, as waves gently crash at your feet.
The lush, green mountains and hills behind you remind you of Hawaii, but the unmistakable musicality of the Portuguese language, spoken softly by a young couple strolling by, doesn’t let you forget that you’re now in Florianópolis, a mid-size state capital that dubs as Brazil’s surfing mecca.
Thanks to a relatively new study abroad program, almost 70 CSULB students have had the chance to take a summer course in Brazil, turning that idyllic-sounding experience into a reality—at least for two or three weeks of their lives.
I started taking CSULB students to Brazil in 2002, as part of a summer course called Global News Media (GNM). I envisioned this as a short-term trip that would offer students a glimpse at a different society, culture, and media system. What I didn’t anticipate was the impact this class would have on the students who have taken these cultural journeys with me.
Since I was born and raised in Brazil and started there as a professional journalist, it made sense to me to take students to a country that I know well, and to expose them to a media system that I knew from the inside. It also made complete sense to turn GNM into this study abroad summer course. GNM is a general education capstone class that discusses how globalization is affecting the mass media, and compares the diverse media systems in the world.
What better way to learn about globalization and to compare different media systems than by visiting a South American country such as Brazil, a vibrant society with a dynamic mass media, and by being exposed first hand to its culture, language, media and people?
Creating and maintaining a new study abroad program involves an incredible amount of paperwork, planning, and countless hours of extra work. Hotels and tickets have to be booked, permissions and visas have to be obtained, newsroom visits have to be scheduled, academic and professional contacts have to be arranged.
Campus presentations, brown bag sessions, classroom visits and slide shows have to be used to recruit new CSULB students. However, every second spent doing all this extra work is worth it when we finally get there.
The great thing about students is that they only need 24 hours to recover from jet lag and the hassles of a long flight (not the case for me, I’m afraid). Once we board the bus and start exploring the city of Florianópolis, the university campus, and other cultural sites, they can barely contain their excitement.
That excitement multiplies by a hundred when our Long Beach students meet their counterparts in Brazil. As students fumble in three languages—Portuguese, English and Spanish—it becomes clear right away that they are about to have the time of their lives. It never fails: by the end of the first Monday, cell phone numbers and emails have been exchanged, pizza dinners have been arranged, and students are off to the hotel with a sense of having overcome their own shyness and other real or imagined limitations.
What amazes me the most is that more than half of the CSULB students had never been out of California, let alone the U.S., before our trip There are always a few savvy travelers, who have been to Asia or Europe before, or a handful who have been to Mexico or Canada. For the vast majority, however, this is their first trip out of the country.
Students tell me their study abroad in Brazil is a life-changing experience. The confident, outgoing students say the trip showed them how important it is to understand cultural differences and appreciate diversity, or that Brazil solidified their views on the importance of traveling and experiencing new societies and making new friends.
The shy, reserved students are the ones who experience the most radical transformations. I have seen it happen many times—all of a sudden, they might realize that their Spanish fluency makes them a great asset and friend to have around; or that they blend in with the Brazilians better than they do with classmates at home; or that they were much braver and street-smarter than they realized.
It is also fun to watch new friendships and even lifelong relationships develop among CSULB students, and between the Brazilian and U.S. student groups. As we visit Brazilian daily newspapers and television stations, even some journalism majors are surprised to see how busy and interesting a “real” newsroom can be.
It is also interesting for them to witness how issues that we discuss in class, such as the pervasive influence of American music and movies on other cultures, play out in Brazilian society and daily life.
My goal is to take many more students on these study abroad trips. In that regard, one of the priorities for upcoming summers will be raising scholarship funds that will open the doors to a whole segment of our student population—our many students who either cannot afford the trip, or have to work hard during the summer to save money for the fall and spring.
