Chile

Chile: UC students in Chile teach, study the environment, and work with NGOs

In and around Santiago UC students are teaching in public schools, working with abandoned children, studying pollution, and working with social service agencies. In the process, they are enhancing their academic edge for graduate school applications and pumping up their resumes in preparation for careers, all while getting UC credit. UC students are working in the arts, at banks, in the sciences, and with the likes of Amnesty International and Greenpeace through UC's Education Abroad Program (EAP).

“The internship experience is perhaps the most positive element of the academic program,” according to Gwen Kirkpatrick, UCB Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and currently Director of the EAP Study Center in Santiago, Chile. Kirkpatrick has been instrumental in helping to increase internship possibilities. “In general, students who undertook internships felt much more united to Chilean society and had a real sense of achievement in completing their projects. I was impressed with their enterprise and their commitment,” Kirkpatrick said.

One of the newer internships offered this past year is through La Morada, an NGO known for its work with women's issues. Erica Frantz, a UCSB political science and English major worked with La Morada and a local professor to examine the status of the rights of women in Chile.

“I have gotten to interview people from the Minister of Education and the National Service for Women. I have learned so much... about the feminist movement in Chile, and also about how a woman’s-rights NGO functions,” Frantz said.

Frantz believes the work she did in Chile will help her with her applications to grad school. "I am applying to grad school next year for literature, but on the side want to continue in the same field of work."

In future years EAP will focus on developing internship opportunities with business, in spite of high unemployment and recession conditions in Chile.

How may internships influence post-EAP study at UC?

Brenda Muñoz (UCSB, Sociology and Women's Studies) believes her work in Chile will make her a better candidate for grad school. She is working with a non-profit organization and conducting field research to assess the role of working women. She explains that how the growing Chilean economy has increased the importance of women's work to the point where Chilean families can no longer depend on one person's income. Munoz is studying how women view their jobs, whether they see it as an option or an obligation. "I picked this project," she said, "because I think that it is important to document the experiences of women in the workforce of a patriarchal society that has traditionally subjected them to the private sphere." Munoz will present the results of her research at a meeting of the American Sociological Association after her return to UC.

Viviana Acevedo Bolton, a UCB environmental engineering student, will also present her work after her return to UC. She is a member of a research group that has been invited to an international combustion symposium in Edinburgh, Scotland. Bolton, who is a member of a UC Berkeley multicultural engineering program, is studying the affects of indoor pollution due to the gas range in Chile. Upon returning to Berkeley will share the results of her research with the engineering group.