Center for Cultural Wisdom

College Semester Abroad Program in the Andes

Mission

We provide cross-cultural immersive experiences that cultivate global peace and environmental stewardship while assisting in the preservation of indigenous cultures and wisdom.

We are currently submitting all materials for accreditation and grant funding. Our goal is to launch in the summer of 2025.

Bridging Worlds Between Cultures

Indigenous Communities

We assist in the preservation and dissemination of teachings hundreds to thousands of years old in the fields of medicine, meteorology, agriculture, and human connection to one another and the earth that is home to all of life as we know it. We also support annual infrastructure and cultural preservation projects, assisting in the protection of these vital communities.

Students

We prepare leaders of tomorrow by increasing their cultural sensitivity, empathy, and abilities to form life-enhancing relationships with other human and natural communities around the globe, leading to an increase in peaceful global interactions, and strategic collaborative solutions to planetary environmental challenges.

Semester Classes

Cultural Practices of the

Medicina Andina

This course offers an immersive experience into a cultural exploration of healing practices of the Andean medicine culture. Attention will be given to how the relationship with plants and their healing gifts are honored and cultivated. It explores the practice of working with plants as an interconnected and sacred life form as teacher, guide, and medicine.

Cosmology of the Andean Mountain Culture

This course explores the Indigenous cultural practices of the Andean spiritual practitioner, or Paqo, as they relate to the Cosmology of the Andes. Students will experience an immersion into a culture whose relationships, music, textiles, constructed sites, and even their relationship with the stars express a worldview of reciprocity and equilibrium with a community of living beings.

Mindfulness & Implications for Cultural Competence

This humanistic inquiry course examines what it means to exercise cultural sensitivity through the lens of mindful awareness. We will examine how thoughts, perceptions, and emotions impact the students' physiological state, behaviors, and actions in response to an experience vastly different from their culture of origin.

Bridging Worlds Between Cultures

Cultural Immersion

The Center for Cultural Wisdom works with Indigenous communities to provide immersive experiences. The lead indigenous instructors have extensive training and experience in providing cultural education in various languages. The baccalaureate-level curriculum in humanistic studies meets general elective requirements for most majors at many different universities. The credits are transferrable back to a student's home institution.