In its third post-pandemic year, Menlo MTerm now offers the largest selection of trips in the program’s history, with new study abroad locations in Malaysia and Peru and a new Lake Superior Borderlands option this spring.
Two trips were removed from last year’s offerings: Cambodia and Northern Arizona. Global Programs Director Peter Brown cited risk management, alongside other factors, as the most important reason for the removal of the Cambodia Abroad trip and Northern Arizona Borderlands trip.
In Cambodia, the homestays were six hours away from a hospital. “We were on an island in the Mekong River,” Brown said. “And as it turned out, we had a need for that hospital.”
Brown also said that many students who did a homestay in Cambodia found it difficult to connect with their host families due to the language barrier. Additionally, there was a logistical challenge: students’ homestays were spread out on the island, which required them to walk long distances to get to the meeting point and took away time from bonding with their homestay families.
This language barrier differed from other Abroad trips where many locals spoke English or Spanish, making it easier for students and faculty to communicate. Brown considers homestays to be a vital part of cultural immersion in Abroad.
Removing Northern Arizona was partially due to growing concerns about crime, safety and other issues related to the fentanyl epidemic. Students and faculty did not encounter fentanyl-related issues last year, but Brown is concerned that the epidemic is a growing problem on the reservation. “It was also a really tough trip [for] our kids and our faculty. That’s not the main reason we left, because we do a lot of tough things,” Brown added. “I think ideally we would like to have them go to a place where they get to have more interactions with more people.”
The new trip to Malaysia was inspired by science teacher Tanya Buxton — who will be leading the trip alongside history teacher Sabahat Adil — according to Brown.
Two years ago, Buxton took a sabbatical from Menlo and lived in Malaysia, where she traveled the country and immersed herself in Malaysian culture. “From the get-go, I envisioned taking a group of Menlo students to this fascinating part of the world. […] The trip is all planned around contacts and friends that I made while I was living there,” she wrote in an email to The Coat of Arms. “I also look forward to introducing the students to the wonderful people I met when I lived there.”
During the three-week trip, students will work in the rainforest of Taman Negara National Park, which will include environmental learning, biodiversity surveys and working with an indigenous population for community engagement projects. The group will be in homestays with Malay families who live near the rainforest. Additionally, the group will spend time and have some activities with an indigenous community outside of the rainforest. “These could include transcribing traditional lore that is being lost to modernity, tutoring and help with publicity [of ecotourism] via social media,” Brown wrote in an email to The Coat of Arms.
The trip to Peru will be Menlo Abroad’s first venture to South America. It will be led by math teacher Yu-Loung Chang and Latin and English teacher Tom Garvey. The trip will begin in Cusco and settle in Zurite in the Andean Highlands. Students will also have the opportunity to visit Machu Picchu and its surrounding towns of Aguas Calientes and Ollantaytambo. Brown said that regional diversity was important for the Abroad program.
For their community engagement project, students will help to survey local populations about water use, restore a community garden and map the canals in the region, according to Brown.
This trip was found through a connection that Director of Sustainability and science teacher Chrissy Orangio had with an organization in Ecuador. Brown visited Ecuador in 2023 with the intention of scouting out an MTerm location there, but did not follow up on it due to Ecuador’s political instability. Brown said that they then looked into the sister organization in Peru.
History teacher Miles Bennett-Smith and head librarian Brittney Otero will be leading the new Borderlands trip to Lake Superior. This trip is offered in association with educational travel organization Where There Be Dragons. Similar to the discontinued Borderlands trip to Northern Arizona, the focus of the Lake Superior trip will be indigeneity. However, on the Lake Superior trip, students will learn about the Ojibwe people, also known as the Chippewa. “They have kind of a unique history and unique relationship with the U.S. government,” Brown said. “They also have a quite extensive presence in that area that extends up to Canada.”
The Ojibwe signed many treaties in the 19th century that ceded a large amount of land to the U.S. government but retained their hunting and fishing rights on the land. As a result, they were not forcibly removed from the Great Lakes, though they have had ongoing conflicts over treaty rights, which students will learn about.
The Ojibwe also live in a very different setting than the Diné on the Navajo Reservation in Northern Arizona, and the trip will cover a wider range of indigenous perspectives in comparison to the Northern Arizona trip.
Students will stay at Potter’s Farm in Washburn, Wis. and will visit places where they will learn about Ojibwe history and culture, as well as farming and conservation efforts. Brown said that he looked for trips that would provide meaningful, unique experiences. “Lake Superior was one of several options I explored through various channels and tips starting last summer,” Brown said. “Miles Bennett-Smith and I traveled to Lake Superior last fall to scope it out further and to visit with key people that the group will eventually meet.”
Brown emphasized Menlo’s willingness to have students learn from their environments and have transformative experiences in the world. “And I think that’s a wonderful aspect of our school, because these programs aren’t cheap, but I think they’re so worthwhile,” Brown said. “So our school is fully behind transformative travel experiences in the field, especially in the international theater.”
