I loved everything about the program. I may have not loved it at the time because it pushed me out of my comfort zone but I have no regrets leaving Tanzania.

The experience as a whole was fascinating, interesting, and informative. The program itself is full of energy and excitement. I would recommend this program to anyone wanting to travel to East Africa who is interested in both science and social aspects of the area.

The program definitely aims more on the wildlife conservation side- with safaris into all the different parks. There is room to learn as much social science as one wants, but they would focus on that more during the ISP time.
Location is great... and SAFE. We travel all over and although we may be camping with lions nearby it is such a cool experience.
The locals are awesome and so nice, only wanting you to be healthy and happy. Make the most out of any person you meet and engage in conversations with them.
The ISP take advantage and do something different or something you've always wanted...
After the program I decided to volunteer at an orphanage and it was the icing to the cake.

This program gives you a taste of everything. Every week is structured differently, giving the participant a well-rounded and full experience! The courses you take are completely subversive, when you are learning about a topic you are standing in the middle of the topic at hand. You get to experience a wide variety of locations throughout Tanzania. Local interactions occur everyday whether it be your home stay family, people on the street, or safari camp crews.

The field based format of the program creative a more hands on learning experience, which was so much more interesting than sitting in a classroom. Tanzania is such a welcoming and beautiful country. Locals are friendly and helpful. I had the best time on all of the excursions.

The program overall was amazing. You will see TONS of animals and some of the most beautiful places in the world. The ISP period is awesome and for me was the period I learned the most. Traveling on this program was great and the best part about it. You learn a lot from traveling and a lot about yourself, perspectives on culture, conservation in Tanzania. I would've preferred for the academics to be a little harder and more structured. As I had said prep for isp and the isp period were great. Realize for me I came on the program knowing since I was younger that i wanted to work in conservation and I was 1/3 who wanted to work with animals so you don't always have the attention from the students you are going to want. The Maasai home stay was my favorite part and a huge learning experience.

Tanzania is an amazing place and the SIT program allows you to have a true cultural immersion experience. It is a valuable life earning experience that you can't get from a book or some class. Don't worry about the classes or grades, its not about that. Just go and be apart of what is happening. Talking to the locals is easy and the language is extremely easy to get the hang of. When in doubt add an i to the english word and say "safi sana" a lot.

The courses were awesome, definitely recommended for someone who (like me) has a love for wildlife conservation and would enjoy a field study learning type setting!Tanzania has a country is beautiful, but don't think that you won't see poverty...you will! It truly is eye-opening. And as far as the locals go. The program does a great job in making sure you learn the necessary language skills in the first few weeks so you feel comfortable interacting with Tanzanians and traveling around the country or ordering food at a restaurant! Tanzanians see white people, "mzungu" as they would say, as promise. So don't be alarmed if they ask you for money or assume that you have alot of it for that matter! The set up of the program though was something that has been in the works for 17 years. The A.D. is AWESOME and he really set the program up well. I don't want to spoil it though!

There was a stronger emphasis on Political Ecology, which was fine, but I did long for a stronger biology focus. Tanzania is a country and is home to cultures and norms drastically different to our own, so you have to be able to throw yourself into new and possibly frustrating new environments and continue on.

The orientation the first weekend was really helpful. Mostly, to get our body clocks acclimated but also to ask questions and begin to learn about the culture in the comfort of just ourselves without being thrown into the big city right away. All of the excursions were amazing. From national parks to mountains, we were always learning something cool! We went to some really awesome places and had the ability to choose from almost anywhere to conduct our final independent study project as well.

From someone who LOVES wildlife conservation, I LOVED this whole semester! Our courses were, "Wildlife Conservation", "Political Ecology", "Environmental Research Methods and Ethics", as well as a "Kiswahili Language Course". The language course was necessary to travel on our own within the country. We met another group of study abroad students who didn't learn any Kiswahili and they expressed that they hated going out and interacting with the locals because they just seem like tourists who only speak english. It gave us an upper hand to be able to speak the language there, we couldn't get ripped off, etc. I really enjoyed the field study learning. It was a nice change up from the classroom learning I had been used to most of my life. This gave us a chance to see, observe and experience that in which we were learning about! The preparation for the ISP took almost all semester, but it gave me incredible insight as to how to form a research question, find methods, etc. That was my favorite part of the trip because I got to study what I was truly passionate about...it didn't even feel like school. Baba Jack, my academic director/teacher, was awesome. We would have lectures after having a reading assigned and hand in 1-page responses to him. He was very thorough with his reading and responses on our papers which I had missed about my high school teachers. College teachers don't often leave comments on your work anymore, it was nice to get some feedback from him.

My academic experience is varied. While I studied baboons for the month of April and had an experience I never could have and conducted a study that may help shape my path in life, the academics were not very rigorous but were nice and challenging as well. The teaching was very opportunistic if unrelated to the direct readings or issue at had. Often if you want a question to be addressed you have to ask and it might be asked in a one-on-one conversation. There were no classrooms, besides kiswahili lessons which were wonderful with wonderful TZ women teachers, so it was a learning environment quite different to the usual of America.

My ISP was my favorite! I chose a topic I wanted to focus on: Elephants and devised a research question and setting over and over again until I was happy with it. I chose to study the African Elephant Migratory Corridor and analyze the human wildlife conflict in the village of Esilalei. This village was inbetween Tarangire National Park and Lake Manyara National Park, bordering a semi-protected area, Manyara Ranch. We interviewed villagers for 4-5 days before beginning to track! The tracking was fun! Elephants are my passion, so looking for elephant dung, footprints and scratch marks on trees was super enjoyable! The final paper, 30-35 pages long after 3 weeks of research and 1 week of writing, came out to be pretty sweet. I am so incredibly proud of it. My paper was also 1 of 3 from our group's to be chosen to be posted online!

I am particularly proud of my study of communicative behaviors of Olive Baboons. I spent a month conducting a behavioral study on these nonhuman primates. Spending hours everyday with them, following them, being so near to them, and learning about and from them. It was amazing and I would not have been able to study this wild animals if it weren't for this program.