Pura vida

January 11, 2024

Reflections on 15 years of the Costa Rica Study Abroad course

The Xavier winter program that takes students to Costa Rica for an experiential biology course has operated for 15 trips. We had a 2-year break due to interruptions of COVID but otherwise have gone every year since winter 2007-2008. The opportunity was originally brought to the Biology department by a local Cincinnati outdoor adventure company run by the Morgan family. Gary Morgan and his brothers are from a pioneering family in the outdoor recreation business. They operate local canoe liveries and campgrounds. The Morgans also owned a property in Costa Rica on the Osa Peninsula and offered to host a Xavier trip during winter break of 2007-2008. My colleague Brent Blair and I jumped at the chance to start a Tropical Ecology class. Brent has expertise in tropical plant ecology and I have expertise and interest in birds. We discovered there was enough interest among our students and brought 16 students to the Osa for a wonderful inaugural trip. The property itself was spectacular with monkeys, frogs, crabs, and of course so many tropical birds and plants! And the surrounding area of the Osa and Golfo Dulce was amazing: dolphins, whales, mangroves, and so much more. We visited Finca Kobo, a nearby chocolate farm. What a great experience for everyone involved!

Since that first memorable trip we have expanded what we can do in Costa Rica through a series of fortunate connections. Serendipitously, in 2008 we were contacted by a colleague of Dr. Blair from their days as graduate students doing research in Nicaragua. Paul Foster had just developed an ecological reserve on the other side of Costa Rica with accommodations for about 20 people on a 700+ acre property full of rainforest in various stages of recovering from being used for selective logging and cattle ranching. I could not have imagined a more perfect setting to bring Xavier students. Bijagual Ecological Reserve was a tremendous addition to the trip beginning in 2009-2010. And it remains the centerpiece of the trip now.

More serendipity
I have a friend from high school who happens to be an emergency room doctor in San Jose. I try to visit with him each year if our schedules allow. (I even brought a sick student to him one year.) He put me in touch with Costa Rican guides and bus drivers because his brother was in the business. From that relationship I eventually met and teamed up with Grevin Alfaro (the best bus driver in Costa Rica) and Andres Quiros (an amazing naturalist and wildlife photographer). This local expertise allowed us to add a short stay in the high mountains that exposes the students to a broader range of terrestrial ecosystems in the tropics.

Unfortunately, the Morgans sold their beautiful property in 2020 so we have had to replace it with a similar place on the other side of the Golfo Dulce. But we have visited the same chocolate farm every trip! It’s always fun for me to see Alex and Jutta and see what improvements they have made to the farm.

This fortunate emergence and evolution of Xavier’s Costa Rica Study Abroad trip has formed a truly unique program that allows our students an intimate experience in the rainforests and marine ecosystems in the tropics. It has been built into a wonderful experiential learning opportunity through relationships with our friends and colleagues in Costa Rica.

The study abroad courses are open to all majors. We offer a version for the non-science major that satisfies a Natural Science Core elective as well as upper-level elective for our majors. Each trip has had some students enrolled in each class. More information can be found at the website: www.xaviercostarica.org.

Pura Vida,
Dr. George Farnsworth
Associate Professor, Biology