Students Spend Spring Break Learning in Belize and Japan

While spring break may have brought a pause to activity on campus, students participating in NMH travel programs took their learning to new horizons. Some ventured off on an immersive trip to Japan to learn about the country’s traditional art forms and culture. Another group studied the healthcare system in Belize while volunteering at local clinics and hospitals. 

Both trips gave students a chance to apply their academic studies to real-world situations, learn more from professionals in their fields of interest, and immerse themselves in the cultural heritage of their host countries.

Participants on both March break trips were selected through application, said Andrea Sell, assistant dean of faculty, who oversees NMH travel programs. “This isn’t a vacation,” Sell noted. “Even for those students who have had an opportunity to travel with their families, this is a completely different experience. We do a lot of hands-on workshops, meeting with experts on the field. Whether that's service or just activities that they're doing, we're really trying to look at these trips through a lens that’s authentic, meaningful, and culturally responsive.”

Journeys Through Japan

Sell said that The trip to Japan was the brainchild of visual arts teacher YeJin Han, who modeled the NMH itinerary on her experiences in a similar program at the Rhode Island School of Design. Working with a Japanese tour guide program, Han and Visual Arts Department Chair Mona Seno led students through the cities of Kyoto and Osaka, visiting artists working in traditional Japanese media and stopping at cultural points of interest along the way.

“A lot of people travel, but not everyone has this sort of insider view of taking the art workshops,” said Seno. “Having lived in Japan, I was excited to see how the students saw the culture and what they took out of it.”

Students had the chance to see pottery-making in the shadow of iconic Kyoto architecture, send themselves postcards using traditional washi papermaking techniques, and learn about the art of wax-resist dyeing, or rocketsu, producing personalized apparel.

“This trip was an amazing introduction to Japan,” said Mac Hargrove ’26, adding that he appreciated the mix of educational programming and cultural exploration. 

“It struck the perfect balance of being able to learn in a structured curriculum, while still maintaining enough freedom to do what we wanted to do as students in smaller groups,” Hargrove said.

Inga Wooten-Forman ’25 was impressed by Japan’s public transportation system, as well as the emphasis on civility in public interactions. 

“I've never experienced such a developed and expansive train system,” Wooten-Forman said. “There is a huge emphasis on respect in Japanese culture as well. I feel like I've learned many habits that I'll continue now that I'm home.”

Hargrove echoed that sentiment, noting that the country’s approach to issues like sanitation and urban design inspired him to think about how similar conventions might benefit communities in the United States. 

“The trip showed me a different way of modern life that I think we can learn from,” he said. “The fantastic public transport system, cleanliness, and urban layout of their cities are big improvements from cities and suburbia in the U.S. When talking about change [at home], it’s critical that we examine other countries to see if we can 'borrow' any of their successes.”

Well-Being in Belize

The trip to Belize, meanwhile, has been a few years in the making, said Sell. For this excursion, NMH partnered with Global Public Services Academies, an international organization that connects high school students with healthcare providers in historically underserved regions to provide service learning opportunities.

“One of the things that we really liked about GPSA is their philosophy on service and how it aligns with our own,” Sell said. “Students did a lot of work around learning basic health theory [prior to the trip].”

That work included a winter cocurricular with trip co-leader and nurse Mary Reader and nurse practitioner Tiffany Doyle, both of whom work in NMH’s O'Connor Health and Wellness Center. The class focused on global health equity and responsible service, while teaching students skills like how to take a patient’s blood pressure, measure glucose levels, conduct visual acuity screenings, and interpret basic health measurements.

This training came in handy once they got to Belize and began working in the clinics, said Marco Villamil ’27.

“I was going in expecting to get a little bit of practice, maybe taking some blood pressure on some patients, but it was a lot more than that,” said Villamil. “I did a shift in radiology; I got to operate the X-ray machine and an EKG. It was really cool.”

That hands-on experience serving patients also offered insights into some of the challenges people in the region face to access healthcare, Mia Soriano ’27 said.

“The thing that surprised me the most was how some people were coming from so far away to the clinic,” she said. Some patients would drive for hours to receive basic medical care. “The clinic relies a lot on donations from around the world. They want to do so much [for patients], but they have limited resources.”

When they weren’t working, students took field trips to get a taste of the local culture, or spent time with their host families. Seeing the way the people of Belize interact with their environment — from the flora and fauna to the built infrastructure — offered an interesting contrast to American life, said Soriano, and an appreciation of the privileges students enjoy at NMH.

“Driving from the airport to our home stay, we passed through some areas where essentially all of the houses were pretty roughly pieced together, not something that we would really see around this area,” she recalled. “The only place that had AC was in the lab of the clinic. It was very eye-opening, because it was my first time being in that type of environment.

“The experience of volunteering somewhere and seeing a completely different culture and social norms — to be completely immersed in something like that — you would not be able to get the same experience just reading about it or speaking to someone.”

Lessons Learned

One unifying theme across both trips was the new bonds students formed with classmates.

“Over the trip, I got really close to all of them — that was nice, just to be able to connect more with the kids here,” Soriano said.

For some students, their experiences abroad will shape their academic interests moving forward.

“I'm currently taking Ceramics II, and in one of my next projects, I hope to incorporate some of the imagery I saw in Japan,” Wooten-Forman said. “Going on the trip also showed me the importance of fluency in several languages. It reminded me of my own hope to achieve fluency in Spanish, which I will work toward this summer.”

“I've been interested in medicine, but my learning to that point was sort of memorizing different anatomy terms and the like,” said Villamil. “Getting to actually apply it with real people, hearing these people's stories and then using my knowledge to help screen for hypertension, diabetes, whatever — being able to help, even if it's in a small way, … was really rewarding.”

Those kinds of experiences are exactly what NMH hopes to see from its travel programs, said Sell.

“For all of our programs, top of the of the evaluation process is, ‘How is this fulfilling our mission and helping students to develop their empathy and humanity?’” Sell said. “We're thoughtful about the program we're developing, but sometimes students take away insights that we never would have expected, which is just proof that it’s working.”

Photos courtesy of YeJin Han and David Reeder. See more photos and videos from the trips to Japan and Belize on Instagram.