The Farther the Better
by Brady Huggett

It changed me,” says Anna Haac, a sophomore at UNC-CH. She says it easily, as if it is something often on her mind.

What changed her was a semester abroad in Cape Town, South Africa, with the Burch Field Research Seminars (BFRS). Haac spent three months absorbing the city, the country, and parts of the continent.

“Getting to understand these people, to understand a different style of the world and how you are viewed by others—I think that is such a great experience,” Haac says. “It allowed me to put myself in the shoes of somebody who lives in South Africa and see it from their eyes. And you learn so much that way. I have never been a minority before. Walking down the street and having everyone turn and look at me because of the color of my skin was really an odd, odd experience for me.”

The Burch Programs include the Field Research Seminars, as well as the Fellows Program. Both are funded through an endowment from Lucius Burch, a 1963 graduate of UNC-CH. His idea was to subsidize research for undergraduates outside the classroom. The specifics for both parts were conceived by Robert Allen, professor of American Studies and now the chair of the Burch Faculty Advisory Committee. One undergraduate Fellow traveled to England, Spain, and Morocco to follow her grandmother’s footsteps through Europe when she was a dancer for British troops during World War II. She is writing the details of her grandmother’s life into a novel.

This is the sort of research that is mind-expanding, but often gets sniffed at when detailed on a grant application. (If grants for this type of research were easy to get, we’d all be traipsing through Europe and writing books.)

Both the Fellows Program and the BFRS provide a semester that affects lives of students, but the added aspect of the BFRS is that it combines the work of professors with undergraduates.

“At a good research university, there is often a gap between faculty research and undergraduate education—one’s here and one’s here,” says Burch Program Director Eric Mlyn, forming a space between his hands. “And they rarely meet. This program brings those two together, bridges the gap. The goal of the programs is also to create life-changing experiences. And they are absolutely working. Students are finding new careers, new interests, new passions.”

“Being in South Africa, the usual constraints I felt back in the States disappeared,” says senior James Kan, one of two students who dyed their hair blond while abroad. “In a new environment, I could reinvent myself.”

The BFRS has four locations per year, and they are subject to change—there won’t be a Cape Town every year. The very first seminar was in Washington, DC, followed by a geology seminar in California. This summer, a seminar will be launched in Vienna, Austria. The past one in Cape Town was the first international location and by far the most exotic to date.

Julius Nyang’oro, professor of African Studies, headed the Cape Town seminar and researches economic and democratic development in eastern and southern Africa. He has found progress lagging in these areas in the past 35 years. He points out, for example, that in 1960, Congo, which is now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), had more paved roads than it does today.

“The DRC has one of the richest deposits of minerals of all kinds: gold, diamonds, etcetera,” he says, his low voice flavored by his Tanzanian accent. “So we are looking at a fairly rich country whose standard of living has gone down. Why?”

This lack of economic progress has spurred the formation of nongovernment organizations (NGO’s), associations that allow citizens a way to voice their concerns. Nyang’oro studies NGO’s—they are a direct window into the unrest, into what is called civil society.

Nyang’oro’s research has a wide scope, but the Cape Town seminar involved ten undergraduates, all with different backgrounds, different aspirations, and different skills. The problem was combining them and giving them a coherent learning experience that meshed the needs of the faculty researcher and the individual students.

The seminar begins with a month of intense classroom work—four hours a day of lectures, assigned materials, and invited speakers from all parts of South Africa’s society. Next is an individual internship in an area that caters to the undergraduate’s interest yet still fits into Nyang’oro’s research. The third educational leg was two planned field trips to other countries—one to Zimbabwe and one to Namibia. Finally, each student wrote a paper on a topic related to his or her internship, civil society, or any other linked subject of interest.

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