Take a second and imagine what the coolest, most epic college course ever conceived might be like. What would make you completely stoked to show up to class and learn?
I have long thought that surfing is a perfect medium through which to transfer complex concepts in education. If you can get students stoked on learning, if you can leverage their passion for surfing, travel, the coast, and the people of surfing destinations and position educational content within their focus of stoke, you have the most powerful real-world laboratory imaginable. I’ve had the opportunity to lead some small student groups on some pretty amazing surf and study trips through the Center for Surf Research. Trips to the Mentawais with the Quiksilver Foundation and SurfAid with the likes of Ry Craike, Balaram Stack and Tom Carroll. Three week stints at surf resorts while I guided my students through sustainability benchmarking of surf resorts in Fiji, Costa Rica, Mainland Mexico, north shore Oahu and Indonesia. I’ve seen students’ minds blown and lives changed through these experiences and I’ve always wanted to scale the impact up from one or two students at a time to 10, 15 or more, to multiple destinations throughout the year, and to offer these experiences to students around the world.
Enter Groundswell Educational Travel – a very deliberate attempt to develop the world’s coolest college courses. The programs have been developed on the premise that there are two types of people in the world: those who surf, and those who would like to. Both groups are welcome to participate, there are destinations that cater for both (e.g. Bocas del Toro, Panama), and those that suit experienced surfers only (e.g the Mentawais). In partnership with San Diego State University’s Center for Surf Research, Groundswell Travel is able to provide university credit for classes based on cutting edge research on the sustainable management of surf tourism, its environments, and the people of surfing destinations.
The first Groundswell trip is running to Bocas del Toro, Panama, in the winter break of 2014 and offers students three units of general education credit from San Diego State University in Recreation and Tourism Management. The curriculum is based on the Framework Analysis for Sustainable Surf Tourism that puts forward four broad principles and indicators of sustainability in surf tourism management plans and policies.
In addition to hearing directly from local communities, touring local sites, working with the local indigenous community and scheduled daily boat trip surf sessions, students will draw lessons from case studies of surf tourism management in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and the Mentawais in conducting a framework analysis of surf tourism in Panama. Students from any university or community college in the world can take this course through the SDSU College of Extended Studies and interested members of the public can enroll through Open University.
The plan is to offer more and more destinations and variations on course content to encompass a range of disciplines. To positively impact the destinations, we visit and improve the lives of the students who participate. I get the feeling we’re at the tipping point of something really cool. Visit groundswelltravel.com to learn more.
