Immersion Trips Illuminate New Cultures

By Sarina Caragan

Instead of spending his first spring break as an undergraduate at the beach or on a road trip with his friends, freshman Anthony Carnesecca traveled to Tuba City, Ariz. with a group of Santa Clara students to help out at a school on a Native American reservation.

"(The Navajo Nation) is not some (place) you could just go visit and say, 'Oh, I'm going to try to assimilate into the Native American culture,'" said Carnesecca. "I figured this was my one opportunity to see that culture that's largely ignored in America."

Carnesecca's trip to the Navajo Nation was one of seven spring break immersion trips offered through the Kolvenbach Solidarity Program in the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education.

Each year, students have the opportunity to travel to parts of the U.S. unfamiliar to them, such as New Orleans, San Francisco, Tucson and Appalachia, in order to learn about the experiences of these areas' marginalized communities firsthand.

"The purpose of immersion trips is to learn about a culture we don't know about," said Hayley Dickson, a junior and the immersion coordinator for this year's trip to Appalachia.

Contact Sarina Caragan at scaragan@scu.edu or (408) 554-4852.