MUNCIE, Ind. – Thirty-five students from three departments at Ball State University spent part of their spring semesters in the Jamaican sun and picked up academic credit for it.

The Department of Anthropology, Teachers College and School of Nursing provides students the opportunity to experience Jamaican culture as part of their class work.

One of the three programs is coordinated by the anthropology department and allows students to work in Ball State’s ethnographic field school. Maggie Coffin is the co-director of the field school in Jamaica and was responsible for supervising the students’ work from Dec. 20 through late March or April. Her husband Jim also co-directs the field school and makes periodic visits during the semester.

"These nine students were conducting research on an aspect of Jamaican culture that corresponded with a project they designed during the fall," said Jim Coffin who also serves as director of Ball State’s Center for International Programs.

The field school began in 1980, and this year students explored such topics as spiritual healing, Rastifarian culture and tourism.

Through the second program, 17 education majors visited the island during spring break. The students spent two days in Jamaican schools where they taught classes and participated in various other classroom activities. One day was spent at a public school and the other was at a private school.

"This experience was very beneficial for the students in Jamaica as well as for the Ball State students," said elementary education professor Elizabeth Jared.

Normally, students spend four half days in Jamaican schools, but the schools were closed for two days of the visit in observance of Ash Wednesday.

"My trip was a real eye-opener," said junior elementary education major and Troy, Ohio, native Jessica Schilling. "The poverty and overcrowded classrooms down there made me appreciate how much we have here."

In a third Jamaican program, nine Ball State nursing students worked in the Westmorland Health Department. For two weeks, the nine students worked in five different health centers where they provided nursing care to pregnant women, children and older adults with chronic illnesses.

The students also went to two schools where they taught children about nutrition, hygiene, pregnancy prevention and sexually transmitted disease prevention. One graduate student also provided mental health counseling and taught patients the proper way to take medications.

"The objective of this experience was to learn about another culture and its health care system," said nursing professor Kathleen Russell. "After our trip we were better able to compare and contrast nursing in Jamaica and the United States."

To participate, the nursing students who were registered nurses had to get approvals from the Jamaican Ministry of Health and obtain Jamaican nursing licenses, as did faculty members Russell and Beth Kelsey, who supervised the students.

"I learned that nursing care is basically the same no matter where you go, but the standard of care varies dramatically," said nursing graduate student Norda Radcliff from Bloomington, Ind. "In Jamaica they don’t have the technology or resources that we have here, so we had to learn to adapt to our surroundings."

Radcliff spent one afternoon of her visit working at a satellite clinic on Mt. Jerusalem where she saw almost 75 patients. The clinic had no electricity, telephone or running water and was furnished with only the bare essentials. The majority of the patients visited the clinic for monitoring of their blood pressure or blood sugar, or to get their prescriptions refilled.

Students were also able to see the informal health care system that operates in Jamaica when they visited a traditional healer, also known as a Balm Mother. The Balm Mother performs a reading on her patient and then prescribes over-the-counter remedies for the person’s ailment(s).

"The reading she did for me was very accurate, as were the readings she did for some of the students," said Russell.

By Kortney Reinitz, Graduate Assistant

(NOTE TO EDITORS: For more information, contact Coffin by phone (765) 285-5422 or email jcoffin@bsu.edu.)