Science Educators Abroad: East Carolina University Opens New Doors for Rural Teachers

Sometimes, to learn more about the area you call home, the best thing to do is to leave and immerse yourself in another place. Living in, studying, and experiencing another landscape and culture draws out critical insights into similarities and differences between the familiar and the novel, opening the door for reflection and a deeper understanding of the places in which we reside and love. For the last three years, rural science teachers from Onslow and Pender Counties in eastern North Carolina have enriched their knowledge and teaching through immersive, study-abroad style experiences in Belize and Mallorca, Spain, transforming them both as people and educators.

The program began in 2023, with a generous donation to the East Carolina University (ECU) Rural Education Institute (REI) from Steve and Edna Smith, who wanted to support local STEM teachers in their area (ECU anchors RSC’s Southeast Regional Hub). Building upon the success of a Science Education Specialist Certification program that ECU developed for Onslow County teachers, two professors at ECU began planning ways to extend the learning experience beyond the county lines. Bonnie Glass, Master Teaching Instructor and Science Education Program Coordinator, and Dr. Tammy Lee, Associate Professor of Science Education, decided to use the Smith family scholarship funds to create a pathway for local teachers to join existing ECU study abroad science programs as professional development.

The study abroad experiences built upon the success of ECU’s Science Education Specialist Certification, a program developed for teaching in Onslow County by Bonnie Glass and Tammy Lee. The five-course sequence offered opportunities for in-person class meetings in Onslow County, meeting teachers where they were to make the program immersive and accessible. Due to the Smith family donation, Glass shares that “through an existing partnership with Onslow county, we ended up being able to support 14 teachers for the certificate. . . Typically these classes are online, but we went to Onslow county, met with the teachers, did hands-on activities and took them outside, and that helped build relationships with them.”

After completion of the certificate, eight of the 14 participants went on to finish their graduate degrees at ECU, which Bonnie Glass notes “was a testament to this model working. . . Since a passion of Tammy and mine is taking students abroad, and drawing parallels between our coastal ecosystem and ecosystems abroad, and how humans impact those, we were able to support many of these teachers to go abroad with us.” Veterans of leading undergraduate and graduate study abroad programs, and knowing the intent of the Smith family donation was to enrich the teaching of local science and math teachers through travel, fusing the programs made perfect sense.

The first study abroad experience included undergraduate and graduate students, including four local science teachers who had participated in the Science Education Special Certification. The scholarship funds deferred most of the program costs, making the nine-day course accessible for those on a teachers’ salary. The first of these immersive experiences brought the students and teachers to Belize. “We are really trying to promote ocean literacy; understanding how our oceans work, and how they impact our weather, our climate, and everything happening on our Earth” described Dr. Lee. Naturally, then, Belize’s scenic marine ecosystems made for an enticing case study to examine the ways in which humans relate to aquatic environments, which both professors feel is especially important for those teaching in an area frequented by hurricanes and with daily oceanic impacts like coastal North Carolina.

Through studying and living so closely with the natural world while abroad, teachers such as Morgan Salge of Onslow County felt changed not just as educators, but as people: “Prior to this experience, I had not traveled outside of the United States. It was amazing observing, studying, and being in the various environments in Belize. This experience makes me want to travel to places with various environments to see how they interact with the animals, people, and surrounding environments. This experience also changed the way I see the local ecosystems and environments.” The other teachers who participated in the program felt similar changes, becoming more aware of the connection between people and place.

In 2024 and 2025, the program moved to Mallorca, Spain, and five more teachers from Onslow and Pender counties were afforded the opportunity to attend. After layovers in Miami and Madrid, the teachers and ECU students arrived in Palma de Mallorca, part of the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea off of Spain’s eastern coast. Trip highlights included boating and kayaking around the island, snorkeling through caves, visiting a sea turtle rescue organization, and learning about plastic-free businesses. Throughout the experiences, teachers kept an eye towards how humans and nature interact with each other, and how they can transfer that knowledge to their lives and classrooms.

Another key goal of the experience was to develop the comfortability and confidence to translate knowledge into advocacy for the students and educators. Experiential educational programs like this provide not just knowledge, but form emotional relationships between people and place, spurring participants to advocate for important ecosystems under threat, such as North Carolina’s outer banks. Bonnie adds that “we want people to see– this is a model for what your support can do” to uplift, engage, and enrich teachers, particularly rural teachers who may lack access to these sorts of experiences.”

While the trips themselves are impactful and enjoyable, it is the long-term effects from experiential education abroad that bring the most joy to Dr. Lee: “Looking back at how many teachers we’ve been able to impact and take out of the country– Bonnie and I believe that education should be fun, and people should be having fun while they're learning. We believe that you should be immersed in whatever it is that you’re studying, and that’s what I’ve built my whole career on. To this day, former students share pictures of themselves kayaking, on the side of a mountain, or doing other things outdoors, and these are students who would rarely spend time outside before this trip. . . We provide this experience, and not only does it impact them as teachers and they take things back to their classrooms and impact their students, which is very prideful for us, but to see their personal journeys means a lot as well. They have a new connectedness to nature, and you just start to see that legacy of showing people that learning can be fun and connected to our environment.”

Tammy’s reflection underscores the core value of immersive, experiential educational experiences. Living and learning alongside their peers, particularly outside of a familiar comfort zone, enables participants to expand their worlds. When done with teachers, who in turn hold the keys to facilitating similar experiences to myriad students, the power of these trips becomes a force multiplier. For Tammy Lee and Bonnie Glass, who have put hundreds of hours into planning and leading these trips, the reward is well worth the effort. As Bonnie reflects on trips like those to Mallorca and Belize, she describes that “through experiences like this, we’ve built relationships with people that in the classroom or online it’s hard to build. We keep up with these people, and see the things they’re doing in the classrooms, with their students, and in their own personal lives, that show us that these experiences that impact their choices now. And I’m proud [of that], it took a lot of work.”