For UWC-USA first-year students, the first months on campus include an important introduction to the region they now call home: Southwest Studies.
Southwest Studies (SWS) are weeklong excursions across the American Southwest where first-year students explore the landscapes, cultures, histories, and contemporary realities of the region. This year, students will travel by school minibus with faculty and staff facilitators, camping and learning together as they encounter the region firsthand. Groups depart on October 10 and return on October 16.
SWS is designed to be more than a trip. It is an opportunity for students, many of whom have only recently arrived from around the world, to begin building a thoughtful relationship with Northern New Mexico and the larger Southwest. The experience asks students to pay attention to the land beneath their feet, to the stories and communities that shape a place, and to their own responsibilities as visitors, learners, and citizens.
This year’s options reflect the many dimensions of the region. Students may develop technical outdoor skills and study natural history through a rock-climbing expedition in New Mexico. Others will take on the physical and logistical challenge of backpacking in Grand Canyon National Park while learning about its geology and scale.
Several SWS trips focus more directly on community, identity, and public issues. In southern Arizona, students on the Tucson Border trip will learn from humanitarian-aid organizations, legal advocates, environmental groups, and Indigenous leaders as they examine the human realities of migration and border policy. An El Paso-based trip will similarly combine service, conversations with advocates and policy workers, and visits that explore the regional landscape of immigration enforcement and border communities.
Students can also choose a journey through Native lands and ancestral places, including Chaco Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, Window Rock, and Hopi Nation. Guided experiences with local hosts, artists, and cultural leaders are intended to help students learn respectfully about the enduring traditions and histories of the region. Another option, the Marfa Art Adventure, connects desert hiking, dark-sky camping, contemporary art, a silkscreen workshop, Carlsbad Caverns, and astronomical observation in southern New Mexico and West Texas.
The range of SWS experiences gives students different entry points into the Southwest, but each trip shares a common purpose: learning through direct experience, preparation, dialogue, and reflection. Students will participate in pre-trip meetings and packing sessions, then return to campus with new knowledge, stronger relationships with classmates, and a deeper understanding of the place that will shape their UWC-USA education.
For generations of alumni, Southwest Studies has been among the most memorable parts of the first-year experience. It is often where a new class begins to see that learning at UWC-USA extends well beyond the classroom.