Faculty Leaders

• Dr. Cecilia Cheung, UCR Associate Professor of Psychology
• Dr. Kalina Michalska, UCR Associate Professor of Psychology

Classes

• PSYC 161: Socioemotional and Personality Development (4 units)
• PSYC 165B: The Development of Immigrant and Ethnic Minority Youth (4 units)

The program provides an opportunity for students to understand and appreciate child development in diverse cultures. Hong Kong is an international financial hub where the East meets the West. Students will take two courses on children's development and will be provided with opportunities to experience and reflect on how variations in cultural traditions, values, policies, and infrastructures jointly shape children's developmental trajectories. At the end of the course, students are expected to show mastery in theories and research on children's development and be able to critically evaluate how the sociocultural environment shapes children's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Apply Here: The Child Development: A Global Perspective FLEAP page on MyUCR Abroad

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Faculty Leader

• Dr. Muhamad Ali, UCR Associate Professor of Religious Studies

Classes

• SEA 149: Southeast Asian Religions (4 units), cross-listed with RLST 149
• RLST 190: Independent Study (4 units)

The program is called Bali & Yogya: Religion, Culture, and Nature in Indonesia, aimed at introducing students to Southeast Asia through Indonesian cultures and religious traditions, practices, and institutions. The learning outcomes are:

1. Students will demonstrate an understanding of world and local religions, particularly indigenous religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism/Chinese religions, Protestant Christianity, Roman Catholicism, and Islam. 
2. Students are able to use secondary sources as well as primary sources, including observations, visits, and interviews of local people in carrying on research in religious studies.
3. Students demonstrate effective writing and speaking skills in communicating their knowledge about the elite and popular religions, and the normative and practical life. 
4. Students demonstrate an ability to record videos about religions and religious peoples and communicate them to the class as well as to the public via social media.

Apply Here: The Bali & Yogya FLEAP page on MyUCR Abroad

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Faculty Leader

• Dr. Randol Contreras, UCR Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies

Classes

• MCS 160 Race, State Violence, and Incarceration in the United States (4 units)
• MCS 190 Special Studies: Drug Policy (4 units)

This program compares the crime policies of the United States and Spain. Starting in the 1970s, the United States applied harsh policing and punishment to non-violent drug crimes in minority communities. This resulted in the mass incarceration of Black and Brown people, which has had negative generational impacts on minorities. Spain, in contrast, began a public health approach in the early 2000s, which decriminalized personal drug use and reduced drug-related harms. Despite its more compassionate approach, Spain's violent crime averages are at least three times (sometimes nine times) less than in the US. And according to the 2021 Global Peace Index, Spain is the 31st safest and peaceful country in the world, whereas the US is ranked 122. However, like in the US, Spain has problems with racism. Its population, in general, holds negative attitudes toward the Moroccan, Latino/a, and Romani communities. Racist policing, hate, and derision run rampant, which has led marginalized young people of color to develop an oppositional identity toward white racism.

All the above will be covered across two courses, MCS 160 Race, State Violence, and Incarceration in the United States and MCS 190 Special Studies (Drug Policy). The course, MCS 190 (Drug Policy), introduces students to drug policies in both Spain and the United States. The course, MCS 160, covers how mass incarceration developed in the US, and how it compares to Spain's approach general approach to crime. To supplement both courses, guest lecturers will teach students about Spain's history, government, drug policies, and laws. In all, students will get a global understanding of the links between racism, drug policy, incarceration by comparing Spain and the US.

To ease adjustment to Spain and decrease student costs, I will hold the program's first two weeks at UCR. This ensures that the students develop a solid knowledge base without the distractions of being in a country for the first time. Also, it decreases the overall costs for students since they will be abroad for only three weeks rather than five weeks.

Apply Here: The Drugs and Crime in Barcelona | Media and Cultural Studies FLEAP page on MyUCR Abroad

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Faculty Leaders

• Dr. Brian Crites
• Dr. Jeffrey McDaniel

Classes

• CS 110: Principles of Web Development (4 units)
• CS 175: Entrepreneurship in Computing (4 units)

This program will integrate two upper-division courses Web Development (CS110) and Entrepreneurship in Computing (CS175) to create a program introducing students to what it's like to create or work at an early-stage startup. Web Development (CS110) is primarily concerned with methods to create well-crafted, tested, and documented websites and services that can be easily extended and scaled to meet future needs. The students will learn about everything necessary to create and deploy modern websites and services including tools, frameworks, patterns, and methods. Additionally, they learn industry-standard project management tools such as GitHub and Kanban boards to track their groups' progress through feature identification and specification, development, testing, and deployment as well as bug identification, tracking, and patching.

Entrepreneurship in Computing (CS175) focuses on teaching the skills necessary to create a technology business such as ideation strategies, business model canvas generation, customer discovery, market validation, development of a minimum viable product (MVP), and product-market validation. The business side of this course teaches the students how to use customer discovery to identify their customers and the features that they truly need so the team is able to develop a product that solves a problem for their target customers. This process includes speaking with potential customers, "failing" rapidly, and learning from those "failures" to develop a better product. These skills are essential for any good manager as well as any good engineer. In addition to the business side of the course, the students form teams and develop an MVP, as identified by their customer discovery process. The final deliverable of the course is a mock investor pitch and a demo of their MVP and the associated documentation.

The program proposed here will retain some of the lab components of CS110, but will focus primarily on an open-ended group project that will be proposed by the students to satisfy both the CS110 assignments and the CS175 MVP project. The students will form their own "startup" groups and propose a web-based system or service prior to arriving in the country and will then build an MVP for their proposed business. They will learn how to formulate user stories to describe/specify features during the first few days abroad and utilize these skills to set up milestones for their project. This integration of the two courses will reinforce the lessons from CS110 as students will see these methods applied to their own real-life project that has "customers" and a business prospect. While it will still be a "smaller project" as far as real-world web systems are concerned, because it is an MVP with a real-world application, the students will be able to see how the foundation in modern web development and software practices sets a framework for maintainable and extensible systems. In addition to the integration of the two courses discussed above, teaching this course abroad provides additional opportunities to enhance student learning experiences. Costa Rica has been hailed as the "Silicon Valley of Latin America" and boasts a number of large technology companies opening offices in San Jose. One of the top technology universities in Latin America (Costa Rica Institute of Technology) is just outside San Jose, and the city has been developing the technology sector as one of the fastest-growing technology economies.

Finally, we hope to partner with the entrepreneurial ecosystems both abroad in San Jose and locally in Riverside. In San Jose, we will have speakers from the local startup ecosystem give talks about their own startup journey. Back in Riverside, we hope to partner with local resources such as 3 UCR's own ExCITE incubator, to provide students with the opportunity to continue with their projects after the program has ended if they choose to or to simply continue their journey in the exciting world of startups.

Apply Here: The Startup Bootcamp: An International Perspective FLEAP page on MyUCR Abroad

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Faculty Leaders

• Kris Miller, UCR Lecturer in Computer Science and Engineering
• Kelly Downey, UCR Lecturer in Computer Science and Engineering

Classes

• CS 5: Introduction to Computer Programming (4 units)
• CS 6: Effective Use of World Wide Web (4 units)

This program will introduce students to computers as a part of society. We will be examining how the purpose of the computer has changed based on society's needs, the effects of different applications of computers, and how computers can be used to improve current society issues.

To do this, we will intertwine two current CS classes; CS005: Intro to Programming and CS006: Effective Use of the World Wide Web. From CS005, students will learn tools that will allow them to create apps. They will be encouraged to create apps that will benefit society. From CS006, students will study the history of the world wide web including why it was created, how it has evolved into so much more than it was originally planned to do, and the social implications of using the internet in different ways. In CS006, students will also learn how to create web pages to present information on a global scale. Combining their apps from CS005 and their knowledge of how the internet can affect society from CS006, students will be able to recognize how their app could change society.

Learning outcomes

1. Students will be able to describe the history of computers, the Internet, and changes to technology introduced after seeing the effects of computer and Internet applications on society.
2. Students will be able to distinguish between different computer programming logics including variables, input/output, branches, loops, and algorithms.
3. Examine the pros and cons of different Internet applications for different communities.
4. Outline steps needed to solve a given problem using computer programming.
5. Create an app to aid in achieving a greener economy using computer programming logics.
6. Students will be recognize HTML structures.
7. Create a webpage using HTML.

Instruction will be a combination of direct instruction lectures, hands on programming labs, group discussions during lectures, and living research from trips to history museums.

Apply Here: The Computer App Development FLEAP page on MyUCR Abroad

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Faculty Leader

Dr. Marta Hernández Salván, UCR Associate Professor of Spanish

Classes

Note: Classes are taught in Spanish. If you speak Spanish at an intermediate or advanced level, you are welcome to apply! Please email the professor if you haven't completed the prerequisites below.

• SPN 122B: Spanish Transatlantic Cultural Studies (4 units)
• SPN 130: Spanish Culture and Civilization (4 units)

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Dr. Covadonga Lamar Prieto, a different UCR professor, ran a very similar FLEAP before. Here is media coverage about that program:

• StoryMap (2021)
• YouTube Video (2021)

Apply Here: The Spanish Society in Madrid FLEAP page on MyUCR Abroad

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Faculty Leader

Dr. Tim Higham, Professor of Biology

Classes

• BIOL 170 Herpetology (5 units)
• BIOL 190 - Special Studies: Functional Ecology in Namibia (3 units)

This program will explore the incredible biological diversity in Namibia, including coastal and desert ecosystems. Namibia is home to some of the most unique plants and animals on earth, and has the tallest and oldest desert, with sand dunes meeting the ocean along the west coast of Africa. In addition to the Namib Desert, there are plenty of national parks that have elephants, lions, rhinos, cheetahs, giraffes and many other charismatic megafauna. The reptile diversity, including snakes and lizards, rivals some of the best locations in the world. Apart from animal diversity, Namibia has the second largest canyon in the world, the largest meteorites, and rock formations up to 1.2 billion years old. Welwitschia is a strange looking plant in Namibia, but it is also a living fossil. Some individuals have lived longer than 1000 years, and others are thought to be older than 2000 years. We will experience all of these aspects of Namibia through field trips and an educational safari to Etosha National Park. We will visit a Cheetah conservation area that also tracks leopards. This will be a transformative experience that you will never forget.

Students will first do small independent projects at the Gobabeb Research Institute, situated in the middle of the Namib Desert. This area spans three major habitats (river bed, sand dunes, and gravel plains), all of which house an amazing diversity of life. We will do field work and learn tools used by field biologists. We will also bring animals into the lab and conduct experiments. Students will give presentations and write a paper based on their research project.

The Safari will cover a large portion of Namibia, and will expose students to an enormous diversity of cultural, geological, and biological areas. Students will also get time to explore Swakopmund, a historic coastal city that has a lot of German influence. Here students will have opportunities to explore other activities, such as camel rides or quad biking over sand dunes.

Finally, students will also have the opportunity to interact with indigenous people, and see world-famous geological sites. We will stay in a mixture of hotels and tents during the time in Namibia.

Apply Here: The Biology and Ecology Field Studies FLEAP page on MyUCR Abroad

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Faculty Leader

• Rickerby Hinds, UCR Professor of Theatre, Film, and Digital Production

Classes

• TFDP 115: Hip Hop Theater (4 units)
• TFDP 190: Independent Study: Research for Dramatic Writing (4 units)

​We have the right to say what has been said and even what has not been said in a way that belongs to us, responding in a direct and straightforward manner to present-day feelings everybody can understand...We want to bring back the idea of the total theatre, where theatre will recapture from cinema, music-hall, the circus and life itself, those things that always belonged to it.

​​ -Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and Its Double

​This course will explore the theatrical genre known as Hip-Hop Theater through: readings, documentaries/videos/films, and performances culminating in the development and virtual performance of a hip-hop theater play by the class. Defined as theater that is created using elements of hip-hop culture: DJ'in, Emceein' (rappin'), Breakdancin', Graffiti (Aerosol) Art, and Knowledge as the primary means of storytelling on stage, hip-hop theater takes these dynamic elements that have made this culture a worldwide phenomenon, and fuses them with traditional theatrical devices as a means of reaffirming the power of the stage.

Apply Here: The Power of Dramatic Writing FLEAP page on MyUCR Abroad

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Faculty Leader

• Dr. Kyle Ingram, UCR Assistant Professor of Teaching in Management

Classes

• BUS 145 Designing and Leading Teams (4 units)
• BUS 190 Special Studies (4 units)

The London Leadership Experience encourages students to engage in a deeper understanding of human behavior within organizations. The program works on the idea that behavior is a function of a person in his/her environment (i.e., the way in which we behave is largely dependent on who we are and the various contexts we find ourselves in.

This program develops its approach from two upper-division management electives: BUS 145 and BUS 190. Both courses encourage students to form a deeper understanding of who they are and how they are already primed for successful leadership and teamwork. Delivering these two courses in the international context will highlight new challenges that students should be ready to face in an increasingly globalized world. The courses are designed to take students out of their comfort zone to inspire personal development and growth. Studying theories of leadership and teamwork amongst top academics and practitioners in London will only further expand the knowledge and perspective gained through these courses.

This program has run before. Here is media coverage about it:

• "London is Waiting" (2021) 
• StoryMap (2021) 
• YouTube video (2020)

Apply Here: The London Leadership Experience FLEAP page on MyUCR Abroad

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Faculty Leader

• Dr. Tabassum "Ruhi" Khan, UCR Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies

Classes

• MCS 110J: Post-War Cinema - Heritage Dramas and British National Identity (4 units)
• MCS 132: Examining Intersections of Media and Popular Culture and How They Shape Our Political-Economic Contexts (4 units) 

Join Media and Cultural Studies’ Faculty Lead Summer Abroad program to London and learn how our pleasurable past times are not frivolous activities after all. Come to London to learn how our supposedly insignificant engagements are a significant influence in the organization of production in society, determination of avenues for employment, and ultimately regulation of our lives. Participate in exploratory and experiential learning in the capital city of the former British Empire to learn how ideological domination replaces military might; and how British Period dramas or ‘hat and frock shows’ like Downton Abbey have become Britain’s most important cultural export as well as cultural manifestation of globally ascendant neoliberal political economic policies which underline current sharp socio-economic inequalities. Soak in the ambiance of this exciting city and address a simple but meaningful query—how do some elements of popular culture support hierarchies and what are the others that challenge them?

Take courses MCS 110 J on Post World War II cinema focusing on period dramas and MCS 132 examining intersections of media and popular culture and how they shape our political-economic contexts.

Apply Here: Downton Abbey - Popular Culture and Political Consensus - What's in Common? FLEAP page on MyUCR Abroad

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Faculty Leader

• Dr Daniel Ross, UCR Lecturer of Linguistics

Classes

• LING 131: Morphology (4 units)
• LING 160F: Dialectology (4 units)

We will study Linguistics in the local context of the Basque Country, Spain, with a focus on the Basque language as well as the development of Spanish. Rather than just reading about how languages work, we will directly investigate the grammar of these languages for a first-hand perspective on linguistic structure. We will cover the same range of content as an on-campus version of these courses, but illustrated by data elicited and analyzed by the students themselves, directly from speakers.

This program will therefore be a mix of theoretical/technical content from the courses as well as hands-on field experience and field methods training, as well as emphasizing the importance and diversity of human languages spoken around the world, including the timely topics of language endangerment and revitalization, as this is the UN's International Decade of Indigenous Languages.

Apply Here: The Linguistics FLEAP page on MyUCR Abroad

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Faculty Leader

• Dr. Fuson Wang, UCR Associate Professor of English

Classes

• ENGL 128J Jane Austen (4 units)
• ENGL 166T Topics in Romantic Literature (4 units) 

"Austen and the City" offers students the opportunity to experience the cultural transformation of Romantic-era revolutions by connecting the groundbreaking works of authors like Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, William Blake, Anna Letitia Barbauld, Felicia Hemans, Letitia Landon, Percy Shelley, Friedrich Engels, and more to the places that inspired them. Students will learn how these authors were awed, disgusted, amused, or motivated by the people and places around them.

Bath was a holiday town where fashionable society came to mingle, and Jane Austen was right there to document their human foibles with acerbic wit and moving characterizations, especially in Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. Although we'll be based in London, we will take a trip to Bath to see how the landed gentry lived it up in the southern English countryside, away from the urban noise of London. With walking tours, a visit to the Jane Austen Centre, and a bus trip to Chawton House, students will see how an industrializing empire tried hard to maintain fictions of gentility, picturesque gardens, and bucolic bliss. In addition to English 128J's focus on Jane Austen, students will also experience in English 166T the darker urbanity of Romantic literature with the work of someone like William Blake. There will be a hands-on tutorial with Blake's unique printmaking process that allowed him to meld visual and verbal art into idiosyncratic expression and revolutionary mythmaking. Michael Phillips has recreated Blake's copper plates, ink blends, and even his star press so that students can experience first-hand how Blake had to create his own printing process to do justice to his anti-industrial, anti-capitalist, and anti-establishment verse.

This program exposes students to these generative contradictions of Romantic-era England to show how this era dealt with issues that we're still grappling with today. In the ruptures of these contradictions, these authors dared to envision a world without perpetual war, the abolition of the slave trade, the flourishing of professional women writers, and the world-shaking agency of the human imagination.

Apply Here: The Austen and the City FLEAP page on MyUCR Abroad

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Faculty Leader

• Dr. Elia Scudiero, UCR Associate Research Agronomist

Classes

• ENSC 190: Special Studies - Agriculture, Food, and Culture in Veneto (4 units)
• ENSC 197: Research (4 units)

This program explores (and experiences) the agricultural systems and their environmental footprints of North-eastern Italy and California, through traditional lectures, active learning, excursions, and student-led research. Focus is given to the history, culture, and economic, environmental, and social sustainability aspects of agriculture in Veneto (and parallels to California). Many food products of Veneto agriculture (e.g., wine, distillates, cheese, cured meats, specialty crops) are also produced in California, but with different management approaches and in different environmental conditions. The two regions, however, share similar concerns about the environmental implications of agriculture (e.g., water pollution, climate change, soil degradation). The ag-environment-societal nexus will be thoroughly discussed in the program. Lectures from local faculty and graduate students will enrich the conversation. Trips (with hands-on, e.g., taste tests) will give the opportunity to the students of gaining first-hand experience in the food and agricultural production in Veneto.

Upon completion of this program, students should be able to:

1. Understand the relationships between environmental footprint and agricultural production in Veneto and California
2. Become proficient at identifying the farm-to-food process for most food products consumed by the general public;
3. Learn to understand and identify similarities and differences in agricultural systems in different areas of the world.;
4. Have a basic understanding of the agricultural causes of environmental degradation; and
5. Have a basic understanding of tradeoffs between economic, environmental, and social sustainability.

The instructional model for this program is as follows. Students will either take (1) ENSC 190 and ENSC 197 (undergraduate students). For graduate students, ENSC 190 and ENSC 297 may be provided instead.

• ENSC 190 (Agriculture, Food, and Culture in Veneto) will be delivered through guest lectures at the University of Padua and the half-day field trips. The students will dedicate 3 days/week (two 4-hour days lecture days and the half-day local excursions) for 5 weeks to activities of ENSC 190. Students will be given time to complete their subsequent individual final reports.
• ENSC 197 will be provided as mentored research (at least 4 hours/week for 5 weeks) and through the five 1-day excursions (approximately 8 hours per excursion). The 1-day field trips will allow students to experience and describe landscapes, environments, and agricultural systems across the Veneto Region. Independent research will be expected from the students. Students will be given time to complete their subsequent individual research reports and are expected to present their results in a short presentation during the last in-class session.

Apply Here: Delicious Italy: Specialty Farming, Food Production, and Agriculture's Environmental Footprint in Northern Italy and Parallels to California

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Faculty Leader

• Dr. Setsu Shigematsu, Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies

Classes

• MCS 184 / ASN 185 Japanese Media & Cultural Studies (4 units)
• MCS 120 Major Figures in Film & Media (4 units)

This program provides students the unique experience of studying modern Japanese history, culture and film while being immersed in contemporary Japanese society. This four-week study abroad program teaches students about Japan's modernization through Japanese film and media (including literature and anime), with a focus on Japan's relationship with the United States. Students will study the history of World War II, the transformative impact of the U.S. occupation of Japan and the history of social movements during the 1960s and 1970s. Students will also have the opportunity to train in martial arts and gain the experience of traveling in Japan, visit Hiroshima and Miyajima, and meeting some of Japan's leading social movement activists.

Apply Here: Media and Cultural Studies in Chiba, Japan

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