Study Abroad in Northern Ireland

For decades, Americans sat in their living rooms and watched news reports about the conflict in Northern Ireland.  Newer conflicts - and progress in the region - have pushed Northern Ireland off the 6 o'clock broadcasts.

However, Terrie McCants, instructor in conflict resolution, knows that traveling to this region gives her students the very best international study experience.  They saw for themselves that the conflict resolution skills and theories they're learning can actually change the course of history...even save lives.

Collaborating with Joanne Katz, professor of legal studies at Missouri Western State University, McCants set off in May for Northern Ireland with a group of 22 K-State and Missouri Western State graduate and undergraduate students, as well as one noncredit participant.  The study tour, which lasted 10 days, was devoted to exploring Northern Ireland's troubled history and emerging peace process.

"Actually visiting these sites challenges your thinking in a way that sitting in a classroom listening to a lecture cannot," McCants said.  "It all becomes real; you are talking to people who live there.  You get the emotional side, as well as the intellectual side, and understand the culture a little bit better because you have participated in it on some level."

More than 3,000 people died during what has come to be known as Northern Ireland's "Troubles," and over 40,000 more were injured.  Of Northern Ireland's 1.7 million people, nearly every person either has been directly affected by the ensuing violence or knows someone who has.

The larger purpose of the trip was to help students explore the deep divisions separating a dominant Protestant community that is fiercely loyal to Great Britain and a nationalistic Catholic community that aspires to create a unified and autonomous Irish republic.

This was the second faculty-led tour of Northern Ireland that McCants has organized, and for her the real value of such programs is to challenge students' perspectives.  Where better to accomplish this than in a segregated society struggling to overcome a conflict with roots that extend back 800 years?

"When students are learning, they are being stretched and are no longer quite so sure.  Sometimes, losing your clarity is a good thing," McCants said.

McCants and Katz indeed took great pains to stretch student understanding.  Participants were exposed to a rich, interdisciplinary mix of guest lecturers.  They were also treated to a surprise visit from Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume.  Hume helped broker the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which paved the way for Northern Ireland's current power-sharing government and has done much to help mitigate the violence of the past 40 years.

McCants and Katz strove to connect classroom discussions to the actual victims, participants and places in the conflict.

The class toured Derry and Belfast, including the segregated Shankhill Road and Falls Road sections of Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods are divided even today by concrete "peace walls" and razor wire.

The value of such participation was not lost on Kate Herzog, a K-State junior majoring in biology, economics, and French.

"It's one thing to read about the Troubles or a place or a history, but the people in Derry and Belfast lived through it, and it's fascinating to hear them speak of it," Herzog said. "I don't often have the opportunity to go somewhere and have people who were actually a part of these huge events talk to me and openly discuss the problems, both past and present, that their country and people are suffering through."