Learning Beyond the Classroom

Fieldwork and Internships

Merrimack College students in women’s and gender studies are encouraged to take their learning beyond the classroom walls into the field where they are mentored by their professors.

In a classroom without walls students engage in hands-on experience in fieldwork, internships and directed studies that include:

Fieldwork in the Southwest

See WGS 3360 course description

Use your knowledge while exploring a different culture and place.

  • Visit the desert southwest and experience the diverse culture, landscape and sky. Past fieldwork included trips to Native American pueblos, working ranches, the desert, museums, nature preserves and camping under the stars in Chaco Canyon. Students met with and learned from southwestern artists, writers, environmentalists, biologists and astronomers as they traveled across New Mexico and Arizona with three professors.
  • Live on a 100,000 acre cattle ranch for a portion of the summer, doing oral histories and documentary work.
  • Learn about the history, arts and crafts, political struggles, rituals and story-telling in southwestern Native American Pueblo and Navajo cultures. Visit archaeological sites and stay on the pueblo and reservation and learn from members of the tribe. Learn how to make SW-style jewelry.

See WGS 3360 course description

Internships and Directed Studies

  • Further develop your knowledge of gender, women and diversity through internships and directed studies. Past experiences included opportunities on presidential campaigns, in the Statehouse, with LGBT youth, in local high schools and workplaces, in programs for substance-abusing teenage girls and with victims of domestic violence.
  • Contact the program chair for more information.