Students encouraged to consider rare opportunity to visit Cuba in 2014

Multiple cultural, literary and historical aspects of Cuba will be studied through the six credit hour course.

Smith and Tucker encourage all full-time CSC students who would like more information or an application to contact them. Smith can be reached at tsmith@csc.edu, 308-432-6250 or Old Admin 212. Tucker can be reached at ttucker@csc.edu, 308-432-6309 or Old Admin 209. The application is not available online since student applicants need to meet initially with one of these two faculty trip directors.

Carey and Crofutt explained several critical deadlines to submit forms, costs, the process to apply for financial aid for the trip and answered students’ questions.

“I cannot over-emphasize what a unique, rare opportunity this is for students. CSC is very fortunate to have acquired the license for this trip,” Carey said. The minimum number of students for the trip is 12 and the maximum is 20. The license permitting the tour is a General License issued by the Office of Foreign Assets Control under the U.S. Department of the Treasury

The trip is combined with a course that will meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays for 75 minutes during the spring semester of 2014. Enrolled students will research Cuban literature, government, society, economy and culture during the course in preparation for gaining the most out of the trip May 13-21.

Smith emphasized that if the students going on the trip want to visit a location related to their major and not on the tentative schedule, that the CSC faculty, working with the professional guide leading the tour, will do their best to make those arrangements.

Stops on the preliminary itinerary include gardens, historical sites, museums, a market, a cemetery, a cigar factory and the Hemingway House Museum, where a possible service learning project is planned. Nobel-Prize winning author and journalist Ernest Hemingway became a fixture in Cuba in the 1940s.

Tucker and Carey, who have each lived in Florida at different times in the past, shared personal experiences when they witnessed rafts of Cuban refugees arriving on the shores of Florida, which is only about 90 miles from Cuba.

Smith pointed out that even though Cuba is a Spanish-speaking, socialist state, many European colleges and universities study in Cuba. The guide for the trip has led 35 tours to Cuba over 15 years.

“This is going to be the real deal, nothing ‘touristy.’ This experience will be up-close and personal,” Smith said.

“You will be stepping out of your stuff,” Tucker added.

Crofutt invited all students considering the Cuba trip to call the CSC START office and schedule an appointment after Oct. 1 to discuss all financial aid possibilities.