SNR professors eye Africa for new study abroad on wilderness

Gwendŵr Meredith (in lower left) shows study abroad trips offer experiences that Nebraska classrooms can’t, like selfies with lions. With her and the two lions sunning in the savanna are, from left, John Carroll, Becca Wyatt and Caden Connelly.
Gwendŵr Meredith (in lower left) shows study abroad trips offer experiences that Nebraska classrooms can’t, like selfies with lions. With her and the two lions sunning in the savanna are, from left, John Carroll, Becca Wyatt and Caden Connelly.

By Ronica Stromberg

John Carroll and Gwendŵr Meredith scoped the Okavango Delta in Botswana June 17-27 to prepare a study abroad on wilderness.

The School of Natural Resources professors took five former students and the school’s student success coach, Kenneth Pyle, with them to test run the study abroad expected to launch in summer 2025. The study abroad will complement the honors class “Wilderness in the 21st Century,” which Carroll and Meredith teach.

“For quite a while, I have been contemplating a course that is more focused on the idea of wilderness,” Carroll said. “The idea was that with 9-10 billion people on the planet, our traditional views of what wilderness might be would have to be different. It also came about because, over the years, I have had occasional students who were interested in international affairs and the environment and often they were very interested in experiences that were outside their typical exposure to politics and policy.”

When Meredith came to Nebraska in 2021, the two professors saw how her interest in sociology complemented his interest in conservation and they began teaching the wilderness honors class together.

Read the full article and see more images at https://snr.unl.edu/aboutus/what/newstory.aspx?fid=1170