The range of human experience was on the syllabus for Colby, Bates and Bowdoin students living and studying in Quito, Ecuador, last fall. Now in its fourth year, the Quito edition of the Off-Campus Study Consortium (other CBB centers are in London and Cape Town) gave 25 young people the opportunity to make intellectual connections to real-life experiences. In Quito, located 22 miles from the Equator with a population of 1.6 million, the students participated in two separate programs led by Lillian Guerra, assistant professor of history at Bates, and Russell Johnson, associate professor of biology at Colby.

"There are no distractions from the material we are studying because we are living the material," Guerra says. "I don't think that students hearing about things in a classroom get even one fourth of the jolt that you get from living in the place you're studying."