With limited electricity and unpaved roads, Monkey River Town, Belize, is not the average college student's spring break destination.

But 16 Penn State Students, who journeyed into the remote parts of Central America as a part of the Rural Sociology 497A (Cultural American Field Study) course, were looking for more than a typical vacation spot.

The Belize assessment is part of Penn State's short-term study tours. Students who sign up for the course at the beginning of the semester create their own experiments for the trip.

The students spent eight days in the village of Monkey River, conducting the second set of social assessments for an ongoing project at Penn State.

"We went in to find out how people are using their resources and what their goals are for the future benefit of the community," Project Coordinator Frank Higdon said.

The students were split into three groups: women empowerment, ecotourism and integrative pest management. Each group had a common goal: community improvement.

"These students were able to develop a relationship with a community," Higdon said. "We are trying to focus on what the community is getting by interacting with our students [rather than the other way around]," he said.

Lori Zimmaro (senior-English and Spanish), who participated in the women's empowerment section of the project, said the 16 student participants came from a range of diverse majors.

"It was a chance to interact with people that you wouldn't usually share classes with," she said.

Zimmaro added the women's empowerment group focused on creating a "portrait" of the lives of Monkey River women through interviews and discussion forums. The women discussed their values, roles, concerns and interests in the community. "For the most part, the women there are limited to domestic responsibilities," she said. "We encouraged them to look beyond and take advantage of the opportunities they have outside their village."

Higdon said the ecotourism group worked with the Toledo Institute for Development to access problems within the community that affect the environment and tourism.

The students were able to evaluate various tour groups that come through the village, and they suggested ways for the guides to increase overnight stays and distributing information.

"It was more than just a spring break trip," Josh Ream (junior-animal sciences), an ecotourism member, said. "I learned so much. As far as business, we learned about politics and marking. All these topics were fairly new to me."

The third assessment group, integrated pest management, dealt with problems in chemical pest control in local and commercial farming surrounding the village.

"Since I've been back, there's a lot of hesitation when I go to the grocery store," Jennifer Dean (graduate student-entomology) said.

Dean explains simple things, such as buying bananas, forced her to think about the situation in Monkey River, since the chemicals used in pest control run into the river that is the primary water source for the village.

"The student got a chance to learn that there's more than just them and that they can make a difference in people's lives," Higdon said.