ALTERNATIVE SPRING BREAK 2010 SUU students have been performing service trips to Guaymas, Mexico, for more than a decade. Once again, SUU students, staff and faculty built homes, renovated schools, spent time in orphanages and participated in a variety of other service projects. Jamie Wayment, a junior Hotel, Resort & Hospitality management major from Henefer, said the greatest lesson she learned over the break was gratitude. “I learned to be grateful for what I have and to not take things for granted, especially drinking water out of a tap,” she said. Wayment said students passed out hygiene kits, and also helped in a soup kitchen, in addition to rebuilding a home. Construction Management students and Rural Health Scholars also participated in service projects in Guaymas. Mark Taylor, Construction Management Club president, said this is his third humanitarian service trip and that he appreciated the additional labor offered by other students. He and fellow students built three dome houses in their week-long visit. Assistant Professor of Construction Management Boyd Fife said dome houses are stronger, faster to build, and require fewer materials than conventional construction. He reported that this alternative break experience was “the most successful trip to Guaymas yet,” as they built three homes in the time it would normally take to build one-half of a conventional house. In addition to assisting with service projects, Rural Health Scholars also engaged in intensive clinical observations at a public hospital in Guaymas. One participant offered the telling insight that after returning home to Cedar City, they felt that “everything seemed so different until I realized that nothing had changed in Cedar City; only I had changed. My perception of poverty, hopelessness, opportunity and ‘lifting oneself up by one’s bootstraps’ had changed.” SUU’s 2010 Alternative Spring Break trips included service and service-learning endeavors in Guaymas, Mexico; Tacoma, Washington; and the Dominican Republic. Typically, alternative breaks are organized for late-December and mid-March, along with plans to develop Maymester and summer session experiences.
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