IIEPassport's Student of the Month

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Many students believe that if they want to study abroad, they have a couple of choices - opt for a program offered through their school or find a program through another agency. And, many students believe they must study abroad within a specific window of time. Then there are students such as Penn State University's Autumn Zellers who do not allow the typical constraints to limit the chance to study abroad.

Zellers was all but finished with being an undergraduate student at the Penn State Abington campus when she decided to follow her passion and study abroad in Morocco. To make it happen, she went through the painstaking process of designing her own independent study project, from narrowing the research topic to enduring the often difficult approval process.

With the help of her favorite professor and a great deal of determination, Zellers saw the plans for her independent study abroad project come to fruition. She decided to devote her research to the observation of nonverbal communicative interactions that take place in the "souqs," or marketplaces of Marrakesh and Essaouira.

Zellers sat down with IIEPassport to share her impressive story, and to help inspire other students to take the initiative and create their own possibilities.

Q. You are a biology major. How did you make the leap from your interest in biology to an interest in anthropology?

A. I have always been interested in the humanities, culture and language, but I always thought I'd be a scientist - I thought that's what I was supposed to do. I was not sure about the concrete possibilities of the humanities. I was on track to be a doctor, studying vertebrate physiology and I was supposed to graduate a year ago.

Then I took an archaeology elective taught by Dr. Peter Capelotti, the husband of a professor who has been my go-to person for guidance. I took a test in his class and he emailed me to tell me I had the best grade in the class. I thought it was nice but didn't think too much of it.

One day I stopped in to visit him in his office and we had one of the most life-changing conversations. I couldn't believe that, in one afternoon, my world was turned completely upside-down! He had read some of my blogs and told me that I can write, and if I had the interest I could really do anything. I could go wherever I wanted to go in the humanities. Exactly a year later, I was on a plane to Morocco to do this research!

Q. This was an independent study. How did you formulate the idea for your research project?

A. I had been wanting to go to Morocco for a long time because I have a lot of coworkers from that country. I'd had experience traveling in Colombia, as my mother is Colombian, and in Costa Rica, so I finally went to Morocco last August for a month. Part of that time I was with a coworker who was also there, and for 10 days I went solo to Marrakesh and Essaouira. I was nervous about being on my own, but I have a bunch of Moroccan coworkers and friends that I could contact. I had a great time and really laid the background for the independent study project.



When I came back, I spoke to Dr. Capelotti, and I loved working with him. We needed to devise an independent study and I wanted to write more about my experiences in Morocco, but I didn't think I had enough to stretch into an academic paper.

I started telling him stories about the souqs and I thought that they'd be a great place to get a closer look. They are public places and less invasive. We worked through a lot of ideas, and my professor was a little doubtful from the start, worried about the paperwork. The project is completely different now than when it began, but at least it stayed in the marketplace.

Q. Was planning your independent study and obtaining approval difficult?

A. At first, I didn't know about all the paperwork! I sent my proposal to the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and it took about two weeks from submission to get an answer. It seemed like I was devising this plan and they would raise questions. It's not a pass/fail thing. I would fix the plan and send it back. The IRB definitely works with you.

I had thought of the IRB as a big behemoth that would step on my project like a bug, but they were great. The hardest part was getting translations of my proposal documents on time! I pretty much decided that if they [Moroccan shopkeepers] didn't understand the consent forms and the project, I wouldn't ask those people to participate in the project.

The local approval was actually much tougher. Although I had effectively finished with my credits for my major, I wanted the project to count toward my anthropology minor. I petitioned for my project to count through Penn State's ACURA research program and got it. I also took out insurance through PSU to quell administrative concerns, as they were of course concerned with liability.

Q. How did you feel you were received as an American in Morocco?

A. Very openly. It has to be said that the Moroccan government wants tourism. There is a lot of protection there for travelers - for tourists, researchers, students - especially for U.S. citizens. Many people see you as someone with money. In Marrakesh there are very densely populated tourist areas. It just opened to tourism in the past 10 years or so, so you might see, for example, more women in scarves in Marrakesh than further north, and the locals are still getting accustomed to life with the influx of foreigners.

In a place like Marrakesh, it is a very intense atmosphere, and it's hard for most cultures to get to know each other culturally. I had mostly nothing but a great experience with the Moroccan culture. There were so many times when I needed something and a complete stranger helped me. The people are very generous to strangers. The character of Morocco is such that if I were found with a broken leg on the street, I would be taken care of by complete strangers.

Q. How were your experiences with your host family?

A. I got hooked up with a great family in Marrakesh that spoke English, and having lunch with them and observing was an interesting experience. It's a shame that outside these more personal settings, it's hard to get an understanding of the local people. It is such a cramped space, culturally and population-wise, that it's hard to find out what you have in common without trying to get over on one another. Everyone wants a different experience - the tourists and the natives - and it is difficult with so many people in one place with an impression of each other.

Q. How did you navigate the city with a limited knowledge of the language?

A. At the souqs, even the small-talk was so funny, me with my broken Arabic and them with their broken English. It was really a mix of whatever anyone could speak - almost no tourists speak the native Moroccan Arabic, which is very different than standard Arabic. Standard Arabic is more commonly learned, if at all, by visitors to Arabic-speaking countries.

Q. How did your experiences in Morocco change the focus of your project?



A. I initially thought that I'd be looking at the bargaining process between natives. I was lucky enough to have the notes I took on non-verbal communication from a communication course. By the time the experience was done, I had to think about what stood out. This was part of the catch with the IRB, because you never really know what you'll get until you get there, but fortunately my approved methods were broad enough so that I was able to get enough data within them.

I am more than happy with what I came out of this with. It became more of a scoping project and a chance to realize all that's possible with this. I had read stories in textbooks about researchers that take months to be trusted by the people they are studying before they are able to get good information, and I pulled that off in a week. All of the credit goes to the contacts I had - my Moroccan friends and coworkers, and of course, my advisor. On both sides of the ocean, there are people I am indebted to.

Q. How was your project received once you returned from Morocco?

A. The project was a big hit on campus. I kept a blog, which was linked to the school's main site. I found myself talking to interested people I didn't even know about my experiences. I also lectured my professor's class on what I did. A couple of the students asked if I was a student, too. It seemed pretty beyond them that I was a students and I could do all of this.

A lot of people were very curious when I got back and I feel as if when you do something this exciting, you want to help make it happen for other people. Study abroad is worth any of the risks. This country is falling so far behind so fast that it has become really important that students study abroad, and you can do it all on your own. When I was a freshman, I wanted to travel, that's all I knew. And I traveled every spring break and I made it in Morocco by myself. It's only now that I see all of the opportunities to get money to study abroad. I really believe that students need to get self-motivated to study abroad.

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