During a Costa Rica study abroad summer 2025 experience, a group of UTC students, led by Dr. Edwin Murillo, took classes at the Universidad Politécnica Internacional. Photo courtesy of Dr. Edwin Murillo.
From visiting the hot springs of an active volcano to playing with monkeys on the beaches of Manuel Antonio National Park, 22 University of Tennessee at Chattanooga students studying Spanish explored Costa Rica this summer while studying abroad.
Dr. Edwin Murillo, director of Latin American studies and professor of Spanish in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures, led the month-long trip to the Central American nation.
To engage with the country’s culture, he explained that students lived with host families.
“Students were able to advance their language skills and immerse themselves in authentic cultural experiences because all the students were set up with Costa Rican housing,” Murillo said. “Two or three students went to a house with native Costa Ricans and were provided three meals a day. A couple of families knew a little bit of English, but the students were 100% immersed in the culture and in the language.”
They attended classes during the week, he said, including philosophy, literature, cooking and dancing. The group toured cities like the capital, San José, and on weekends would visit the unique landscape outside of the urban areas.
The trip was the third time Murillo had led students to Costa Rica, a country he compared to Switzerland due to its political stability and safety for tourists.
“You have to go someplace where the students can focus on their excursions, cultural immersion and their academics, where they’re not worried,” Murillo said. “Costa Rica is a very stable democracy. It has been for at least 75 years.
“The other aspect, of course, is the infrastructure. Costa Rica has been one of the leading study abroad destinations since the 1970s.”
He also explained why it’s a perfect place for students to practice their Spanish speaking skills.
“Linguistically, Costa Rican Spanish is very articulate and well-paced,” Murillo said. “For students who are there to learn the language, the delivery is most beneficial. It’s the clearest to understand. That’s quite important when it comes to learning a language.”
Andrew Buck, a senior from Fayetteville, Tennessee, previously traveled to Spain during a UTC study abroad opportunity and described it as one of the best summers of his life. He said he was excited about another chance to practice his Spanish.
“I didn’t let myself speak any English there,” said Buck, a Spanish major with a minor in professional sales. “It was a full immersion experience, making new friends every day, opening my mind and trying to understand how different cultures think.
“Being able to connect and bond over simple things, you may not have all the words to communicate something, but you can just point and smile at a mountain and be like, ‘How beautiful.’ The little things like sharing meals and the ‘pura vida,’ pure life there.”
Buck said he was also eager to learn about another country’s history and culture.
“It’s a thoroughfare or a land bridge where North America and South America meet. They all funneled through Costa Rica. It’s a mixture of culture,” he explained.
For senior political science major and Spanish minor Jacqueline Alvarado, it provided a slightly different experience. Alvarado is the daughter of first-generation immigrants from Mexico.
The Nashville native said she used her skills as a fluent Spanish speaker to help other students while adding to her vocabulary.
“It was interesting going to Costa Rica and learning new words that they say because they have different phrases I didn’t know,” she said. “But I did have an advantage because I do know Spanish, so I would help my other friends who were there, too.”
Alvarado said her favorite part of the trip was the relationships she built with other UTC students and faculty.
“Anyone who has any interest in an opportunity to go study abroad should do it, especially if it’s a UTC-led, faculty-led program,” she said. “Dr. Murillo was such a good support system throughout the whole trip.”
Buck echoed Alvarado’s sentiment about the chance to go abroad while at UTC.
“I would recommend it to anyone who wants to expand their horizons and to be able to open their mind,” he said. “The United States has a lot of diverse ideas, but when you go and live in a completely new country or even a new continent, you can’t get it from a book, you can’t get it from a movie. You can get subtle ideas, but to really live it is so different. It’s truly life-changing.”
Murillo said he hopes students who went on the trip continue to learn about other cultures and experience different ways of life around the world.
“College as a whole is a time in your life to figure out who you are, to start to figure out what you want to do and really enjoy what it means to be a student, and to truly appreciate what it means to learn,” he said.
“My hope for each one of the students who has ever been in my class is not so much that they remember what it was that we talked about in class, but they walked away with that appreciation for learning. The appreciation for experiencing new things. The appreciation for film and food and culture and art and literature and languages and people and travel.”
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Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures
Photos provided by Dr. Edwin Murillo
