Tourism, Community Health, and Sustainability

Catalog description

In this course students will examine the potential role of tourism in mitigating or exacerbating health disparities and environmental degradation in rural poor areas. The course endorses an academic ethic of engaged scholarship. Students will be asked to make original contributions to participatory development scholarship, and they will be asked to collaborate with community partners on an applied project addressing tourism, health disparities and environmental degradation in an economically depressed rural community. Consistent with the engaged nature of this course, we will travel to rural communities to meet stakeholders, collect data, and provide coaching/training to tourism micro-entrepreneurs.