SIT Alums to lead inaugural gap year program

Co-founded by SIT Study Abroad alum, Robin Pendoley (Bolivia 1999), Thinking Beyond Borders (TBB) recently hired SIT graduate student and EIL alum/ group leader, Nina Rubin, to help lead their inaugural gap year program.

With a similar philosophy to World Learning’s, TBB is a 35-week program to educate youth about the economic, political, and cultural realities of our world while empowering them with the tools to create proactive social change.  The gap year students participating in the program travel the world, living with homestay families and working with locally-based NGOs in 5 separate countries.  The curriculum challenges participants to examine their assumptions about the world, its challenges, and themselves.

Nina comes to TBB in the midst of completing a Masters of Arts in International Education from the SIT Graduate Institute. With her course work completed, the coming year will serve not only as a powerful application of both theoretical and practical learning, but also as the practicum component of her education. Nina has extensive experience as an international educator having led multiple trips for the Experiment in International Living in Australia, the Navajo Nation, and currently in Belize. She also spent a summer in French Polynesia as a Trip Leader for the International Camper Exchange Program of Becket-Chimney Corners Camp, located in Becket, MA.

These experiences give her a deep understanding of the logistics of student travel, the power of well-facilitated experiential learning, and the importance of cultural sensitivity. Nina has also served as an Outdoor Educator with Outward Bound. In this position she helped students build skills in healthy risk-taking, communication, and personal development, all while leading five-day wilderness backpacking courses.

Clearly, Nina’s teaching background is both impressive and incredibly well suited to the varied and specific demands of a TBB program. However, she also brings skills and interests from her educational and professional careers that further enhance her ability to enrich the experience of TBB students. Completing her undergraduate career at Wesleyan University, Nina earned a BA with High Honors in Music, focusing specifically on ethnomusicology. During this period, she spent a year in Zimbabwe, researching mbira with Shona musicians, first with the Pitzer College in Zimbabwe program, then as an independent traveler.

As a professional, she has written and edited both for Fodor’s Travel Publications and as a freelance writer. She even has experience in film production and post-production.  Without a doubt, Nina’s passion for following her curiosity as a learner, capacity for expressing herself in various media, and detail-oriented approach to presentation and communication make her indispensible as a member of the 2008-09 TBB Teaching Team.