RCAH in Costa Rica

Program: RCAH Program on Sustainability in Costa Rica

A semester-long education abroad research program on sustainability and civic engagement in Costa Rica 

 

• Are you looking for real training on how to change the world?

• Are you ready to dream new futures together with communities in one of the most beautiful places on earth?

• Spend MSU’s Spring Semester 2026 in Costa Rica learning and applying the latest innovations in community autonomy, resilience, and research.

 

Upcoming Info Sessions:

 

Program Overview

Study Spanish while you get direct guidance, mentorship, support, and training in participatory action research practices. Collaborate with rural and/or indigenous MSU partner communities in diverse tropical environments, from the cloud forests of Monteverde to the coastal mountains of Talamanca in Costa Rica’s Caribbean. In this program available each spring semester, you will get the training and experience you need to be able to identify emergent sustainability challenges and dream new futures with rural communities.

To get ready, you will spend your first six weeks studying Spanish at the edge of the world’s largest private cloud forest reserve, learning from the founders of community resilience and autonomy movements in Latin America and visiting with indigenous and campesinx communities throughout the country.

Then, having learned arts and humanities-based participatory action research methods and selected a community site, you will branch out in teams across the country to use a variety of community facilitation strategies to investigate and respond to emergent challenges faced by residents living among the Pacific mountains and along the country’s Caribbean coast.

Following three months of intense tropical study and experience, you will depart Costa Rica with at least conversational fluency in Spanish and publishable research.

By the end of the program, you will also:

• Complete a major research project that you can submit for consideration in an undergraduate research journal or as a writing sample for graduate school or job applications.

• Put a six-week international internship on your resume or C.V.

• Become a participatory action research practitioner.

 

Cost

This program is priced under $7,500 – competitive with on-campus food and housing – and you are eligible to cancel your spring dorm room contract to participate.

 

Dates

• Applications are due October 15, 2025.

• Daily online meetings start January 19, 2026.

• The in-country Costa Rica portion runs January 24-April 29, 2026.

• You will submit final program assignments to D2L on May 1, 2026.

• If you commit for Spring 2026, you will be eligible for a flight voucher up to $500.

 

Course Credits (minimum 16 credits)

 Check with your advisor

• RCAH 203 course may count as university-required, upper-level integrated arts and humanities credit.
• RCAH325 may meet any community engagement or field study requirements. 
• RCAH325 is an elective course for the new Design Justice minor.
• Lower-level Spanish language students take two Spanish courses totaling eight credits.
• Upper-level Spanish language students take three Spanish courses totaling nine credits.

  

Questions and More Information

Contact Vincent Delgado (delgado1@msu.edu), Director of the RCAH Program on Sustainability in Costa Rica, for more information.

 

About the Program Leader

Vincent Delgado is the founding director of the Michigan State University Residential College in the Arts and Humanities Program on Sustainability in Costa Rica (where he is permanently posted). Co-founder of the Refugee Development Cente in Lansing, Michigan, past co-chair of the Power of We Consortium, and a former MSU Associate Dean for Civic Engagement, Vincent Delgado works globally on migration and sustainability; innovative civic engagement projects; and large systems change networks.

Initially a print journalist covering humanitarian issues in Central America, labor in Mexico, and politics and local government in the United States, Delgado is published in major newspapers, travel magazines and international academic journals. As a one-time Refugee Resettlement Director at Resettlement Director at St. Vincent Catholic Charities, Delgado led resettlement of Afghan families and the Lost Boys of Sudan following 9/11. Fluent in Spanish he has taught English, community college political science and served as a Lansing City Council member. He currently serves as a board member of the prestigious Monteverde Institute, Girls for Success in Hone Creek Costa Rica and the Lansing Refugee Development Center, which he co-founded in 2001.

Delgado has conducted research and taught at the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities since serving on the founding advisory board in 2007. Areas of interest include nonprofit management; international partnership ecosystems; and civic engagement curriculum development and assessment. He wrote the documentary cookbook A Taste of Freedom: A Culinary Journey with America’s Refugees (2003) and was International Humanitarian of the Year for the American Red Cross Great Lakes Region (2005/2006)

He lives in Monteverde, Costa Rica, with his wife and photojournalist, Becky Shink, and two sons, Diego (12) and Pablo (16). Check out his new website, in collaboration with Jeno Rivera and Dylan Miner: www.radicalreciprocity.com.