Ecotourism students, including (front, from left) Joslyn
Spurgeon, of Brock University, Canada, Adina Radu, from
Romania, and Linton Churches, of Dunedin, run down a
sandhill at Sandfly Bay, on the Otago Peninsula, yesterday.
Photo by Jane Dawber.
Depriving themselves of the subzero delights of a
Canadian winter to spend part of the summer in Dunedin seemed a
smart move yesterday for a group of overseas students attending
the University of Otago summer school.
Seventeen students from Brock University, in Ontario, Canada,
were among 22 tourism students who made a field trip to
Sandfly Bay, on the Otago Peninsula, yesterday afternoon.
Their home university is situated in the city of St
Catharines and is part of a Unesco Biosphere Reserve.
They also live close to Niagara Falls, an international
tourism feature, which attracts more than 10 million people
each year.
Some Canadian students have studied at the annual Otago
University summer school previously, but this is the first
time a group of Canadians has taken part.
The students, who are taking a third-year paper on
"ecotourism operations", were accompanied on their field trip
by Prof James Higham, who heads the Otago tourism department;
Prof David Brown, of Brock University; and Dr Erlet Cater, a
specialist in ecotourism and sustainable tourism from Reading
University, England, who is teaching much of the paper.
Mark Jemison (20), a third-year BA (Hons) student majoring in
tourism and environment at Brock University, said he was
enjoying the "big improvement" in weather since arriving.
However, that was not the main reason he and his fellow
Canadian students had come - Dunedin was a good place to
study ecotourism issues, he said.
Prof Higham was "excited and enthusiastic" about the chance
to work more closely with staff and students from Brock
University, with which Otago University has an academic
exchange agreement.
The involvement of Dr Cater added to the special occasion, he
said.
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