Connect with Communities

Broadening horizons through exploration and investigation

From a home base as small as one city block, Saint Mary’s students and faculty are reaching beyond the borders of the campus to make a difference locally and globally.

And you know good works are being done when the United Nations takes notice.

Geography professor Dr. Cathy Conrad and International Development Studies masters students Mira Lyon, Dustin Martin and Camaro West were recognized in a newsletter by the United Nations Environment Programme this year. The article, picked up from the Panafrican News Agency, highlighted the group’s green mapping project in The Gambia as one of several newsworthy environmental initiatives worldwide.

Dr. Conrad and the students, who won a video contest to earn the trip, introduced locals to the concept of community mapping, and then asked the locals to highlight places of environmental importance and potential concern. They were also encouraged to map places of cultural and historical significance to them. What the Saint Mary’s team didn’t realize was, for some of the communities, it was the first mapping of this kind that had ever been done.

“The experience had an impact on us and the people in the communities we visited,” Conrad says. “We were grateful and so were they. It was an overwhelming experience for everyone. They were so welcoming to us.”

While Dr. Conrad and her team work on the surface, a group of archeology professors and students dig a little deeper.

The international team of students and professors has made some important discoveries this summer during an archaeological dig at San Felice, the site of a Roman villa built more than 2,000 years ago outside the city of Gravina in Puglia, Italy.

The 12-member team, led by Dr. Myles McCallum of Saint Mary's University and Dr. J. vanderLeest of Mount Allison University included students from across Canada, the United States and Great Britain. 

“What we discovered is the civilization in this particular area was at the end of its life; the people were in starvation mode,” Dr. McCallum says. “They were eating weeds to survive. Now, we’ll work to figure out why.”

The students excavated the remains of a Roman villa complex that included a rural residence and agricultural site. The villa was constructed in the first century BC and abandoned in the late second or early third century AD.

“To have the opportunity to work on real research and be part of an international team is unique for these students,” Dr. McCallum says. “It sparks the desire for investigation to explain what they have found.”