Gina Liu CC’27 doesn’t shy away from difficult conversations. A medical humanities major on the pre-med track, she’s on her way to becoming a physician; she knows that understanding the context and environment of a patient’s health is just as important as treating the symptoms they exhibit.

“You need to have that perspective, and learn where the patient is coming from and be able to have that dialogue,” she says.

Liu found the space to explore these interdisciplinary issues and more in the Global Columbia Collaboratory: The Gambia program this past summer. Founded by Dean of Undergraduate Global Engagement Shannon Marquez, the program fosters cross-cultural communication and encourages students to think about impact of global issues and how to tackle them at the community level. Through both a virtual component and a three-week in-person experience, Liu says she found it rewarding to think about structural inequalities and their local solutions.

“This program pushes you to have hard conversations,” she says. “When you lean into it, you really do learn a lot.”

Hosted in the coastal town of Gunjur, students in the Collaboratory explore how local nonprofits, communities, NGOs and other organizations are working to advance the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals in The Gambia. Beyond contemporary policy, they also think critically about the circumstances that have led to the challenges faced by many underresourced countries. Liu says she appreciated how comprehensive the program was and how the pre-travel virtual meetings and readings prepared her to tackle these issues head-on during her fieldwork.

“Learning about things on an academic level is important, but this is where you see how actions have an impact, especially in a small country,” she says.

Liu shared more about what a typical day in The Gambia looked like this past August.

Mornings

“We’d generally have breakfast around 8:15, and then leave for our first programs of the day around 9:30 or 10:00. We worked with the nonprofit CETAG, a community-based ecotourism group. Its main projects are sea turtle conservation, water quality and indigenous tree farming. We went with the sea turtle group on its patrol of a 16-kilometer strip of beach; none of us finished the full walk. But the group gathers data on the nests and can relocate eggs to a safer location if need be.”

Afternoons

“Our programs typically ran for two to three hours, and then we’d head back to the lodge for lunch. After that, we’d leave for our afternoon activity. In addition to the conservation projects, there’s a strong healthcare aspect to the experience. We worked with one group that offered blood pressure and blood sugar screenings to the community, and we also went to a maternal health clinic. That experience really stuck with me. The midwife had one of the students who knew how to do an ultrasound teach me how to do it. I had never done an ultrasound, and then within 10 minutes I was feeling around this patient’s belly and checking for the fetal heartbeat. This patient was under my care, which is a very vulnerable position for someone to be in. It really opened my eyes to what being a doctor is about.”

Evenings

“Around 6:00, we’d go back to the lodge for dinner. Some days when you’re doing fieldwork, you go back to the lodge and you’re exhausted. But the program is designed to push you to deconstruct your biases, and I feel like grappling with those big questions is what makes it so special.”