Visitors get a taste of SIT’s diversity

May 9th, 2017   |   SIT Graduate Institute

Open House attendees in Vermont got a taste of campus diversity last month with an international tea expo. At six locations across campus, staff members, a professor, and a student shared tea from their home countries.

Visitors started the tour by sampling tea from India and learning a little about varieties of teas cultivated there.

At the next stop, two staff members from SIT Study Abroad, the branch of School for International Training that provides study abroad programs for undergraduates, served tea from East Africa. The staff, from Cameroon and Ghana, provided hot lemongrass tea and cold, sweetened hibiscus tea, a popular medicinal tea in multiple African countries.

In the admissions office, two admissions counselors shared tea from Kazakhstan and China and demonstrated the proper way to serve it.

The group next visited one of the dormitories on campus, where an MA candidate in Sustainable Development from Japan offered Japanese green tea.

In one of the classrooms, visitors sampled mint tea from Morocco and got a short lesson on the history of tea in there from Mokhtar Bouba, assistant professor in the self-designed Intercultural Service, Leadership, and Management degree program.

The final stop on the tour was the alumni engagement building, where visitors tasted tea and homemade treats from Bolivia.

In spite of the rain that day, the visitors enjoyed getting acquainted with a wide variety of teas and the SIT community members who served them.