The class, mostly doctoral students in the Arnold School of Public Health, visited a clinic for migrant workers in Inman, where they worked with patients, and made presentations in Spanish on hygiene, workplace safety, alcohol and drug abuse, and domestic violence to employees of Columbia Farms, the chicken processing plant on U.S. 378 across the Congaree River in West Columbia. In class, the students concentrated on Spanish for their specific fields, learning vocabulary to help them work with patients with hypertension, diabetes, or infectious diseases or with patients who need physical therapy.

For Bettina Drake, the class was “eye opening,” especially the field trips.

“I particularly liked when we went to the clinic for migrant farm workers because I could listen to the patients and understand almost all of what they were saying and it seemed like they could understand what I was saying as well, even if I wasn’t completely grammatically correct,” said Drake, a doctoral candidate in epidemiology.

“If I continue to do little things to help maintain where I am now with my level of Spanish speaking, I should be able to use it to interview patients and make them feel comfortable.”

Jessica Bellinger, a doctoral student in the Arnold School of Public Health’s Department of Health Services Policy and Management, said the outreach component of the course “just blew my mind,” far exceeding her expectations.

“We actually translated for patients, which was a great real-world experience, but we also talked with them about problems they’re having as immigrants,” she said. “We talked about housing, fair pay, and other subjects.”

For Walter Johnson, an undergraduate biology, pre-med major, the class will help him fulfill his life’s goal. “I really want to work in a rural community and help minorities as well as speakers of Spanish,” he said. “My main goal is to help as many people as I can in life.”

Mujica Laughlin structured the course’s community outreach components to increase in difficulty as the class progressed. Before visiting the clinic and Columbia Farms, students interacted with students in USC’s English Programs for Internationals, interviewed a Mexican family at home, and learned about three-way interactions (patient, doctor, and interpreter) from interpreters who work with Hispanic patients in the Columbia area.

In every task, Laughlin was impressed with her students.

“These students are not native speakers of Spanish,” she said. “They have limited language skills, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t greet a patient and get basic information and allay the patient’s anxieties. I want my students to know that they can successfully interact with Hispanics with the language skills they have.

“They were highly motivated, very focused, and very professional. They were fully committed to the tasks and were very successful at them. I hope the outreach experiences were enriching for the students and that they motivated them to continue interacting with Hispanics. Then, perhaps in the future, they will have more confidence, less fear, and continue to engage in and take risks with these types of activities. It has always been very fruitful to expose my students to the people with whom they’ll actually be interacting in the real world.”

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