Beyond paradise: The Bahamas becomes a classroom for Tulane students

For Jolene Pinder, the Bahamas is more than the surf, sand and sun that draw millions of visitors each year. The island nation is part of her family history, her childhood and, increasingly, her understanding of leadership.

Pinder, a professor of practice with the School of Liberal Arts’ Strategy, Leadership and Analytics Minor, could not think of a better destination for a two-week experiential course exploring leadership, sustainability and culture.

“I have spent so much time in the Bahamas,” she said. “And one day I woke up and said, ‘I really should start a summer abroad class in the Bahamas.’”

Following a year of research, planning and meetings with Bahamian educators, Beyond Paradise: Leadership and Sustainability in The Bahamas became a reality this past summer, with 11 Tulane students participating. Their majors ranged from environmental studies and engineering to finance, filmmaking and environmental biology.

At The Island School and Cape Eleuthera Institute, students learned about aquaponics, coral and sustainability research. They performed trail maintenance with the One Eleuthera Foundation and tended compost at a small regenerative farm. Along the way, they learned from farmers, fishers, scientists, educators, nonprofit leaders and entrepreneurs.

The students also traveled to Spanish Wells and Nassau, where they met Tulane alumna Kimberly Furnish, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy.

Pinder’s family roots in Spanish Wells date back centuries. Her parents and siblings lived in the Bahamas during the 1970s before returning to the United States shortly before Pinder was born.

Her childhood experiences in the Bahamas shaped her identity and approach to leadership in ways she did not fully understand until decades later.

Drawing on an experiential learning framework inspired by Pinder’s participation in The Island School’s Educators Conference, the course invited students to develop their own leadership potential while learning from Bahamians whose work puts sustainability into practice.

Pinder intentionally designed the course as a low-tech, largely analog experience. Students left laptops behind, worked from printed reading packets and wrote reflections in paper journals. During their first week at The Island School on Eleuthera, they put their phones away, except for two hours of free time each afternoon.

When Pinder heard them talking and laughing together, she knew “this was the right decision.”

The goal was to encourage students to be fully present, not just with one another but also with the people they met and the places they were studying. For Pinder, who has served as executive director of several nonprofit organizations, building genuine relationships and being present with others are also fundamental to leadership.

The course also asked students to question the familiar image of the Bahamas as simply a tropical paradise. Through critical tourism studies, the group examined how that image can obscure challenges facing island communities and the complexities of an economy heavily influenced by tourism.

As the classroom expanded across the Bahamas, students also examined their own strengths and considered how they might become agents of change in their communities.

Pinder said that response came through in their final papers and evaluations, with students responding especially strongly to learning outside a traditional classroom and directly from the people and communities around them.  

Among them was Shantay Hill, a junior majoring in finance at the A. B. Freeman School of Business, who said the trip helped her understand her own leadership potential.  

“As I continue to grow as a leader in the world and my own community, I carry with me the lessons learned on this trip,” she wrote. “As I start traveling the world, I take with me the idea of traveling in a way that respects local communities, values their history and culture and leaves a positive impact rather than simply taking from a place.”