Just hours south of Arizona’s border, an educational program is shaping how students understand environmental sustainability, social justice, and climate challenges. Since 1991, students, alumni, and faculty from Prescott College have traveled to the Kino Bay Center for Cultural and Ecological Studies for hands-on sustainability education.

But it all started in the late 1960s.

“A group of students started coming down here with professors from Prescott College to study invertebrate biology, to kayak around Tiburón Island, to do photography, and study Spanish,” recalled Kino Bay Center Director Lorayne Meltzer. “They were a group of hippie kids with long hair, bandanas, holes in their bellbottoms — pretty cool by any measure.”

Back then, classes would camp on the beach, and through that shared experience, a deep and trusting relationship was formed with the Comcaac (Seri) people. In the late 1970s, the students started camping near the marina, where over time, they became friends with the local fisherman. Through those early relationships, the Kino Bay Center was able to establish itself in the area.

Now, more than 50 years later, Kino Bay is continuing to host Prescott College students as well as Arizona educators, administrators, and schools that are searching for meaningful, real-world learning opportunities.

Programs like this offer students an experience that goes beyond the classroom walls. From complex environmental challenges, cross-cultural collaboration, and community-driven solutions, the Kino Bay Center provides an accessible, immersive setting where students learn by doing.

A group of Prescott College Ph.D. students, alumni, and faculty spent a week at the center engaging in fieldwork, collaboration, and cultural exchange along the Gulf of California. Their experience highlights how place-based learning can deepen understanding and better prepare students to address challenges facing Arizona and the Southwest.

Real Life Learning

During their time at the center students get to reflect on sustainability challenges ranging from climate justice to food systems and conservation. For master’s student Coralie Palmer, the experience reshaped how she understands sustainability.

“Being in Bahía de Kino deepened my understanding of sustainability in a really transformative way,” she said. “Seeing community-led programs in action built on long-term relationships, trust, and shared stewardship really highlighted for me how sustainability is as much about people and continuity as it is about science.”

She pointed to programs like Grupo Tortuguero de Bahía de Kino as examples of how long-term ecological monitoring and community collaboration can create lasting impact, an approach that can apply to environmental work in Arizona as well.

Culture and Conservation Interwoven

Programs are designed and dependent on group preferences but during this trip, students joined local residents in celebrating Carnival in a parade that went from Kino Nuevo to Kino Viejo. The parade featured a truck-size whale puppet, seabird costumes, and handmade fish created by local youth.

Alumna and founder of HEROTheater, Elisa Bocanegra, who helped lead the artistic effort of the Kino Bay Center’s float, said the experience reflected the deep connection between culture and environmental stewardship.

“The community of Bahía de Kino is already full of its own stories, stories rooted in family, in pride for their culture, and in a shared responsibility to care for the ocean and the land that surrounds them,” Bocanegra said. “Theater felt like a natural extension. I was honored to lead them in this process.”

The event demonstrated how art and stories can support conservation efforts by bridging communities together and raising awareness.

Beyond the Classroom

Students explored the region’s ecosystems through fieldwork, including boat trips to nearby islands where they observed seabirds, dolphins, and fragile marine habitats. They learned about conservation challenges such as overfishing and shrimp farming, habitat protection, and the complexities of balancing environmental sustainability with local livelihoods.

They also spent time with members of the Comcaac community, whose ancestral lands include the surrounding desert and islands. Just like in the 1960s, community members opened up their doors and shared traditional ecological knowledge, including basket weaving and the use of medicinal plants

Meltzer, who has worked at the center for over 20 years, emphasized that these types of experiences are critical for students studying sustainability.

“It’s important for students to ground theoretical learning in real-world, community-based experiences,” she said. “You can study issues like shrimp trawling in a classroom, but you don’t fully understand them until you see the environmental impact, talk to the fishermen, and understand the economic and regulatory pressures they face.”

She added that this deeper understanding often changes how students approach environmental challenges back home.

“Students leave inspired by the people they meet and the ecosystems they experience,” she said. “They begin to see how they can apply those lessons to their own communities in Arizona.”

A Model for Arizona Schools

Programs at the Kino Bay Center are not limited to Prescott College. Schools, educators, and youth programs across Arizona can partner with the center to provide students with hands-on learning that connect language, science and critical thinking.

These programs offer a model for engaging students in ways that go beyond textbooks, helping build critical thinking skills, cultural awareness, and a deeper understanding of environmental systems that directly impact life in the Southwest.

As Sarah Fox, Core Faculty in PhD noted, the impact extends far beyond the trip itself.

“My time at the Kino Bay Center was enriching in countless ways,” she said. “Chief among them was the way it affirmed that knowledge production is most effective when it takes place at the nexus of community and academia, informed by care for place, people, and the greater than human world.”

As Arizona faces growing challenges related to water, climate, and rapid urban sprawl, experiences like those in Bahía de Kino can help prepare students to think more holistically about solutions.

Just across the border, the Kino Bay Center offers Arizona students a powerful opportunity: to move beyond theory and into the kind of learning that shapes future leaders.