Experiental learning: student opportunities range from a service trip to Guatemala to an internship with MTV.

• Position: EXTRAORDINARY EDUCATION

The hands-on, out of the classroom and into the real world learning approach that High Point University employs in its Experiential Learning programs has sent students to some amazing places while preparing them for a lifetime of opportunity and service to others.

Take HPU student Dylan Robinson, for example. Robinson was born in Guatemala, but he was adopted by his parents at eight months old and brought to live in Minneapolis.

Robinson in Guatemala

Last October, Dylan traveled back to his native country with 10 fellow students to make a difference. The group installed closed-fire stoves in 80 homes in the village of Paquilla. They rotated on four work teams - the base crew that put cinder blocks and large parts in place, the chimney crew, the tile crew and the paint crew. As a result, families in the village no longer have to live in homes polluted by smoke-filled air, which has been linked to premature blindness, and they don't have to fear that their children will fall into the open fire pits that they previously used.

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"It was a great opportunity, not just to go back and visit but to actually help the people where I came from," Robinson says.

Opportunities like this - hands-on experiences that provide students with knowledge and skills they wouldn't have received otherwise - are all managed by the Office of Experiential Learning. Other opportunities include internships, civic engagement, study abroad programs and The President's Life Skills Seminar, a course that Dr. Qubein teaches to freshmen about purposeful living in a changing world.

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Larmarca at MTV

Nicole Lamarca also benefited from an experiential learning experience when she...