West Virginia University first offered Economics of Cuba during the first summer session of 1999. Since then, it has been offered every year. The course includes a nine-day visit to Cuba. The course will again be offered in Spring 2004 with the trip taking place over spring break.

Bill Trumbull of the Department of Economics is the primary course instructor. There will also be lectures by faculty in other departments, such as Geology and Geography and Political Science. In addition, students will be required to take HIST 242 -- Latin America: Reform and Revolution, which will focus on the Latin American context. The instructor will be Professor Joe Super, an expert on Latin America.  Both Professors Trumbull and Super will travel to Cuba with the students. In Havana, faculty of the University of Havana will lecture on various topics, including the current economic situation in Cuba, Cuba/U.S. relations, and prospects for the future. There will be additional lectures during field trips to government agencies, a farm, and a foreign investment project.

We will be housed in guesthouses run by the University of Havana in the Miramar district (just down the road from the Mexican ambassador's residence). Miramar was a rich residential district before the revolution, and many of the homes there are very big and very beautiful. Most of the embassies and many foreign firms are located there now.

We will arrive on Friday, March 12. Saturday and Sunday will be for rest and recreation. We will visit one of the spectacular beaches just minutes east of Havana (Playas del Este), tour Habana Vieja, the old walled city, which is being carefully restored, and visit the forts that once protected Havana Harbor. Monday through Friday will be devoted to lectures and field trips arranged by the University of Havana's Center for the Study of the United States (Centro de Estudios sobre los Estados Unidos). The lectures will reinforce what the students learn in Morgantown, and will provide them with the Cuban perspective. Field trips will include a tour of the University of Havana, conducted by the Historian of the University, and a trip into the country to visit a collective farm. Saturday will be a day to explore the city. We will also have more beach time, and perhaps a quick visit to Cojimar, the old fishing village that was the setting for Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. We will return on Sunday.

The course has been a fabulous success. The professors and students attend lectures and go on field trips together, eat meals together, explore together, drink Cuban rum and smoke Cuban cigars together, have long discussions about life experiences and dreams. Few of the students  ever know each other before the course. They quickly become fast friends. And what they learn in just a couple of weeks is far more than they would have learned in any two courses during a regular semester. For instance, they learn about economic crisis in Cuba while still in Morgantown, but then they got to see the crisis for themselves, talk to the people who have to struggle through the crisis every day, look for themselves at the crumbling infrastructure, see the foreign investment that Cuba is pinning so much hope on... It is a heady experience. 

Following is a tentative outline of the program in Cuba.