Program Overview

This is what the School for International Training (SIT) has to say about the program:

The SIT Study Abroad Mongolia School building occupies a semi-detached house located in Bayanzurkh District, in the eastern part of Ulaanbaatar (UB). The program base has been established to give students a common area for both formal and informal meetings, regular classes and as a central office and resource space for program participants and staff. It is comprised of several rooms for small group classes and whole group lectures. The second floor of the building is occupied with program offices.

It will take you approximately half an hour to walk from the hotel you will be staying at to class. UB has regularly running public buses and trolleybuses. Bus routes run almost everywhere in the UB area. There are also private passenger vans running along the public bus routes.

Our daily schedule is busy, beginning at 9 a.m. and continuing to 3-4 p.m. Days usually start with a pair of language classes that are followed by lectures or site visits.

Our program focuses on “nomadic culture and globalization” in Mongolia. Through this guiding theme, we will investigate the process by which traditional and historical culture adjusts and manages the problems and trends of contemporary fast-track development. Mongolia is a relatively small developing country, which has been thrust onto the world stage politically, economically and socially. This is crucial during a time when the U.S., World Bank, ADB, UN, etc. are becoming ever more effective in domestic workings of countries and when cultural and bio-diversity is threatened by commercial investment.
Mongolia’s belated entrance on the modern global scene means both that its development process is fairly young and that the country as a whole is unusually self- conscious about which trends it sets into action. Mongolia aims to develop balanced policies open to Western involvement with strong nationalism spreading over a vast countryside and rooted in a culture that is still pastoral.

Among the temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere, few nations compare to Mongolia in the size, diversity, and health of its natural ecosystems. Covering 1.564 million square kilometers, Mongolia encompasses an area larger than Britain, France, Germany and Italy combined. It is the seventh largest country in Asia and one of the largest land-locked countries in the world. With only 2.7 million inhabitants, its population density, 1.7 persons per sq. kilometer, is the lowest in Asia.
Although threatened by commercial exploitation, Mongolia still contains relatively intact examples of Asia’s deserts, steppe forests, mountains, and rare species of wild creatures and plants that inhabit them. The traditional culture of the semi-nomadic herder still thrives, as one-third of the country’s people still move by horse and camel, herding their sheep, cattle, and goats through an annual cycle of pastures, governed by the limits of natural systems. To consider culture within Mongolia, one must consider the natural surrounding environment. The two are interdependent, continually needing to adapt to the needs and demands of each other.

Our program will explore the degree to which local cultures have been shaped by the geographic and environmental features of their surrounding landscapes, as well as how the ever-increasing demands of a developing country and growing population have put pressure on the abundance and availability of natural resources. The country now faces the challenge of developing the nation’s infrastructure and economy while at the same time protecting the natural environment.