March of 2024 my colleague Dr. Kimberly Warren from the Psychology department and I traveled with 12 students on a service learning experience in Guatemala.  The students learned to measure blood pressure, BMI and test for sugar in the blood. They worked at a health fair, made presentations to school children and visited the surrounding villages to make home care visits to families with young children. We went on numerous cultural immersion field trips and learned about the traditional artisanry and way of Mayan life in the highlands of Guatemala.  We studied Spanish for three hours each day with a private teacher and applied the language everyday as most Mayans speak Spanish as a second language and do not speak much English.  The trip for me was one of networking. I spent time visiting two potteries in San Antonio Palopó, a very small village known for its pottery.  The style of ceramics that is practiced is more western in that the pottery was started by a man named Ken Edwards in the 1990s.  Ken retired from a career as a studio potter after emigrating to Mexico where he had a 25 year career producing high fire stoneware pottery.  He moved to Guatemala to retire however, he began another pottery business that he passed on to the many families that he trained in high fire, slip decorated ceramics over the course of his 20 year tenure in ‘retirement’ in San Antonio.  He has forever changed lives and his legacy lives on in the businesses and ceramics produced in Guatemala today. I had the pleasure of meeting Ken Edwards in 2020 and, if not for the pandemic, would have made a return trip that summer to lay the foundation for study abroad trips with art students.