Study abroad programs have become widely available and are encouraged for undergraduate students, especially in the environmental studies field. Students are given the opportunity to apply their classroom knowledge in an experiential and practical manner, learning new methods in environmental research and engaging with fellow students, professors, local and foreign researchers, and community members (Hale 2021). Many of the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that work in collaboration with study abroad programs are embedded in countries and communities in the Global South. This study investigates how undergraduate students’ environmentalism shifts (or not) after participating in one such study abroad experience, the Tulane Interdisciplinary Research and Action (TIERA) program. This study is centered on a small cohort-based group of undergraduate students, organized by professors in the School of Science and Engineering at Tulane University, with the goal of introducing students to community-engaged scholarship and the issues and solutions surrounding applied conservation. Created in 2021, the program works in conjunction with the Fundación para la Conservación de los Andes Tropicales (FCAT), a conservation NGO in the Chocó Rainforest in Ecuador. Data were collected in June and the fall (September-November) of 2022 using questionnaires, semi- structured interviews before and after the study abroad experience, and participant observation. Findings indicate that all TIERA students shifted towards community-centered ii environmentalism when they were exposed to certain student experiences, including shadowing research projects and participating in collaborative workshops, that contextualized conservation projects in the Global South and placed local community members as “experts” in the field. Despite these findings, many of the study abroad experiences in the TIERA program were founded upon the mainstream environmentalism of the Global North, causing confusion and disillusion in environmentalism. Understanding why some students were able to reframe their environmentalism, and what obstacles confined shifts in other students is key to understanding the role of study abroad programs in higher education.