PROGRAM DIRECTORS
Brandon Fitzsimmons teaches accelerated, pre-AP Spanish to gifted middle schoolers at Sycamore School and Medical Spanish at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. He has traveled to Ecuador over 15 times, leading trips of middle schoolers and college students alike. Since 2020, he has taught, trained, and tutored over 100 National Spanish Exam medalists.
“Over the past several years, it has been a joy and privilege to see the Sycamore-Ecuador summer trip grow and blossom into an unforgettable first step (for most students) of immersing themselves abroad in the Spanish language. In the summers of 2022, 2023 and 2025, I was able to witness over 50 of my favorite people - the students I know, love, and teach daily at Sycamore and a handful of their parents and siblings - experience one of the most magical places I've known, the very epicenter of my bilingual breakthrough: Cuenca, Ecuador.
María de Lourdes Larrea (Executive Director of Fundación Taylor del Ecuador), our primary contact and programmatic partner, and I began to discuss designing a longer summer immersive program for high schoolers, similar to the IU Honors Program in Spain (an opportunity that has been very instrumental in many of my former students' continued progress to bilingual proficiency). Upon hearing of the IUHP's indefinite hiatus this past August, she and I knew that June 2026 was an ideal time to launch our pilot HS program in Ecuador.” - Brandon Fitzsimmons
This Study Abroad program is proudly presented by
María de Lourdes Larrea is the Executive Director of Fundación Taylor del Ecuador. Since 2006, she has designed and facilitated over 50 academic immersion trips to Cuenca, Ecuador for thousands of U.S. students - from middle schoolers to MBA candidates. She and her team are fully bilingual in Spanish and English.
