Despite the United States’ embargo on Cuba, many Massachusetts universities — including Suffolk University, Emerson College and UMass — run study abroad programs there. WGBH's Morning Edition Host Joe Mathieu spoke with UMass Lowell Professor Julian Zabalbeascoa, who leads a cultural immersion in partnership with the University of Havana, about the importance of academic ties between the U.S. and Cuba. He was joined by two of his students, Eliana Casamassima and Corrina Quaglietta. The transcript below has been edited for clarity.

Joe Mathieu: Professor, you're [part of] one of several academic programs teaching in Cuba. What is it you want your students to learn there?

Professor Julian Zabalbeascoa: I think one of the big takeaways with any study abroad program is to understand that people are people, wherever we go. We have been told for a very long time something very specific about Cuba as a country and its government, and by extension its people. And in the same respect, Cuba has been telling its own story about the United States and our government, and by extension its people.

Mathieu: Eliana, you were part of this whole thing [and you said] you fell in love with Cuba. You went somewhere most Americans are not allowed to go. How do you get your head around that?

Eliana Casamassima: I suppose when we first went, I was a little bit wary because I had never seen any place like Cuba before. I'd been told it was kind of place stuck in time, as if time had froze, and it was a bit scary for us, as American students going to a place where we didn't know the norms. We didn't know how we were going to be received by the people. [But] everybody was willing to show us, you know, where to go to find this, and what we should be eating that's better than what we had in our hands at the time.

Mathieu: And you grew up around here?

Casamassima: Yes, I'm from Mansfield, Massachusetts.

Mathieu: Corrina, you just got back in January?

Corrina Quaglietta: Yeah. I feel like there was something really special about it since it's so foreign to us. For me, as someone who's coming back from Cuba, [it's important] to inform people around here what it's actually like.

Mathieu: What is the truth going on over there?

Quaglietta: It's a bunch of really caring, sweet people. I never had a problem.

Mathieu: Did this make you feel more politically active? And I would ask you that knowing that there are major human rights issues with this government still today in Cuba.

Quaglietta: I believe that it would be amazing for that embargo to be lifted. I think that it's something that most people should be able to see and feel comfortable going to see. There's just people in the world. And we would see people that would say, "I understand our governments might not be friends, but you and I are friends."

Mathieu: [Professor,] do you warn them about some of the things they're going to see? Obviously this is a very different type of culture — a lot of people are living with no money [and] have no access to resources, and they're dealing with an oppressive government.

Zabalbeascoa: It isn't like going to a country in Europe where you don't necessarily need of all that sort of context to be developed before you go. But Cuba is such a mysterious, confounding and fantastical kind of place that you really do [need to prepare] in order to fully appreciate the experience that you're having. You should have done your research.

‘Morning Edition on the Road’ in Cuba is made possible with support from the Museum of Science.