The magnificent view from the balcony of our hotel room in Auckland — the hills, the ocean and the green harbor islands — was such a welcome sight after 22 hours on a plane! But, as faculty advisor — such an amorphous title — to 25 law students who traveled with me to New Zealand as part of Northwestern University School of Law’s International Team Project (ITP), I was a bit worried. Was I a teacher, a chaperone, a guide, or an inconvenience? Whatever. As I tagged along on their in-country interviews, which are the crux of the ITP course, I was treated to a number of adventures along the way.

Expecting to go out for dinner with a member of the National Party’s Women’s Committee, the students studying gender issues and I were treated to an informal dinner around her kitchen table. Joining a Maori group for one meeting, I learned to hongi (the nose-to-nose press that is a sign of greeting and respect — and can be challenge with glasses!). The agriculture group met with the Minister of Agriculture, the third or fourth most powerful politician in the country. We watched one interviewee shear a sheep — a task much harder and stranger than one would expect. Everywhere we went the interviewees were gracious — and there always seemed to be food.

At first I accompanied the students to the interviews to make sure they were asking the right questions and later because I didn’t want to miss out on such fascinating experiences.

Before the two-week visit to the selected country — in this case New Zealand — over spring break, each student in Northwestern’s ITP course participated in weekly meetings. The course will culminate in a group paper of publishable quality combining original research obtained from in-country interviews with secondary source material.

The interviews are the heart of the ITP course and the bulk of the time spent in the country being visited. Students experience opportunities of a lifetime. Those interviewed included cabinet ministers, members of Parliament, members of the Maori Land Court, law professors, founders of extreme sports companies, sheep farmers, forest rangers and women partners in large law firms.

Of course we also enjoyed purely fun sidetrips that involved nature and the environment — whale watching, dolphin gazing, albatross observing (including chicks), and night-time kiwi viewing. Best of all, we saw little blue penguins swimming in to shore and waddling to their nests at Omaru. A group of us took a 12-mile hike up the Routeburn Track in the Fjordlands National Park outside Queenstown to see spectacular waterfalls and vistas of snow-capped mountains. On the hike, students chatted enthusiastically about their interviews and compared notes. (I don’t think this was just because I was stumbling along within earshot.)

We even attended a rugby match, which seemed to these uneducated eyes to consist of a lot of running around and kicking the ball away, with now and then an odd activity called a scrum. Signs supporting Obama for President bobbed among the crowd — illustrating how knowledgeable people in other countries generally are about the United States.

The students, being much less risk-averse than I was, insisted on throwing themselves off various tall things via bungy-jumping. I breathed a sigh of relief when their skydiving flight got cancelled (twice) and was thrilled that there were no serious injuries on the Level 5 whitewater rafting trip.

Upon our return, each group assembled a 30-minute presentation on their research. Not unexpectedly, the focus of topics shifted with new information that the students gained from the interviews.

At the final class meeting, students were asked to fill out evaluations of their own and their team members’ contributions to the project. The results of these evaluations count for 25 percent of their grade. The emphasis is on the team aspect of the project.

Now I am in the midst of grading the group papers. And next year? Well, we’ll see. I have suggested to a couple of 2Ls that they lead an ITP next year. Whether I will go on one, I don’t know … but if I do, maybe I’ll try the bungy-jumping this time.

William A. Chamberlain is assistant dean, Law Career Strategy and Advancement, Northwestern University School of Law.