Professor Pérez has run a fieldschool in Oaxaca, Mexico since 2003. The fieldschool focuses on ethnographic field methods and works with the communities of Santa María Atzompa, Zimatlán de Alvarez, and San Pablo Huixtepec as primary field sites. Atzompa has been Professor Pérez's primary research site since 1994 and students are able to enjoy a warm and inviting reception from the community as well as her personal friends, goddaughters and compadres. At the same time, students become aware of the larger issues that the community is wrestling with including severe health issues resulting from lead exposure, population growth that challenges long-held practices of community involvement and politics, and negotiations of gender and household structures resulting from participation in the global tourist industry. In Zimatlán, students work with the NGO Centeotl, A.C., in providing support for their micro-credit program, amaranth farming and production, nutritional assessment, and health promotion.  And in San Pablo Huixtepec, students work with community leaders and youth groups on a variety of projects that work toward integrating their migrant families in California and those that remain in San Pablo. 
 
Each year the student researchers focus on particular research topics that are discussed with community leaders prior to the summer program. In recent years these have included the study of ceramic production as it relates to lead exposure from the glazing process, a market analysis that focused on food consumption patterns and emerging market opportunities for new foodstuffs, nutritional assessment and outreach, an analysis of the micro-credit program and its future, chapuline production and exportation to the US, archival restoration, preservation and digitization, migration histories, tourism, and an analysis of female business owners' strategies for balancing work, home, and community. Each year students benefit from the previous years' data and are able to tap on established relationships with community members as well as establish new ones. At the end of the 2005 field season, the Presidente del Municipio (the mayor) of Atzompa invited SDSU to return and participate with them in projects that include health promotion on lead and malnutrition, the creation of a community museum that would encompass their prehistory, history, and contemporary lives, and the excavation of parts of Monte Alban that rest on the community's ejido lands. These areas will be the focus for the next three to five years and will require student researchers interested in ethnography, archival research, archaeology, museum studies, and public health.

While in the field students participate in large discussions with key community leaders, conduct individual interviews with community members, and enjoy themselves in local community fiestas while actively learning and practicing research methodologies including social mapping, open and closed ended interviewing, survey development, and life history interviews. The class portion of the fieldschool is conducted at the Instituto Welte para Estudios Oaxaqueños in Oaxaca city where students are able to utilize the facilities of the research library that include the largest collection of works on Oaxaca in Mexico, a wireless internet environment, a private cafe and outdoor garden area. 
 
The class is limited to fifteen students and priority is given to graduate students although many undergraduates who have been brave enough to join us have returned to Oaxaca for graduate research work. Undergraduates interested in developing full research projects have received funding from MIRT and McNair to attend the summer program. Graduate students qualify for travel funds through the Associated Students.

Students involved in the fieldschool have presented their findings at the AAA meetings and at the SfAA meetings. Several graduate students have included or are currently producing theses on their research conducted during the fieldschool that is then refined and developed for additional research in the following summer. Students participating in the program have gone on to publish their findings, obtain various grants including Fulbright and Sally Cassanova Predoctoral Fellowships. 
 
The course is offset by the mundane of living in Oaxaca (see Keith cleaning out the tinaco), personal fun and fieldtrips into surrounding communities and of course, a trip to the beach.