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Faculty Testimonials
How leading study abroad programs has improved my courses and scholarship: Faculty testimonials
(September 2005)
Prof. Andreas Kiryakakis, German:
- I have been able to provide students with more current and relevant issues that affect the European community.
- Discussions in class now often focus on issues from a “European” perspective.
- I am now better informed about contemporary literary works and critical theory which I incorporate into my literature courses.
- I can now speak with greater authority about present day German cultural issues.
- I have gained a greater appreciation of the changes in the German language which I can convey to my students. This includes the idiomatic use of language that is not generally covered in text books.
- I am now able to help student who wish to study abroad on their own much better.
- The resources I collected while abroad have become valuable additions to the lack of hands on materials in the USA.
- Collegial conversations and professional activities abroad have given my approach to teaching a “second wind.”
Prof. Greg Schroeder, History:After directing the Austria Program, I have redesigned my HIST 344 Modern Germany course to provide more content on the Habsburg Empire/Austria. I did this to support the study abroad program and offer history materials to study abroad students before they go or after they return.
Prof. Brian Larkin, History: Most importantly, I’ve decided to promote the study abroad programs in my History 120 Latin American Experience class more consciously by including extensive reading materials on Guatemala and Chile. For instance, I have students in this course read Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits, a lengthy novel that creative narrates the history of 20th-century Chile from the perspective of four generations of one family. I also use substantial selections from I, Rigoberta Menchú, a testimonial of a Mayan Indian woman from Guatemala about her political activity there in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I deliberately selected these texts not only because they directly address important class themes but also because they allow me to promote CSB/SJU’s Latin American study abroad programs.
Second, I will include more discussion of the development and course of liberation theology in Nicaragua from the 1960s to the 1990s in History 323 Religion in Latin America the next time I teach it. Before traveling to Nicaragua I read much of this topic and while in Nicaragua I spoke with many people about liberation theology. I will certainly incorporate these new insights into my future classes.
Prof. Jeanne Cook, Communication: Co-directing the China program in 1995 and 1998, as well as teaching courses in intercultural communication to Chinese graduate students in the English Department at Southwest University, has significantly strengthened my intercultural communication course, my gender and communication course, and assisted me in creating a brand new course called “Language, Gender, and Culture.”
My credibility is also enhanced when I can share both theoretical knowledge as well as actual experiences with my students. For example, I share specific theoretical information and examples from my lived experience in China when covering units on nonverbal cues, face, worldview, hetereosexism, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, proverbs & idioms, translation problems, cultural uses of time and space, approaches to health and healing, educational systems, culture shock, and sex roles.
I also feel more effective when I make my pitch to students to study abroad because I’ve experienced studying abroad both as an undergraduate in a western culture (Germany) and as a faculty member in China.
Prof. Denise Meijer, Nursing: My course content has been influenced in that I include many more trans-cultural examples in didactic and laboratory settings than I did before I had the opportunity to direct a study abroad nursing program.
Specific examples often are drawn from my clinical and life experiences in South Africa. I frequently compare and contrast practice situations to illustrate global similarities and differences and thus improve learning of specific and general nursing, psychosocial, health economics, and nursing leadership concepts aside from promoting improved life skills for the young adults we are educating and working with.
Aside from the regular nursing curriculum, I have also written a Cultural Selective course that specifically deals with women’s health in the developing world. I felt very humbled by my South African experiences after observing how poorly woman were treated and had to overcome major barriers to access medical, social, and personal help in their communities and still were so strong and believed in each other.
I believe that our nursing students need to be made aware of the poor opportunities for women in the developing countries and my course will address that need.
Prof. Joe Desjardin, Philosophy: Directing our study abroad in London has contributed to virtually every course I teach. In every introductory-level course I teach, students read some primary source text written by at least one of the philosophers we studied in London: Hobbes, Locke, Adam Smith, Hume, Marx, Bentham, and Mill. The London class included historical and social aspects that I had not previously covered on campus, and included walking tours and site visits in the London area associated with these social & political thinkers. When I teach them now on campus, I also bring in the historical and social contexts that I previously ignored.
Stories of British politics compared to US politics now highlight many upper-division classes I teach in political philosophy and philosphy of law. Just this morning I used the example of the prime minister's question period in the House of Commons as a means to elucidate the type of "gadfly" political challenges that Socrates alludes to in the Apology. In that same class, I talked about Mill's On Liberty and 19th century progressive politics in London as a further way to explain what Socrates was after in the Apology.
My business ethics classes have benefited both from my own wider understanding of European business, and from my own research that has developed from the contacts I made while in London. I have even co-authored an essay that appeared in a European business ethics journal with a London colleague on US-British approaches to teaching ethics in business classes.
My Senior Seminar class on sustainable living and sustainable development has also benefited. My favorite example involves the use of the "ecological footprint analysis," a method for determining the ecological impact that one's lifestyle has on the earth. This analysis can be done on-line and students are asked to do their own before coming to class. At the start of class I do my own, projected up on the screen for all to see. The Desjardins household makes a large impact on the earth, alas. Then I re-do the analysis for the DesJardins family while we lived in London. A very powerful lesson then appears on the screen: living in a small 4 room flat in London, relying on public transportation or walking, buying food at local farmers markets, etc., reduced our ecological footprint by two-thirds! And, I remind the students, we lived a much fuller, happier, culturally interesting and enjoyable life in London! I also use several examples of European, and particularly British, industries (BP, Royal Dutch Shell as 2 big examples) to highlight how European business has already begun the evolution towards sustainability.
Prof. Art Spring, Education: The work in the senior seminar during the study abroad was very important for me for the following three reasons:
1. It allowed me entrance into general education. My previous work here had been in my discipline and I was glad to be appealing to the intelligence of students from a variety of disciplines.
2. I was able to divide the senior seminar into 2 sections and thus to work with a small group enabling me to measure how much work students from various parts of the college community could effectively complete on a daily basis in an environment in which class participation was foundational to a course's purpose. This close student teacher relationship is sometimes diluted in a more 'cosmopolitan' environment
3. I developed some interesting techniques for teaching in general education courses with a small group of students.
Other parts of the study abroad experience deepened my knowledge of Irish history and geography that I can use to enrich the courses I regularly teach here on campus. I also saw in a renewed way how important language is to a study abroad experience. In Ireland, Irish language was not a major part of the curriculum. I see now that it should be.