March Madness!

March Madness! The sweet sixteen! The final four! Some of you know and care about all this. Others know what it is and wish it would go away. Still others probably don’t have much of a clue. Of course, I’m talking about the NCAA collegiate basketball championship. However, that’s not the whole story because the March Madness that is coverd by ESPN and other national networks is all about the men’s NCAA Division I basketball championship. Being from Oklahoma, I’m a big fan of OU’s powerhouse women’s basketball team, but I have to listen to a bunch of boring stuff on ESPN to get to anything that is said about women’s basketball. I also teach at a school that’s not even in the NCAA. It’s in the NAIA. You won’t hear anything about NAIA March Madness, not even on local TV, not to mention the NCAA Division II and III schools and their tournaments. March Madness is all about the big boys. That probably makes sense. The different national associations and divisions in sports are designed so that the big guys don’t beat up on the little guys.

Small universities like Southern Nazarene University sometimes tout their programs with the preface, “For a small university, we have one of the best.....” I’ve heard that phrase or one like it many times at SNU. The implication is that we can’t compete with the big guys, but we’re great when compared with the small fry. It’s like the difference between the NCAA and NAIA in sports. President Obama may not go on ESPN and give his choices for the brackets for the NAIA version of March Madness, like he did for the NCAA brackets, but hey, we’re still pretty good when compared with schools our size.

However, I know that at least one program at SNU can compete with the best of the big boys and come off quite well. I would put SNU’s International Studies Program (ISP) up against any program, no matter the size of the school offering the program, with the assurance that we would shine. Let me explain.

SNU’s ISP prepares leaders for the international arena, including business, government agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGO’s, both faith-based and secular). What does a recent graduate need in order to have a successful start in that arena? First, the graduate needs to have a good understanding of how language and culture shape and interact with all aspects of people’s lives. ISP majors at SNU must complete 15 credit hours of language and culture study as part of their core major requirements. Second, the graduate needs to have a good overview of international politics, history and geograpy. Those areas intertwine with everything done in the global arena. ISP majors at SNU must complete 15 credit hours of history, political science and geography study as part of their core major requirements. Third, the graduate needs basic business management skills, the kind of skills that are needed to run any type of organization in our globalized socio-economic system. ISP majors at SNU must complete 15 credit hours of management study as part of their core major requirements. Fourth, the graduate needs to have well developed skills that set him or her apart from other recent graduates and that make the graduate the kind of human resource asset that every organization needs. ISP majors at SNU must complete an additional 15 credit hours in one of five specialty areas: History/Political Science, Business Management, Business Spanish, Teaching English as a Second Language or Language and Culture. Finally, the graduate needs to have recent challenging and relevant overseas experience. ISP majors at SNU must spend one semester or more in an approved study abroad program or in an approved overseas internship. Approved programs are selected specifically to meet the needs of ISP majors.

As you look at the ISP at Southern Nazarene University, one thing you realize is that it is not a major for those who don’t want to work. Just as sports teams don’t get to the championship, NCAA or NAIA, without hard work, ISP majors don’t make it to the end without a lot of hard work. It is not a major for the faint hearted. However, SNU’s International Studies Program is a major for those who want to make significant contributions in the international arena. Bring on the big boys. We can handle ‘em.