LASP Spring 2010 newsletter

Check out the spring 2010 newsletter for the Latin American Studies Program in Costa Rica. This is where SNU students Paul James and Kristin Lege are studying this semester.

Going global in 2010, Part IV: Eating Spanish tapas, Iberian ham and other great stuff in Boston

At the end of January, I attended a conference in Boston that was sponsored by the overseas commerce office of the Spanish province of León y Castilla. Being a conference sponsored by a government office assigned to attract foreign business to León y Castilla, they treated us right. It was nice to go to an event where the refreshments were more than coffee, tea and cookies...a whole lot more. However, the eats were not the best part of the conference. I went specifically to look for opportunities for SNU students to study in Spain. I was very pleased with the resources and programs I found. It is way too early to start promoting anything definite. Nevertheless, I have some ideas that I hope work out. I have a lot of hope for being able to work out a "traditional" study abroad program, perhaps with a Christian university in the states that already has a program in Spain. What excites me even more is the possibility of working out an 8-week program that would allow students to study on campus for the first part of the semester, taking some intensive 8-week courses that would meet general education requirements, and then spend the second part of the semester in Spain studying Spanish culture and language. If you are a current or prospective SNU student, let me know if something like that would interest you.

A Nicaraguan reflection from Paul James

Paul James has a new blog post from his experience in Nicaragua. You can read it at http://buenviaje-puravida.blogspot.com/. Every semester, I am grateful for the lasting impression that the Latin American Studies Program (LASP) makes on our SNU students who go there. Great program for great students!

Spanish heritage research project

ACTFL looking for intermediate level Spanish "heritage speakers" between ages of 18-29 for a research project. Participants get $25 and an official OPIc rating. If you are interested, check out http://actfl.informz.net/survistapro/s.asp?id=2065&u=1003679045.

Going global in 2010, Part III: Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, México

[Blog post & Facebook note from http://www.goglobalatsnu.blogspot.com/]

As stated on SNU's Morningstar Institute website: "The Morningstar Institute is an international development and poverty alleviation training institute, housed in Southern Nazarene University’s School of Business. Morningstar’s primary purpose is to bring the knowledge of international development and poverty alleviation to students and to provide them with the opportunity to be empowered through receiving academic training in the classroom, analytical training through research as well as practical training on the field during international internships." January 17-20 I was in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Mexico, exploring possibilities for SNU students to do an internship there working with Healing Waters International through the Morningstar Institute.

Healing Waters International is a faith-based non-governmental organization that helps provide clean drinking water to poor communities. One of their project sites is located in the southern part of Mexico in the state of Chiapas. The project is headquartered in Tuxtla Gutiérrez and serves Tuxtla as well as surrounding communities. Healing Waters serves over 20 different communities in the area. It do this by locating water purification facilities in churches. The facilities are inspected and licensed by the state health department and produce purified water that the churches sell at below market prices to people in the community. After covering the costs of operation, a portion of the proceeds goes back to the Tuxtla Healing Waters office (called Aguas de Unidad in Spanish) and the church uses the rest for community outreach ministries, such as providing school supplies to poor families or supporting substance abuse ministries.

Dr. Tom Herskowitz from SNU visited the Tuxtla Gutiérrez project last year and came away with the idea of working with Healing Waters by having interns serve for a semester with the program. I went down to look at housing and study options for student interns. We still have a ways to go before anything is set up, but I hope that we can get something going before the end of the year. I think it will provide a great opportunity for SNU students to get first hand experience in addressing issues of poverty in very practical and sustainable ways.

Stay tuned to hear more as this opportunity develops.

Going global in 2010, Part II: LASP, NILI and beyond

[Blog post & Facebook note from http://www.goglobalatsnu.blogspot.com/]

SNU does a good job of encouraging and helping students study abroad. There are 13 students studying abroad this semester: 6 @ QERC (I talked about that in an earlier blog post), 3 @ the Australia Studies Centre, 1 in the China Studies Program, 2 in the Latin America Studies Program (Costa Rica) and 1 @ the Nazarene International Language Institute (Ecuador). All of the programs I mentioned are great; however, since I'm a Spanish prof, I'll push the Spanish-language programs just a bit.

Kristin Lege and Paul James are in the Latin American Studies Program (better known as LASP) and Alicia Bland is at the Nazarene International Language Institute (better known as NILI). As far as I know, Paul is the only one of the three that is keeping a blog. You can follow his posts @ http://buenviaje-puravida.blogspot.com/. Kristin and Alicia are using Facebook to keep folks updated about their adventures, so you'll need to be (or become) their Facebook friend to keep up with them.

Students often ask me for advice on which program they should attend, LASP or NILI. My response is that both programs are good, they just take different approaches. In both programs, students are involved in language immersion. In LASP, students live with a Costa Rican family; in NILI, students live in a dorm with a Latin American roommate. In LASP, students study Spanish intensively for a period before moving on to their different concentrations (LASP offers four concentrations). In NILI, students study Spanish throughout the semester except when on trips away from Quito. All LASP students spend a short period in Nicaragua, and depending on the concentration, may go to Cuba, Panama or Guatemala. NILI students spend their entire time in Ecuador and travel to different locations, including the Amazon jungle and the Galapagos Islands. If you are thinking about studying abroad and wondering which program is best for you, I suggest checking out their websites, http://www.bestsemester.com/lasp/ for LASP and http://www.gonili.com/ for NILI. There are also several LASP and NILI alums on campus at SNU. Talk to them and let them tell you about their experiences. (If you need contact info, drop me an email at fjohnson@snu.edu.)

One development at SNU that is just getting underway this semester is the new Center for Global Engagement. As the Center gets up and going, it will become the central location for information on all "credit-earning" international experiences through SNU. Dr. Don Dunnington is heading up the office and Rhea Woodcock (who studied at LASP last semester) is working with him. Stay tuned to hear more good news about the office. Meanwhile, the Center for Global Engagement is holding a couple of informational meetings this week: Monday, February 15, at 7:30 pm and Wednesday, February 17, at 1:30 pm. Both meetings are in the faculty lounge. If you are interested in studying abroad, you should go to one of those meetings and start checking out the opportunities.

And let's keep going global at SNU.

Language & Culture Assistant in Spain

Great (paid!) opportunity for college juniors, seniors and recent grads with at least an intermediate level of Spanish competency: Language and Culture Assistant in Spain. Check it out on the Spanish Ministry of Education website.

Going global in 2010, Part I: QERC

[Blog post & Facebook note from http://www.goglobalatsnu.blogspot.com]

The year 2010 has started off as a super month for going global at SNU. It has also meant a lot of traveling for me. Here are some things that have been going on in January.

Part I: QERC

January 4-9, I was in Costa Rica with 6 students from Southern Nazarene University and 4 students from Northwest Nazarene University (NNU). They are spending the semester at SNU's Quetzal Education and Research Center (QERC) in San Gerardo de Dota, one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. The video below is the view from the main building at QERC.



I went to Costa Rica with them to observe and participate in their initial orientation. The students are all life science (biology, bio-chem, etc.) majors and will spend the semester doing field research and taking related courses. They also take a course called Applied Cultural Integration, which is where I come in. Applied Cultural Integration helps the students integrate into the local culture, including learning enough survival Spanish that they can travel about Costa Rica on their own, and reflect on their experiences in Costa Rica and Nicaragua from a wider perspective of studying about all of Latin America. Students can also opt to take a test and receive from 6-12 hours of language credit. I will go back down in April to wrap up their ACI studies and give them their language credit test.

An interesting and challenging part of their initial orientation in Costa Rica is the day they take a bus on their own into San José...without any more Spanish than what they had when they left the U.S. Once in San José, they have two days to complete a list of tasks, working in small groups, that makes them travel throughout the downtown and adjoining areas, find designated places, do assigned activities and meet at a designated meeting place. After those two days, they have to get back to San Gerardo on their own. I think that I would find it somewhat intimidating to do all that they were assigned to do, but they all did it, and I think all of them, or at least almost all of them, enjoyed it. The most important part of their adventure was that it gave them the skills they needed to be able to travel Costa Rica on their own without the need for a sponsor or chaperone to lead them.

QERC is a super opportunity for SNU life science majors to explore a little bit of the world, immerse themselves in a different culture and fulfill course requirements in their majors, all while living in a beautiful environment. It happens every spring. If you are an SNU student, take advantage. If you are not an SNU student but are thinking about coming, it’s just one more reason to make SNU your school.

Coming up...
Part II: Two more SNU students studying at the Latin American Studies Program and one at the Nazarene International Language Institute
Part III: My visit to Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, Mexico, to get acquainted with Healing Waters International's (Aguas de Unidad) water purification project
Par IV: Learning about study abroad opportunities in Spain while sampling Spanish tapas, cheeses and Iberian ham

Making College Relevant

[Blog post/Facebook note from http://www.goglobalatsnu.blogspot.com]

Here's another shameless plug for Southern Nazarene University's globally-oriented programs. A recent (12/29/09) New York Times article, Making College ‘Relevant’, commented on the accelerating trend of undergraduate students and their parents focusing their attention on the economic benefits of a college degree. "Consider the change captured in the annual survey by the University of California, Los Angeles, of more than 400,000 incoming freshmen. In 1971, 37 percent responded that it was essential or very important to be 'very well-off financially,' while 73 percent said the same about 'developing a meaningful philosophy of life.' In 2009, the values were nearly reversed: 78 percent identified wealth as a goal, while 48 percent were after a meaningful philosophy." Naturally, this change in focus has resulted in some undergraduate majors, such as business, increasing in popularity while others, such as classics or philosophy, have lost popularity. As the article observes, some majors long considered as foundational for a liberal arts education are being threatened: "The University of Louisiana, Lafayette, is eliminating its philosophy major, while Michigan State University is doing away with American studies and classics, after years of declining enrollments in those majors."

SNU is certainly not immune to such developments. In fact, in my role as an academic advisor I encourage my advisees from the very beginning to think about what they are going to do once they finish their undergraduate degree. SNU is an expensive school. There is no way of getting around that fact. I know what it's like to have a child in an expensive university because my two oldest children graduated from expensive private universities. As a parent footing much of the bill, I was concerned that they come out with an education that would help them earn a living. I did not necessarily want them to become wealthy (although, as a retirement plan, having wealthy children is not such a bad idea). However, I did want them to be employable in a field that would provide a good living and provide them satisfaction. I believe the parents of most SNU students want the same for their children.

On the other hand, many university professors and administrators advocate forcefully for the value of a traditional liberal arts education. "'We believe that we do our best for students when we give them tools to be analytical, to be able to gather information and to determine the validity of that information themselves, particularly in this world where people don’t filter for you anymore,' Dr. Coleman [University of Michigan President] says. 'We want to teach them how to make an argument, how to defend an argument, to make a choice.' These are the skills that liberal arts colleges in particular have prided themselves on teaching. But these colleges also say they have the hardest time explaining the link between what they teach and the kind of job and salary a student can expect on the other end."

SNU's International Studies Program (ISP) is an excellent approach to the issue of preparing students who can think and act in a global environment, who are well-prepared to enter the job market or to pursue graduate study after graduation, who develop skills that can be put to use immediately and who have a foundation that will continue to develop for years after they leave campus. The ISP is a multi-disciplinary major that emphasizes developing practical business-oriented skills that are useful across a wide spectrum of organizations, from large, international businesses, to governmental and quasi-governmental agencies, to large and small non-governmental organizations (NGO's) to mission agencies. At the same time, the ISP emphasizes developing linguistic and cross-cultural skills and understanding along with a good foundation in history and political science. ISP graduates are prepared to go in many different directions, and they are doing just that, going on to graduate school, entering the business world or working in the U.S. or overseas with non-profits and NGO's.

Given the global environment into which our graduates go, I do not believe there is a more "relevant" major than SNU's International Studies Program major.

Preparing to do good in deed as well as in word

[http://www.goglobalatsnu.blogspot.com]

In my first blog post/Facebook note of 2010 (the blog automatically posts to Facebook), I thought I would comment on some interesting online articles that I've come across over the last couple of months. I've already commented on a couple of these articles either on this blog or on Facebook, but I wanted to join them together with another article and see if I can make them relate to each other. The fourth article is one I just read today. It lays some groundwork to argue for the value of an undergraduate education at a teaching university like Southern Nazarene University (SNU). So, here goes for the first for 2010.

"Earning Commissions on 'The Great Commission'" (Wall Street Journal, 11/12/09) describes "missionary" entrepreneurs. In my blog post on 11/14/09, I differentiated missionary entrepreneurs from entrepreneurial missionaries and bivocational missionaries. Missionary entrepreneurs use their entrepreneurial skills in profit-making enterprises to carry out both the Great Commission and the Great Commandments. "Evangelical, and Young, and Active in New Area" (New York Times, 11/27/09) talks about how young, activist evangelicals are turning their activism toward making the world a better place for marginalized people. The article states, "Without disowning longstanding causes for evangelical activists like opposition to abortion or support for school vouchers, these young evangelicals have taken up issues previously abdicated to secular and religious liberals: climate change, AIDS prevention and treatment, Third World poverty." These first two articles are overtly religious in subject matter. The third article, an Op Ed piece by Nicholas Kristof ("How Can We Help the World’s Poor?," New York Times, 11/20/09), is about international do-goodism in general and makes the case that a healthy dose of healthy capitalism (my redundancy is intentional) could be the best hope for world poverty relief. He observes, "I was recently in Liberia, a fragile African democracy struggling to rebuild. It is chock-full of aid groups rushing around in white S.U.V.’s doing wonderful work. But it also needs factories to employ people, build skills and pay salaries and taxes. Americans are horrified by sweatshops, but nothing would help Liberia more than if China moved some of its sweatshops there, so that Liberians could make sandals and T-shirts."

The common perspective I find in all three articles is a focus on pragmatism, on specific, concrete, real world actions that address intractable issues that affect millions of people around the world. As I think about our SNU students and graduates, I see many who are focused on fulfilling the Great Commission and Great Commandments and doing so in pragmatic ways, ways that produce real, measurable, long-lasting results to combat many of those intractable issues. I am proud of those students and graduates. I'm also glad that SNU offers students excellent preparation to go out into the world and make an impact that lasts. As I write this, I think of those students who right now are on Commission Unto Mexico, ministering and gaining practical experience that will help many years into the future. I also think about our students who have just returned from the Latin American Studies Program (LASP) in Costa Rica and those who are preparing to go to LASP in a few days, as well as those who have studied at SNU's Queztal Education and Research Center (QERC) in Costa Rica and those who leave for QERC on Monday, 01/04/10. Add the students who have studied at the Nazarene International Language Institute (NILI) or other study abroad sites as well as those who have done internships in Honduras and Uganda and you start to get a feel for all the ways that SNU prepares students to go into the world do something that makes a difference.

Later on this month, I will travel to Chiapas, Mexico, to help set up an internship under the auspices of the Morningstar Institute, SNU's international development and poverty alleviation training institute. Our goal in Chiapas is for SNU students to contribute to the development of micro-enterprises that will support and help expand an existing ministry already there. The Morningstar Institute is also working to set up micro-enterprise related internships in Swaziland. To any evangelical high school student who is serious about exploring God's call to love the world in deed and not just in word, I would say take a serious look at SNU. I do not believe you will find a school that will help you along your way any better than SNU will.

Finally, another plug for SNU: "The Case of the Vanishing Full-Time Professor" is a New York Times article from 12/30/09 that talks about how more and more top-tier universities are using grad students and adjunct instructors for their undergraduate courses. According to the article, "In 1960, 75 percent of college instructors were full-time tenured or tenure-track professors; today only 27 percent are. The rest are graduate students or adjunct and contingent faculty — instructors employed on a per-course or yearly contract basis, usually without benefits and earning a third or less of what their tenured colleagues make." Many grad students and adjunct instructors are excellent teachers. However, in many cases their primary focus is not on teaching or they teach so many courses in order to make a living that they cannot do an adequate job. (I know that happens. When I was an adjunct, at times I taught so many courses that there was no way I could give my best to any of them.) SNU does use adjunct instructors, and by and large they are excellent teachers. However, the focus at SNU is clearly on undergraduate teaching and the majority of courses are taught by full-time faculty, most of whom hold doctorates in their teaching fields. Another reason for high school students to give SNU a good look.

Here's to 2010. Let's make it a good one.