February 19, 2012
American Colleges’ Missteps Raise Questions About Overseas Partnerships
Bevis Fusha for the International Herald Tribune
The U. of New York Tirana (in Albania, offers degrees from the State U. of New York Empire State College.
By Karin Fischer
Headlines in recent weeks have highlighted the stumbles, and sometimes outright spills, by American colleges seeking to set up degree programs with foreign partners.
State University of New York Empire State College has allowed a university in Albania to deliver diplomas in its name. But the public college, the subject of a New York Times investigation, has had seemingly little say-so in the curriculum or hiring at the University of New York Tirana.
In North Dakota, state auditors issued a scathing review of dual-degree programs at Dickinson State University, reporting that they had admitted hundreds of unqualified students, mainly from China, and awarded them degrees even when they failed to meet graduation requirements. Ignoring its own standards, the public university had acted as a diploma mill, the audit concluded.
Then there’s Houston Community College, which has been in the midst of its own desert storm. Students at the Community College of Qatar, in the tiny Persian Gulf emirate, protested after learning that they would not earn degrees from the Texas college, as they had expected to. Those degrees would allow them to transfer to four-year universities. Houston officials maintain that they were working with Qatar’s first community college only in an advisory role, but that students could earn Houston diplomas by submitting their transcripts for review.
Taken together, these incidents have renewed concerns about whether, in embarking on ambitious international ventures, American colleges are putting themselves at risk, legally, financially, and reputationally. In their quest for global prestige and, often, dollars, are they rushing abroad without doing their homework? After all, experts note, even internationally savvy institutions, like George Mason University and Michigan State University, have occasionally misstepped in their efforts overseas.
“There are lots of good reasons to go and serve students where the education is weak,” says Alan Ruby, a senior fellow at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. “But that doesn’t mean going unwittingly and unthinkingly.”
Looking Before Leaping
The North Dakota University System audit is damning. Dickinson State, it charges, enrolled international students with subpar grades, shaky English, and fraudulent transcripts, awarding them bachelor’s degrees for spending just one of their four college years on that campus. A number of the students transferred in from a remedial-education institute associated with Taiyuan University of Technology, in China, and not from a college-level program.
What’s more, Dickinson State disregarded its own rules regarding course and degree changes, allowing students to switch to majors for which they had no preparation. Department chairs apparently felt pressure to do so because recruiting agents in China, purporting to work for Dickinson, had promised students they would be able to swap majors once in the United States. Just 10 of the 410 students enrolled in these dual-degree programs since 2003 actually completed the necessary requirements, the audit report concludes.
It’s not entirely clear what led Dickinson State to begin the controversial programs, and the president in charge when the worst offenses occurred has been fired for other enrollment irregularities. But the news has many international educators scratching their heads: Why, they ask, did a small, little-known state university in North Dakota have dual-degree agreements with dozens of institutions abroad?
Too often, these experts say, colleges’ international relationships are partnerships of convenience. Kevin Kinser studies branch campuses at the State University of New York at Albany—he doesn’t start them. (He’s also a Chronicle blogger.) Yet he has been approached countless times after speaking at conferences by foreign institutions that want to work with Albany.
Philip G. Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, says colleges need to scrutinize their motivations and those of their potential partners before entering into any agreement. Sometimes he wonders why foreign universities or governments approach certain American institutions: “I don’t know if they just go through the phone book.”
Nor are many colleges sophisticated in their methods of assessing possible global ventures. Colleges should have centralized committees that vet any agreements, and those panels should draw on a range of expertise, including faculty members, human-resources administrators, and university lawyers, says Bob Lammey, a senior director at High Street Partners, a company that advises colleges on overseas risk management. Institutions need to ask the right questions, from what’s the rule of law in a potential destination country to who in the partnership will do the hiring and firing to how much such an arrangement will cost in staff time and money.
Few colleges have formal processes to assess international activities, Mr. Lammey says, and that’s a problem. Mr. Kinser agrees: “Approving a program in another country is not the same as approving a new program in sociology.”
Keeping Control
In Qatar, much of the disagreement seems to center around academic control. In internal e-mail messages obtained by the Houston Chronicle, officials of Houston Community College expressed concern about decisions made by the top administrator at the new Community College of Qatar, who was hired by the Qatari government, not the Texas college. They were also apparently surprised by a Qatari decision to educate male and female students separately. And although initial announcements by both partners said students at the Qatari institution would have “dual enrollment” in Houston Community College, Houston officials recently said that only those who go through an individual review process would be eligible for American credit for classes taken in Qatar.
Houston Community College is not the first institution to run into disputes over decision-making. George Mason shuttered its campus in Ras al Khaymah, another Gulf emirate, after its partner sought to make midstream changes in their agreement, demanded to hire a chief academic dean, and reduced its financial commitment. Peter N. Stearns, George Mason’s provost, says the university hasn’t given up on overseas work but will focus on creating dual-degree programs, not overseas campuses. Degree programs, he says, give the university a greater amount of control.
Daniel Kratochvil, of the University of Wollongong, in Dubai studies the Emirati education market. There’s no such thing as a “free ticket” when it comes to international joint ventures, he says. “You’re overseas as a guest, and that’s a risk. Misunderstandings can arise, partnerships can change, governments can make unilateral changes to the terms of a contract.”
Webster University, based in St. Louis, has campuses throughout Europe and Asia, but it operates under a “one-university” policy, says Grant Chapman, associate vice president for academic affairs and director of international programs. All course changes are reviewed by a centralized curriculum committee. Every diploma says “Webster University.” While staff and faculty members may be hired locally, there’s always an administrator answerable to the home campus. And any variation from admissions standards must be approved back in St. Louis. “We’re not in the business of franchising our name,” Mr. Chapman says.
Relationship Maintenance
Some observers question if that’s what Empire State College did in striking a deal in Albania. Although an initial agreement between the SUNY college and University of New York Tirana sets out high academic standards, Empire State’s director of international programs told the Times that instructors in Albania were not subject to its review and approval. Teams of faculty members from New York are able to make the trip to Eastern Europe only a couple of times a year because of budget constraints. (College officials have since said they have a more substantial review system in place.)
By contrast, officials from the Rochester Institute of Technology regularly visit its branches in Croatia, the Dominican Republic, and Dubai. Rochester faculty routinely take temporary teaching appointments abroad, and the university uses its overseas sites as destinations for its students to study abroad. All those people going back and forth help act as a quality-control mechanism—one of many, says James H. Watters, senior vice president for finance and administration. “It’s easy to say, ‘Out of sight, out of mind,’” he notes.
Mr. Lammey, of High Street Partners, says many colleges assume that their foreign partners are taking care of everything on the ground. That’s not always the case, he warns, mentioning one client whose longstanding partner failed to pay employees of the joint venture according to local regulations. The American college could face a hefty settlement with the foreign government.
International agreements, Mr. Lammey says, “always start out on good footing.” But when problems arise, colleges need to have an “easy-out clause” to end floundering relationships.
Still, he cautions that educators should not assume the worst of all international ventures just because a few problems have grabbed headlines. Many are well-run, he says.
Jason Lane, who is co-director, with Mr. Kinser, of the Cross-Border Education Research Team at Albany, worries that failures of institutional management could lead to “overly aggressive external oversight” by outside groups, like accreditors or state legislatures. They could put severe limits, or even prohibitions, on overseas partnerships.
But John K. Hudzik, a former vice president for global and strategic projects at Michigan State, finds that good can come from scrutiny. “It’s hard, but we can learn from failures,” he says. “It’s a good thing if people can learn to be more systematic about this work.”
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February 19, 2012
In Study Abroad, Men Are Hard to Find
Andrew A. Nelles for The Chronicle
.By Karin Fischer
Ryan Fazio freely admits: “I’m a perfect example of a guy who doesn’t go abroad.”
For starters, he dropped Spanish classes the first chance he got, after his initial semester at Northwestern University. He never picked up another language.
By the fall of his junior year, he was juggling a double major, in economics and political science, and was slated to take over as editor in chief of The Northwestern Chronicle, a weekly newspaper. His brothers in Sigma Phi Epsilon elected him president of the fraternity.
His life on campus was full, so why leave?
Some people chalk it up to the preponderance of women majoring in the fine arts, foreign languages, and other humanities heavily represented in overseas-studies programs. Others note that more women than men are enrolled in college in the first place.
But business students are now the second-largest group abroad (after those in the social sciences). Engineering, another male-dominated field, had record growth in study-abroad participation in 2009-10. The same year, the number of foreign-language majors overseas actually dipped. And even taking the overall gender-enrollment disparity into account, women still dominate study abroad.
Sending a broader cross-section of majors abroad hasn’t made a dent in the gender gap because, it turns out, women in those fields study overseas at rates disproportionate to their numbers. At the Georgia Institute of Technology, for example, men make up 86 percent of computer-science students but only 71 percent of majors who go abroad. The engineering school even pitches study abroad as a way to attract more women to the discipline, says Amy Bass Henry, executive director of international education.
Nor have other efforts aimed at diversifying education abroad, such as offering shorter, cheaper trips and unusual destinations, had much of an impact. Whatever the cause, the trend worries many in the field, who believe that having an international experience is key to understanding and working with people from other cultures, a crucial skill set in an increasingly global and interconnected workplace.
“If half the population has less exposure to other cultures, it’s a disadvantage to them as individuals and to us as a society,” says Heather E. Barclay Hamir, director of study abroad at the University of Texas at Austin.
But Mr. Fazio’s story may encourage those wrestling with the problem. At the last minute, just days before the deadline, he decided to go overseas, to an English-language program in Prague. He spent the semester studying alongside four of his fraternity brothers.
“It was kind of a fluke I went abroad,” Mr. Fazio says, “but I couldn’t be happier that I did.”
Wired Differently
From its inception, more than a century ago, study abroad has had a reputation as a female pursuit, the lasting image one of Seven Sisters students steaming overseas for a grand European tour of art and culture, a refining gloss for a marriageable young woman. “Women were sent overseas to be culturally educated ladies who could entertain their husbands’ business partners,” says James M. Lucas, of Michigan State University, who has written extensively about men and study abroad. “The mantra became that study abroad is feminized and a dalliance.”
The gender imbalance is readily apparent to Kate Freyhof, a recent Gettysburg College graduate, who spent part of her junior year in Aix-en-Provence, in southern France. Perhaps one in 10 of her classmates, she says, was male.
Once back in Pennsylvania, Ms. Freyhof, who had so wanted to travel overseas that she saved her babysitting money throughout high school, teamed up with Samantha Brandauer, the college’s director of study abroad. Half of Gettysburg’s students spend at least a semester overseas, but just 30 percent of that group is male. Ms. Brandauer and Ms. Freyhof wanted to know why, so they assembled a series of focus groups, male and female: those who had studied abroad and those who had stayed on campus.
The pizza-fueled discussions revealed what the two women dubbed the “bro mentality.” Male students were far more reluctant to leave their campus social groups to go overseas. Many, like Mr. Fazio at Northwestern, were more likely to do so if their friends were also going abroad. “I thought it was girls who went everywhere together,” jokes Ms. Freyhof, who now works as a study-abroad adviser herself.
Recent research suggests that the two sexes respond to different messages, and different messengers, when deciding to study abroad.
A University of Iowa study of some 2,800 students at two- and four-year colleges found that the more men interacted with their peers, not only the more deeply influenced they were by them, but also the less likely they were to go abroad. Peer interaction did not have a similar effect on women.
Thomas Bogenschild, director of international programs at Vanderbilt University, sums it up: “We can talk ourselves blue in the face, but they’re really going to listen to their friends.”
Parents, meanwhile, hold far greater sway over female students, concludes Jill McKinney, of Butler University, who conducted extensive interviews with returning female study-abroad students as part of her master’s thesis. They were likelier to go overseas if their parents were supportive, and likelier to be encouraged to go as part of “safe” college-sponsored programs rather than independently, she says.
Many of the women also reported that they wanted to have the experience of living and traveling abroad when they were in college because they believed they wouldn’t have that opportunity once they had work and a family to juggle, a view that left Ms. McKinney, associate director of Butler’s Center for Global Education, shaking her head: “They felt pressure to check it off the proverbial to-do list.”
By contrast, men are more inclined to question the value of an experience they perceive as “visiting museums with a professor,” says Mr. Lucas, who is assistant to the dean for international academic student life at Michigan State. They figure they can backpack through Europe with a friend or will have the opportunity to go overseas for work, he says. “They need to be told why culture is important, or they need to be given another message.”
Real-World Value
Mr. Lucas organizes short study-abroad programs for incoming freshmen at Michigan State. With his findings in mind, he writes different letters to male and female students to promote the trips. Women get the “traditional” message, which highlights the cultural and experiential benefits of going overseas, while the letter to men “makes it sound more like a privilege,” he says. “I tell them, ‘This is how you are going to distinguish yourself at a big university and, later on, in a global work force.’”
Emphasizing the practical, bottom-line benefits of an overseas experience is a strategy embraced by a growing number of institutions. That means offering programs not just in subjects tied to students’ majors but also in places they can see themselves working long-term. “No one is looking for a career in Florence,” says Daniel Riley, a campus-relations manager at CET Academic Programs, an independent study-abroad provider. By contrast, he notes that CET’s programs in China, which feature heavy doses of language instruction, are split evenly between male and female students. “Taking intensive Chinese for a semester is something men can see as valuable for a job,” he says.
Other institutions are expanding their offerings to allow students to work or hold internships overseas. There’s some evidence that such an option is more attractive to men, although not much more than study abroad. At Georgia Tech, 68 percent of the engineering students who study abroad are men, but they account for 71 percent of those who work abroad. And 87 percent of the computing majors who work overseas are male, slightly higher than their share of overall enrollment.
At Georgia Tech and elsewhere, study-abroad offices are forming partnerships with career services to help students better articulate the work relevance of education abroad. Such efforts are geared to those have already gone overseas, but Ms. McKinney, of Butler, says they also can send an important message to students who might consider doing so. At résumé workshops for students returning to Butler from overseas, she notes, students who have not gone abroad are increasingly in attendance. “I think they want to see what it means for their résumé, for their job prospects,” she says, adding that the sessions are “male-heavy.”
For another research study, Ms. McKinney analyzed the content of more than 100 study-abroad application essays submitted by male students. They saw going abroad as a résumé-builder, a networking opportunity, and even as a scouting trip for a possible career overseas.
Ads in ‘The Onion’
Still, there’s a question weighing on Ms. McKinney: Do male students who go abroad do so because they view it as more of a career credential than their male peers do? Or is study abroad simply not on the radar of most college men?
To make sure that men are getting the message, a number of colleges are expanding their study-abroad marketing with male students in mind. The University of Kentucky distributes brochures on gender and overseas study at key points around campus, like the academic-advising center. (Other pamphlets are aimed at students from underrepresented groups like racial and ethnic minorities and students with disabilities.) Brook Blahnik, director of study-abroad advising at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, advertises overseas programs in publications with a heavy male readership, like the sports section of the college newspaper and the satirical tabloid The Onion.
Mr. Blahnik and his colleagues are also careful to include more male faces and voices, whether on posters highlighting certain destinations, at study-abroad fairs and information sessions, or in student blogs and videos posted online. “It sounds really basic and simple,” he says. “But that subconscious message is important: ‘Here are people who look like me.’”
Kyle L. May Jr. hopes to spend six months beginning this summer in Australia studying sports management. Sydney is far from the North Carolina mountains, where Mr. May is a junior at Western Carolina University, but he has a friend to turn to for advice who went overseas earlier. He also has John Schweikart, a study-abroad adviser at the university, whom he met through his fraternity, Lambda Chi Alpha. “John just kept talking to me about where I wanted to go, what my options were,” Mr. May says. “He helped me figure out where would be a good fit.”
Bigger Than Study Abroad?
Men like Mr. Schweikart may be potent messengers to other men, but they are in the minority in the study-abroad profession. At American University, in Washington, one of the three male staffers, in an office of 10, has been reaching out to fraternities and athletics teams for the past three years.
Mark Hayes, associate director of education abroad, says the jury’s still out on the effectiveness of the staffer’s efforts. Women continue to outnumber men in all but three of the university’s study-abroad programs. “I try to take the long-term view,” Mr. Hayes says. “It may take a while.”
Increasing male participation may be the goal, yet another piece of research suggests that even if men go overseas, they may not benefit as much as women do. A study of nearly 1,300 students at various colleges who studied abroad found that women made greater gains than men in language proficiency and in their understanding of and comfort with other cultures.
Michael Vande Berg, one of the report’s authors, says there are ways to improve language and cultural learning for both men and women studying abroad that can largely erase the gender gap. “Men are trainable,” Mr. Vande Berg, vice president for academic affairs at the Council on International Education Exchange, says with a laugh.
Still, he acknowledges, it is important to ask what’s happening to men on campus—before they ever study abroad—that would lead to the gender disparity.
Mark H. Salisbury may have an answer. Now director of institutional research at Augustana College, in Illinois, he is an author of the Iowa report, the one that said men are less likely to go overseas the more they became involved with their peers.
Conversely, Mr. Salisbury and his co-authors also found that male interest in study abroad grew if they had more diverse experiences outside the classroom, such as interacting with people from different backgrounds on clubs or teams or in their dorms.
“Study abroad,” says Mr. Salisbury, “doesn’t happen in a vacuum.”
It certainly didn’t for Keaton E. Becher, who is studying now in Fribourg, Switzerland. He got the bug to go abroad after he met a foreign-exchange student, a woman from Sweden. Sitting down to write his application essay and map out his required study plan made him think more purposefully about how a semester overseas could further his goals of graduate school or a career in international development.
His feelings only deepened as he heard other students and alumni swap travel stories at reunions and football games. “If you study abroad, you’re connected with everyone else,” Mr. Becher, a junior. “It’s like you’re in a little club.”
That club? It’s at Wabash College, an all-male liberal-arts institution.
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Ten Friendly Questions for Michael H. Prosser By Mansoureh Sharifzadeh, Tehran, Iran, February 18, 2012 [Post 369]
Mansoureh Sharifzadeh (B.A. Damavand College, Tehran-Iran), An English Language teacher at public and private Pre-university centers of Tehran, since 1978. Translating books from English to Persian, awarded by President Seyyed Mohammed Khatami in 2004. Writer of English and Persian published articles. Contribution with Professor Farzad Sharifian( in case of Data Collection). Reconnection with the last president of Damavand College, Professor D. Ray Heisey in 2008 and facing fundamental changes in my perspectives about the global communication and writing papers.
Michael H. Prosser (Ph.D., University of Illinois) also a founder of the academic field of intercultural communication, is Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia, former William A. Kern and Distinguished Professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, a Fulbright Professor at the University of Swaziland, and has taught at four Chinese universities. He is editor/coeditor, author/coauthor of fifteen books, ten published in the United States and five published or forthcoming in China.
Question One: In the world today, the great powers of the world make decisions for the nations and the nations struggle to bring their governments to the state of their expectations, how could you as a ‘founder of the academic field of Intercultural Communication’ help the process? Whose favor do your findings employ?
Michael’s Answer
In a joint conference paper, and later essay on language, Jacky Zhang Shengyong and I explored the idea of the G7, then G8, then G20, and finally the G2 languages: Chinese and English. Our point was that in fact, presently there are two big powers, China and the US. China now is the second leading economy after the US, having passed both Japan and rather recently Germany. This doesn’t deny that the BRIC nations, Brazil, Russia, India, and China have a very important role to play both in world affairs and in the global importance of language, but among those four, only Chinese is moving rapidly forward . Spanish is of course a major global language in Spain, Latin America, and increasingly in North America. Although French remains very important, and is one of the two working languages in the UN, 80% of the delegations are requesting documents in English, rather than French. The French government struggles to maintain its superiority, while Germany is the leading economic country in Western Europe. The Russian language has diminished in importance since the end of the Cold War in 1989 with the separation of former Soviet bloc nations, and the population has shrunk greatly since that period, with the average life expectancy of men dropping to fifty-seven. So, in our judgment, China and the US are the two major players as great powers. Recent media reports indicate that China is now the largest cyberterrorist in the world. The other may be the US.
Iran has had a long-term influence as a major power in the Middle East, but the recent European and American sanctions, and the recently strained relationship with Turkey have had a negative effect on its international situation. Nonetheless, China’s insatiable need for more and more oil suggests that this factor will offset the former supplies of oil, particularly to European countries. In hindsight, it may well have been oil that was one of the major factors in the US and UK attacks on Iraq, rather than the so-called “weapons of mass destruction.” Syria’s present situation also has a negative effect on Syrian-Iranian relations. The situation between Israel and Iran continues to remain tense. a worrisome potential new conflict in the Middle East.
Question Two: As being the editor/coeditor, author/coauthor of fifteen books and numerous articles, explain the main theme of your writings and what suggestions would you make to young authors in the field of communication to improve their writing attitudes in the case of global view.
Michael’s Answer:
I began to develop an international outlook when I was in my boarding high school. My parents took me to Canada when I graduated from high school. It was difficult for my father, visiting Quebec, because he didn’t understand their French. He often said that he didn’t lose anything in Europe, and so he didn’t need to go there to find it. However, he encouraged me in my own international interests. He died when I was 21 (bone cancer because of earlier heavy smoking), and so he wasn’t alive when I went to Europe for two months after my university graduation when I was 22, or present at my wedding later than autumn. My wife and her brother had gone to Europe on a student tour the summer before when she graduated from university. My wife and I went together to Europe, including the Scandinavian countries and the Soviet Union for two weeks when I was 23. With four young men friends (Mexico, Belgium, Chile, and the US) when I was 24, we spent four weeks traveling in Mexico.
At the doctoral level, I studied classical Greek and Roman rhetorical theorists, and this resulted in a coedited volume each on classical rhetoric and medieval rhetoric. For my doctoral dissertation, I chose to analyze addresses at the United Nations—which later led to the publication of three books about the UN, including edited books of international speeches, and books about intercultural, international, and global communication and media. As I was teaching for nearly ten years in China, I have coedited two books about Chinese communication, and presently two coedited books about values. Professor Li Mengu’s intercultural communication text book for Chinese university students, Communicating Interculturally, will hopefully be published in the near future, two perhaps in 2012. I have talked about authoring or editing a book for the American readers on “China’s Youth: China’s Future,” but it is still in the planning stages, with various parts appearing separately on my blog, www.michaelprosser.com.
So, my topics for my books relate to rhetoric and public discourse, including international public discourse, the United Nations, intercultural and international communication and media, and Chinese-related topics. In China, I was very involved in communication conferences, and I have attended more than 15 of them, gaining a reasonably strong reputation among communication and intercultural communication scholars.
It is important to say that I have not just researched intercultural, international, and global topics, but I have tried to live as much as possible as a multicultural individual, hosting high school students in the 1980’s for eleven months or longer as family members, serving as a short term emergency home for international exchange high school students who needed to change homes (including for example a young woman student from Sri Lanka, an Argentine student, and a Muslim student from Morocco.), parenting a sixteen year old refugee teenager from El Salvador; traveling internationally as often as possible; teaching in Swaziland; and living and teaching almost ten years in China.
My favorite secular quote is from Socrates: “I am neither a citizen of Athens, nor of Greece, but of the world.” I have tried to be a global citizen as much as possible and practical. I have also encouraged my children and grandchildren to adopt an international outlook, taking my children to Europe when they were young, and helping them to travel abroad as adults. One of my sons spent a semester as a university junior in the Denmark International Studies Program; my daughter and her children came to see me in China; and another granddaughter had a short total Spanish language immersion opportunity with classmates in Spain.
I am trying to pass on this interest in becoming more international to my grandchildren now. My home or apartment generally is filled with cultural artifacts, even for my apartments in China. In my present small apartment, there are many masks from Africa, China, and Latin America. Thus, interculturally and internationally, I am frequently in an intercultural environment by life life style, my research, and my travel and teaching outside of the US.
Question Three: In your book with Li Mengyu, Communicating Interculturally, I find you a very kind and patient teacher whose sense of humor brings joy and at the same time authenticity to the class atmosphere, how could you handle a class in a real condition and are you always like this in the various life situation?
Michael’s Answer
The first century Roman poet, Horace, suggested that one should not steer the ship too far out into the ocean, lest the waves and storms capsize it; nor too close to the shore, lest it capsize on the rocks (which has happened along the coast in the Mediterranean Sea with the Italian cruise ship). Horace’s idea was that we should live moderate lives, avoiding the extremes. Typically, I lead my life according to his suggestion, as much as possible. Though I enjoy American politics (and my daughter Michelle worked for three Virginia governors after she graduated from the University of Virginia), I am neither an extreme conservative nor an extreme liberal. Currently, however, there is a lot of extremism in American politics, and also among the evangelical Christians in the US. In terms of my religious tradition, I try to honor “many paths to one God,” while at the same time not being a religious extremist, nor insisting that my religious tradition is the only one that is reasonable and just. None of my research, nor my speeches are ever radical, as I try always to be objective, while admitting my own biases. As a father, my three children would probably say that most of the time I was very moderate, and the advantage of being a grandfather is that usually I can stay fairly well out of family arguments and quarrels.
Many people don’t like their jobs or professions, but I have always enjoyed being a teacher, lecturer, editor, author and at this moment, if another overseas teaching position opened up for a semester, I would surely undertake the opportunity again. as I did this past spring teaching for a five month semester at Ocean University of China in Qingdao along the Yellow Sea, or serving as the academic coordinator for the lifelong learners on the University of Virginia/Institute for Shipboard Education for the three and a half month around the world study tour in the autumn semester.
Aristotle’s book to his son Nicomachus, provides a number of key concepts for moving toward a happy life: good family, good spouse, good children, good community, good reputation, good friends, good education, good health, and enough wealth, sufficient for one’s status in life, and loyalty to one’s country. Not everything in life works out perfectly, but as one of my major goals is happiness, for the most part, I have had a happy life. (Deo gratias.)
Question Four: You have been a friend of Professor D. Ray Heisey over the past 40 years, compare your individuality with his and your co-operations to the last days of his life.
Michael’s Answer
In 1973, in my edited book, Intercommunication among Peoples and Nations, I republished Ray Heisey’s 1970 Quarterly Journal of Speech article, “The Rhetoric of the Arab-Israeli Conflict.” He wrote me to thank me for publishing his essay. At that time, perhaps we only knew each other rather casually through communication conferences, but if I remember correctly, when I held a national conference in 1974 to establish the academic field of intercultural communication, he was among those 200 individuals present. This was before the internet age, and we mostly saw each other at conferences as both of us were active conference leaders and presenters, or exchanged a few letters by mail on different projects.
As he was serving for three years as the President of Damavand College in Tehran, 1975-1978, each year the Communication Department at Kent State University advertised for a temporary visiting position and appointed an individual to replace him for the year. During Professor Heisey’s final year as President at Damavand College. I had completed my five year term as Chairman of the University of Virginia Communication Department, and I had agreed to serve at the United States Information Agency as the academic coordinator to teach an intensive intercultural communication course for midlevel executives for the 1977 autumn semester. Also, I had applied to teach at Kent State University for the winter and spring quarters, and perhaps with Professor Heisey’s recommendation, I was chosen to replace him during that period.
When he returned to Kent State University from Tehran, we began to develop a close friendship and undertook several projects together, some of which never resulted in coediting or coauthoring an article or book together. For example, I got us a contract in the late 1990s for an ESOL instructor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Professor Heisey, and me to coauthor a guide book for international university students in the US. He promptly completed his part of the book, but neither our other colleague nor I did get our sections completed. The contract lapsed, and the book was not published. In 1995, Professor K.S. Sitaram of Southern Illinois University and I cochaired six Rochester Intercultural Conferences, and to the best of my memory, Professor Heisey was a presenter at each of these conferences. Two of the papers that Professor Heisey contributed to the books published as a result of the conference were published, but two or three additional papers that he prepared for the conferences were not published in additional books related to the conferences because of difficulties with a new publisher who would not accept the book lengths that the earlier publisher had permitted. Two of these essays related to Africa, one to communication, technology, and values, and still another to human rights. This was a great pity.
Professor Heisey preceded me in teaching in China by five years or so, and he gave me much very wise advice. His most important statement, “three things to remember while teaching in China, 1. Patience, 2. Patience, 3. Patience (because of the contrast cultures that we were getting involved in ). It was simple, but very wise advice.
I recommended to the editors at Ablex Publishing Company, that he become the series editor for a vacant series, and in this context, he was both series editor and coeditor for several books about Chinese communication. After not seeing him at US national conferences for several years because of my teaching in China during the 2001-2011 period, we were together at the German-Chinese symposium on intercultural communication at Shanghai International Studies University in June, 2010, followed immediately at the International Association for Intercultural Communication Studies in Guangzhou, China, where he was an active and outstanding keynote and leader as he had been in Shanghai.
Unfortunately, in the winter of 2011, he learned that he had thyroid cancer with perhaps only three months to live. Despite his chemotherapy, it was clear to him that he was moving toward the end of his life: “Time is running out,” he wrote me, and asked if I could assist him in getting his essay about Damavand College published, which I did in a condensed form for the Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (in Asia) published at Shanghai International Studies University’s Middle East Institute. I am not aware whether the essay was published before he died in May, 2011 or not. Several people helped him get some of his final essays into print, so it is not clear whether he knew about each of these publications or not.
Recently, three close friends in the intercultural communication field have died: Professor K.S. Sitaram of Southern Illinois University at the beginning of 1909; Professor Nobleza Asuncion-Lande of the University of Kansas died in 2010; and then Professor Heisey in May, 2011. Presently, Professor Steve J. Kulich at Shanghai International Studies University and I are coediting a special issue on twelve of the early North American leaders in the intercultural fields, including Asuncion-Lande, Sitaram, and Heisey. I am writing the essays on Sitaram and Heisey. I have completed the essay on Sitaram, and am presently working on the essay on Professor Heisey. All three of these deaths were a sad moment for the early leaders of the academic intercultural field. I treasure all of them in my memory. Being gone so long from teaching in the US (last at Rochester Institute of Technology in 2001 before I went to China), I often think that I don’t have any close friends in the US, besides my children, their spouses, and my grandchildren, but certainly the professional friendships with such outstanding indiviiduals as Professors Sitaram, Asuncion-Lande, and Heisey are a major achievement over mostly the last forty years. All three of them were my professional mentors as well, although Professor Heisey, in his modesty and even being four years older than I, used to tell other colleagues that I was his mentor. No, it was the other way around, with great thanks to them. Or, were we co-mentors to each other as the intercultural communication academic field developed?
Question Five: Today you write a letter to the Iranian students; Why do you feel a need for that today? Was there any need for it about 30 years ago? What are the main reasons in both cases?
Michael’s Answer
The Buddhists have a saying: there is no yesterday because yesterday becomes today and there is no tomorrow as tomorrow becomes today, thus we should all live in the present as well as possible. Shakespeare’s question has Hamlet asking: “Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow! Will tomorrow never come?” The poet, e.e. Cummings once said: “The woman named tomorrow sits with a hairpin in her teeth and turns and says ‘my grandmother yesterday is dead. Well, what of it? Let the dead be dead.” In 1972, both Chairman Mao Tsedong, despite his Cultural Revolution, and US President Richard Nixon, though strongly anti communist, made a brave decision to meet, and as Henry Kissinger says, history was changed. President Jimmy Carter, a graduate of the US Naval Academy and China’s Paramount Leader, Deng Xiaoping, agreed to full diplomatic relations. Also, Carter decided, with major protests from right-wing politicians such as Ronald Reagan, who said “It’s ours, and we will not give it up” to return the Panama Canal gradually to Panama. Although it is not well known, President Carter made great, behind the scenes efforts, to get more than 50 US diplomat hostages released from Iran, but the credit went to the new President Reagan on his first inauguration as the hostages flew home. After Carter’s presidency, he has made trips to North Korea and Cuba to try to end the decades long stand-off, frozen in time between the US and other formerly hostile countries.
So, when is the time to speak? We have the Latin saying, “Carpe Diem!” (Seize the Day!”) As Civil Rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. said “Now is the time!” There were moments in time when Iran and the US might have overcome their difficulties: had Ronald Reagan taken a very brave effort to restore friendly relations with Iran as he did with President Gorbachev of the then Soviet Union, or at the beginning of President Obama’s term in office had both sides, Iran and the US, agreed to the serious work of restoring friendly contacts, leading also to restoring diplomatic relations? Could one imagine that President Obama wins a second four year term of office, and with the cooperation of the Republicans, suddenly the US moves toward restoring full diplomatic relations with Cuba, Iran, and North Korea, as he did recently with Burma/Myamar?
My writing a friendly letter to the young Iranian students developed because of Mansoureh Sharifzadeh’s and my email contacts and because of our mutual friendship with Professor D. Ray Heisey, as well as the fact that my blog has become popular enough recently that it no longer stands alone, but that several search engines are now picking up all of the posts and thus making them more potentially read by people outside of the framework of my own blog. Even so, it is only a small voice on our part, and there are unlikely to be any American policy-makers reading these posts, but “today’s” decision to write the letter seemed appropriate in the context of our two contacts, and our decision to engage in these ten-question interviews.
Personally, I know very few Iranians, and have very few Iranian friends, but our friendly contacts together have made this small voice possible, as would not have occurred perhaps thirty + years ago. Time should be unfrozen, and we should all be about the business of a “dialogue among civilizations” rather than a “clash of civilizations.”
Question Six: You have travelled to more than sixty countries what has been of your most and least interesting and how have they been supportive in your working experience? Why is it important for the youngsters to be ‘more international in their outlooks’? How can they find a global vision and what is its outcome and what is the easiest means for them to gain the goal?
Michael’s Answer
The fourth century St. Augustine said that if we have not traveled, we have not opened the first page of the book of life. With my recent faculty appointment to join the University of Virginia/Institute for Shipboard Education autumn 2011 three and a half month Semester at Sea study tour around the world as the academic coordinator for the sixty lifelong learners on board, and visits to Morocco*, Ghana*, South Africa, Mauritius*, India, Malaysia, Viet Nam, China, Japan, Hawaii, Costa Rica*, traversing the Panama Canal*, and Honduras, my total number of countries rose to about sixty-nine that I have visited (with those with the star being new for me). No doubt, those countries where I have both lived and taught for an extended period—Canada, Swaziland, and China—must be my most interesting countries. Certainly, my nearly ten years of teaching in China and frequent returns to give lectures to students there speak loudly to my fondness for the young Chinese, causing them at Shanghai International Studies University to label me a “Chiamerican.”
I have traveled to Europe several times. While teaching in China, I visited a number of Asian and Pacific rim countries, often with a young Chinese friend. Over the last nearly 40 years, I have given lectures or lecture series in Cambodia, Canada, China, England, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, and South Korea. Returning from China on July 30, 2011, my bags were basically still packed for the Semester at Sea and I boarded the MV/Explorer on August 20, and debarked on December 13. I missed a lot of good opportunities, but enjoyed visiting most of the countries.
Where would I still like to travel to? More central and eastern European countries; Egypt and Iran in the Middle East; Laos in Asia; Brazil in Latin America; Nigeria and northern Africa all would be very interesting travel destinations. I probably don’t have many least desired destinations beyond some of the more dangerous travel locations for Americans. My South Sudanese friends have encouraged me to come to the new state of South Sudan, but I am reluctant to do so. I see advertisements for travel to very interesting locations which call for strenuous activities, and coming to my 76th birthday on March 29 (the same day that my granddaughter Darya turns 15), I am passing those up for destinations calling for more mild activities. Travel seems to be in my DNA, however, and I hope that I will have more travel opportunities in the future. When we step out of our own cultures, we learn more about ourselves, by traveling, studying, working, and living in the new cultures. Each new travel opens another page in the book of life.
Question Seven: In Iran people tend to keep their privacy very strongly while in the cultural values of the Americans, there might be less reason for that. For instance, in Iran, a person never reveals being an adopted child or explaining about her/his past marriages and even celebrating a second marriage while having children or the friendship of different genders is not accepted by the people, how do you see these fundamental differences between our cultures?
Michael’s Answer:
An important idea in intercultural communication is how much self disclosure people from different cultures and backgrounds feel comfortable to share. When I was a child, my adopted mother and I had a sort of agreement: “It is nobody’s business that you were adopted, but if you are questioned about it, you should be honest.” She was Irish and rather traditional on that subject, and I am not sure that my father ever talked to me about it. So, I never talked about it. Later, after I was an adult, I spoke more freely about this part of my life as an infant, being loved by my adoptive parents and I never felt the need to try to find my birth mother. Perhaps my later openness about this topic helped my daughter and her first husband to feel more comfortable in adopting Darya from Russia when she was 8 months old. Darya also has her brother Sanders and her sister Sophia, both natural children of my daughter and her former husband.
My first wife and I were married 22 years, and we are linked together because of our three children and nine grandchildren. We both live in the same town. In fact, I have an apartment in my daughter’s house. My first wife has had a very nice second husband for about 15 years now, and he and I are friendly. Six years after separating, I remarried a second time and we were together for 14 and a half years. She had four adult children and I had three, and all but one of them were present at our wedding, and with one of my second wife’s one year old daughter, they all stood with us we were married. She had a very good sense of social justice and adopted the saying “Living simply, so that others may simply live.” She had been on a study tour in Mexico and Nicaragua and I had been on a study tour to Lebanon, Jordan, and the occupied territories of Israel; both of us were involved in peace activities; both of us were educators, and shared the same religious tradition, and we both liked young people. I had had several international exchange high school students living with me before we were married, and together we had an exchange son, first from Spaiin, and then from South Africa, and a refugee teenager from El Salvador.
When I was a Fulbright Professor in Swaziland, South East Africa, she was with me and teaching courses in religion. We brought two teenagers back to the US to live with us for a year of high school. Our South African Indian exchange son, Bernard, returned to the US for university, and is now married a second time to a young woman born in the US. He is doing very well as a regional clothing manager. Amariah and Paulos from Swaziland were in high school here. Paulos returned to Swaziland after his high school graduation, and Amariah stayed with us for three years, and then got married to a young African American woman and has 2 teen age daughters here, but he and his wife have divorced.
As I taught almost ten years in Chinese universities to 2300 students, I made a number of good friendships with Chinese students. Their older teachers are much more traditional, but the younger ones are more open. There are about 100,000 foreigners teaching English in China today, and at both Beijing Language and Culture University and Shanghai International Studies University, there are many foreign teachers and students. At BLCU, there were nine of us in the English College, and SISU has about sixty foreign teachers, many of them teaching foreign languages besides English. Many Chinese students liked the international atmosphere in my apartments both in Beijing and Shanghai.
At SISU, Amir and Maria from the University of Tehran and their little girl Nilla and I became good friends as they lived on the floor below me. We had several meals together, including when I returned to the University to give lectures in 2010, shortly after the birth of their son, Amir Ali.
Many of the Chinese students opened up to me as their foreign teacher, several helping me to teach as volunteers in a private language elementary and junior middle school, or joining my Friday evening open houses, inviting me to their homes, or traveling with me. Seven young Chinese went on trips abroad with me. In a similar way, Amir and Maria were very pleasant to be with, even though their Iranian background was much more traditional than my very intercultural background.
Sometimes students would ask if I was a typical American (professor) and my answer was always no, as many Americans might visit China for two or three weeks, but far fewer would come to live and work or teach there. The few Iranian students with whom I became friends over my 50 years of teaching were already very Westernized when I met them. It is one of the benefits of studying overseas—whether it is the Westerner going to teach or work in a country like China, or the foreign students coming to the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or the UK. If we have good experiences overseas, then we want to become more international too. More pages in the book of life open for us.
Question Eight: Based on your acquisition, what are the main reasons for the Iranian government to stand against America and Zionists and vice versa? How would you judge these statements by Ayatollah Khomeini “Today the war between truth and falsehood; the war between the rich and the poor; the war between the weak and the arrogant; the war between the naked and the clothed has started.” Sahifah Noor, V. 20, Page 236 (1988)
Michael’s Answer
In each of our three countries, Iran, Israel, and the US, there is an ongoing tense conflict, diplomatically, politically, strategically and in our mentalities. Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudia Arabia have been the closest allies to the US in the Middle East. There have been many books relating to “the China threat” published in the US, and many books published in Chinese in China on “the American threat.” Now, more books in the US are being published about “The Iran Threat.” Both Jewish lobbies and evangelical Christians in the US demand stronger and sometimes blind support for Israel. The US government has concerns about the effects of “the Arab Spring,” and with good reason, as it is not clear what new dangerous events will develop from those protests and governmental reactions in the Middle East.
President Obama is generally given good support for several of his foreign policy initiatives, such as ending the military presence generally in Iraq, the capture and killing of Osama bin Lauden, and the Navy Seals rescuing of American hostages in Somalia, but the entire Middle East remains a major concern for the for US government. When Iran and Israel are involved in sabre-rattling against each other, and when assassinations occur clandestinely in these countries, with charges against the other countries, there is more reason for concern.
One problem that President Obama faces in his 2012 reelection campaign is that the US Senate Republican Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell said early in Obama’s presidency, that the single objective of the Republican congressional leaders was to ensure that Obama would have only a one-term presidency. Generally, the Republican Party over the last three years has been the Party of “No.” I recently read that there are sixty-nine anti-Obama books published in the last several years in the US., mostly by right-wing writers, many with outlandish claims unsupported by reliable evidence.
The weakness of the international economy, especially in Europe, where the disastrous economic crises in Greece, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and Spain pose serious threats for stability to the entire European Union and the Euro as a major world currency. The number of very poor individuals in the world (including a dramatic increase even in the USover the last several years, does indeed justify the claim of Samuel P. Huntington that the Islamic Middle East and North Africa, the Confucianist/Buddhist/Hindu Asian against the European, Latin American, and North Americans more or less Christian countries do indeed create a “clash of civilizations.”
The 2007-2009 world-wide recession could easily reemerge again. Asian countries presently, including China and India, appear to have better prospects than for much of the rest of the world economy. At this time, approximately one quarter of the seven billion world population live in deep poverty. While he was Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan said that the two greatest problems facing the world, and greatest human rights violations are war and abject poverty.
In a Ghanaian village in our autumn Semester at Sea voyage, an American twenty year old woman asked me: “What can we do? When I grow up, what should I do to help eliminate poverty?” My response was that as individuals, our abilities are limited, but we can support good government with a reasonable foreign and domestic policy, and each of us can make some small efforts toward a better global and domestic policy and condition. Later, we might make bigger steps.
Three examples from the sense of social justice that was encouraged in our voyage, where many of the passengers brought school supplies and children’s books to distribute at schools in Africa and Asia as we continued our travel. Many of them did one day volunteer work in service projects in different countries, such as orphanages, hunger programs, soup kitchens, and Habitat for Humanity, : 1. A young man who was on the Semester at Sea experience in 2002 as a university student, asked an Indian boy, if he could have one small thing that would make his life better, what would it be. The boy answered “a pencil.” So this young man started a nonprofit organization called “Pencils of Promise,” which has now helped native villagers in three different countries build their own two room school houses and hire their own native teachers, and forty-two schools have been built or are unders construction. 2. In South Africa, a couple have taken in more than 400 HIV/AIDS orphans and have established an ongoing charity, “Do Umbunto” whereby individuals can buy a bracelet as a sign of solidarity to support the orphans. The woman lifelong learner, already active in social justice projects in the US, sold $3,000 of bracelets, all of which go directly to the orphans, without any administrative costs. 3. A medical doctor on the ship who was a lifelong learner worked with many of the students to provide blood for a maternity hospital in Ghana during the next voyage docking there.
Here at home in the boy scout troop where my 13 year old grandson, Sanders, is an active member, each week the scouts are encouraged to help get people to provide nonperishable food for a local food bank, and then to work in the “Loaves and Fishes” food bank to distribute food for the poor in our community.
Each of us is called to help those who are poor and disadvantaged in our own local settings, or to help provide funds for national disasters, such as the earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, China, Pakistan, and in the 2004 tsunami which struck much of Asia, or in the Katrina hurricane that devastated New Orleans and the coastal areas on the Gulf of Mexico. All world religions have as a major priority caring for the poor. A concept from liberation theology is that the church, temple, synagogue, or mosque that does not stand with the poor has no standing. Governments have special responsibilities for the poorest in their societies.
Question Nine: In our joint paper with Dr. Heisey, ‘The Visual and Artistic Rhetoric of Americans and Iranians of Each Other’ one of the drawers, illustrated the US as a powerful nation that intends to promote the world condition, while others portrayed it as oppressor, aggressor, demolisher, performer of the commands of the Zionist regime, cowboy, main terrorist, and mainly a very strong power with Satanic intentions , how would it be possible for the US to change and bring all of the perspectives to the first idea? And how would you Interpret these lines by Khaje Hafiz Shirazi, “Not the way(Usage) of the darvish is discussion(of complaint of the true beloved, or of the murished): If not, (to narrate) passed circumstances to thee we had.” [Goftogoo Ayeen darvishi Nabood Var Ba Ham majaraha dashteem]
Michael’s Answer
Such perceptions are hard to break. Personally, I think that many of these charges leveled at the George W. Bush administration have lessened to some extent, and that unlike that period, we are seeing more progress in overcoming these negative perceptions overseas since the Obama administration has come to power in 2009. One of my sons disagrees sharply with me on this point. Right-wing extremism remains a serious problem, not only in the US, but in other countries as well, whether it be the so-called “tea party” people or right-wing evangelical Christians in the US, or for “jihadist” extremist Moslems, which is contrary to the meaning of “the struggle—jihad” in the Holy Qu’ran as articulated by the prophet Mohammed (Peace be upon him). [I am sorry that the quote which you have provided me by Khhaje Hafiz Shirazi is not clear enough in its meaning for me to respond to.]
Question Ten: You like travelling to Iran, what are your expectations about this country, and how do you evaluate those Iranians whom you have visited so far, what is the most significant feature of their personality and how do you compare them with those of Arab world?
Michael’s Answer
Unfortunately, as I have noted in the earlier questions, I know very few Iranians and have very few Iranian friends—a consequence of the more than thirty years of frozen relations between Iran and the US. Where a hundred thousand Chinese students and many Indian students come to the US to study, the number of Iranians doing so is very limited. I have never had an Iranian student in class and in China, even though when I taught at Beijing Language and Culture University there were 7500 foreign students from 142 countries, there and at the other universities, all of my students have been Chinese. My first close Iranian friends in China, Amir and Maria, were most gracious and hospitable. Iran is well known for its gracious hospitality, and I would expect that if I were to teach for a semester or spend a month visiting there, I would make many good Iranian friends, who would welcome me into their homes and hearts as our father in faith, Abraham (Abram) did to the angels disguised as men, even as they seemed to be strangers. Still, there is an uneasiness when we hear that some radical groups continue to capture American tourists in Iran, and presently the relations between Iran, Europe, Israel, and the US remain in an unsettled situation. It is a pity.
Are there any other comments which you wish to make?
Michael’s Answer
There is my favorite prayer by St. Francis of Assisi “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is despair, hope; where there is doubt, faith; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Oh divine Master, grant that we may seek not so much to be consoled as to console, to be loved, as to love; to be pardoned, as to pardon; for it is in giving that we receive, it in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is dying that we are born to eternal life.” The hymn, “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me” resonates well on this topic, as does the Beetles song, “Come on people now, smile on your brother. Everybody get together and try to love one another right now.” NOW IS THE TIME.
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Six Early Leaders in the Intercultural Fields. Michael H. Prosser, Ph.D. (February 17, 2012) [Post 368]
[Professor Steve J. Kulich at Shanghai International Studies University and I are coediting a special forthcoming issue of International Journal of Intercultural Communication on twelve early leaders in the academic intercultural fields. Here I am providing the abstracts of the writers on these early leaders as snapshots of what will later be published as articles in the Journal. This first set of the abstracts about six of these early leaders is presented below:
Nobleza Asuncion-Lande (deceased) by Dorthy Pennington, University of Kansas
Fred L. Casmir by Mark C. Hopson, George Mason University; Tabitha Hart, University of Washington; and Gina Castle Bell, George Mason University
John C. Condon by Richard Harris, Faculty of Management, Chukyo University, Nagoya, Japan
Paul Pederson by Gary Fontaine, University of Hawaii
K.S. Sitaram (deceased) by Michael H. Prosser, University of Virginia, Emeritus, and Shanghai International Studies University, Emeritus
Edward C. Stewart by Jacqueline Howell Wasilewski, International Christian University, Tokyo, retired and Holly Siebert Kawakama, Kanda University of International Studies, Chiba, Japan (retired), Go Global Coaching, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA]
Nobleza Asuncion-Lande: Intercultural Communication “Mother Ship:”
Dorthy Pennington, Communication Studies Department, University of Kansas
Abstract
Nobleza C. Asuncion-Lande` (d. February 13, 2010) devoted her career to communication studies, specializing in intercultural
communication and linguistics. She was a faculty member in Communication Studies at the University of Kansas for more than
forty years. She was a pioneer and builder in intercultural communication ,helping to conceptualize the theory and pedagogy of
teaching in this developing area. Her scholarship and leadership in intercultural communication are notable in the areas
of language studies, ethics, conflict, and gender studies. Born in Manila, the Philippines, she adopted the world as her sphere
for intercultural scholarship and practice. Hers was a global perspective, and her endless pursuit of intercultural opportunities
took her around the world, literally, as a scholar, visiting professor and conferee. At the time of her sudden death, she was
planning a trip abroad. During her career, she published more than fifty articles on a variety of topics, and presented at more
than seventy conferences. She was a pioneer in the International and Intercultural Division of the National Communication
Association and in the International Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research. She was also active in the
International Communication Association, in the Pacific and Asian Communication Association where she served as president, and in the Central
States Communication Association. Her editorial role in professional journals included Human Communication and the Howard Journal
of Communications. During her long and distinguished academic career, she was also a mentor, guide, role model , and consummate encourager
for her students at the University of Kansas. Whether consciously or unconsciously, as this article shows, Asuncion-Lande` consistently
operationalized an etic and emic approach to scholarship in intercultural communication.
Key words: Andragogy, Cross-cultural conflict, Etic, Emic, Ethics power
Meeting in the Middle: An Essay on Fred L. Casmir’s Contributions to the Field of Intercultural Communication
Mark C. Hobson, George Mason University, Tabitha Hart, University of Washington; and Gina Castle Bell, George Mason University
Abstract
Fred Casmir’s third-culture building (TCB) framework made a major theoretical contribution to communication studies. Casmir conceptualized the framework as an active process whereby different cultural groups come together to form a third-culture between them. The third-culture then becomes a common ground for all participants; a cognitive space that incorporates elements of both cultures and yet remains separate and distinct. Third-culture building is a departure from adoption (the process of taking on the cultural mores of another) or adaptation (modifying one’s cultural mores to better fit those of another), and achieved through deliberate development in an extended process, during which all participants gain an understanding of, and appreciation for, one another. In this essay, the authors review the life and work of Fred Casmir—a leading figure in establishing intercultural communication as a specific area of study. Next the authors discuss the ideological foundations, intended use, key applications and heuristic value of Casmir’s third-culture building framework.
Key words: Fred L. Casmir, oral speech, communication scholarship, third-culture building, international communication, intercultural communication, communication and speech organization
A Different Way of Knowing: With Respect to John C. (Jack) Condon
Richard Harris, Faculty of Management, Chukyo University, Nagoya, Japan
Abstract
John C. (Jack) Condon is one of the most respected figures in intercultural communication today. His 1975 introductory textbook was a significant factor in defining the field and giving it its initial direction and terminology, and the two international conferences he helped organize in Japan in the 1970s were influential in bringing together many of the figures responsible for its subsequent development. His teaching, especially at the University of New Mexico and the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication, has introduced thousands of students to the field, and many of today’s leading practitioners were directly and personally influenced by Condon’s approach. His career spans almost half a century, and yet the details of his extraordinary life and achievements are not widely known. This retrospective summary attempts to suggest some of the more important biographical and intellectual stages in Condon’s ongoing development as a major intercultural leader.
Key Words: Cultural values; Focused observation; General semantics; Intercultural communication; Personal engagement; Japan; Mexico; Epistemic structures
Mocha Java Café: Reminiscing about Paul Pedersen’s Continuing Contributions to Our Intercultural Fields
Gary Fontaine, School of Communications, University of Hawaii
Abstract
Paul Pedersen has been one of the most energetic, prolific and eclectic thinkers, writers and doers in our collage of intercultural fields. His general interests have spanned intercultural counseling, intercultural training, international education and–increasingly over his career–conflict management at the micro, regional and global levels. He has taught and conducted research at an array of universities, consulted for a broad range of organizations, and provided services to a long list of professional organizations. This paper provides a glimpse of his professional journey and what he has—and is—contributing to us all along the way. Particular attention is paid to his contributions to multicultural counseling and psychotherapy, Microcounseling, his Triad Training Model, and his currently emerging work on Inclusive Cultural Empathy and its relevance to a broad range of intercultural contexts including counseling, advising, teaching, consoling, consulting, coaching, managing, leading, and international diplomacy.
Key words: Paul Pedersen, Multicultural counseling psychotherapy, intercultural training, Microcounseling, Triad model, Inclusive cultural empathy, Global leadership.
K.S. Sitaram: An Early Interculturalist
Michael H. Prosser, University of Virginia Emeritus; Shanghai International Studies University Emeritus
Abstract:
A retrospective of the leadership and academic contributions of K.S. Sitaram (1935-2009) with an emphasis on his early work career in India and his 1969 doctoral dissertation on Indian radio; his early influence in the development of the study of intercultural communication and his coauthored 1976 text, Foundations of Intercultural Communication with its stress on Asian communication; his further development of an understanding of Asian communication, particularly through Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam in his 1995 text, Communication and Culture: A World View; his co-chairmanship of the 1995-2001 Rochester Intercultural Conferences and co-editorship of the 1998 Civic Discourse: Multiculturalism, Cultural Diversity, and Global Communication and 1999 Civic Discourse: Intercultural, International, and Global Media; and a summary of his professional contributions.
Key Words: Asian religions, India, Intercultural and multicultural communication, Information technology, K.S. Sitaram, Radio, World peace
Edward C. Stewart: Cultural Dynamics Pioneer
Jacqueline Howell Wasilewski,, International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan (retired); Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO), Albuquerque, New Mexico
and Holly Siebert Kawakami,, Kanda University of International Studies, Chiba, Japan (retired); Go Global Coaching, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Abstract
Professor Edward C. Stewart’s work has been much affected by his own experiences and the historical spaces he and his families of origin have occupied. He remains one of the most complex members of the intercultural field. Although he played a key role in the initial organization of the field in the 1970s, he has also been the quintessential “outsider.” As a French-Swiss-Southern American-Brazilian, his multicultural perspective is novel. His initial academic formation was in experimental psychology with a focus on perception.
During his whole career he has been creating comprehensive conceptual frameworks for the complex intercultural communication field of inquiry. One of Stewart’s earliest pioneering efforts was at the 1974 conference held in Chicago to establish the intercultural field sponsored by the Speech Communication Association (SCA, now the National Communication Association, NCA), the International Communication Association (ICA) and the newly developing Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research (SIETAR). At this conference Stewart’s 40-page 1973 “Outline of Intercultural Communication” provided the “text” that the 200 participants, divided into small groups, discussed.
Stewart began his work with a focus on cultural differences, using a contrast culture approach. This approach produced his two most famous works, the Contrast American or Contrast Culture Method (CCM) of Intercultural Training and his book, American Cultural Patterns: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Although this approach moves beyond simple contrasts to embrace similarities and the realization that differences are a matter of degree (Paige, 1993), later in his career Stewart focused more on adaptation, on dialectical and contrasting forces.
This all goes back to his original intellectual formation as a student of Harry Helson, the neurophysiologist, and Helson’s idea that perception itself is an act of creation. This is the platform upon which Stewart constructed a cognitive/emotional/aesthetic dialectical geometry in which all “liveliness” includes seeming opposites AND the space between, the interface where relationships are formed.
Stewart’s most recent synthesis-in-process is a proposal to create a graduate level university course, “Culture as the Central Social Science” and an accompanying text, Forces of Identity (FORID) for Culture-Building. The idea is that this course would be a required course for any of the social sciences. Stewart’s latest ideas (see part 6 Epilogue below) move way beyond a simple dialectical orientation to become a five-part (Seenko) framework for analyzing culture.
Key words: American cultural patterns, Contrast American method, Culture as the central social science, Contrast Culture Method (CCM), Culture heroes in training, Cultural identity for the third millennium, Cultural trilogy, Edward C. Stewart, Primordial sentiments of being, Seenko
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February 12, 2012
Sara Lipka,The Secret of Success for a Branch
Campus? It’s All in the Marketing, Chronicle
of HigherEducation, February 12, 2012 [Post
366]
Silvia Razgova for The Chronicle
New students arrive at the U. of Wollongong in Dubai for orientation. The Australian university recruits students from across the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa.
By Sara Lipka
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
When the global financial crisis hit Dubai, many of the Indian expatriate families whose children went to university here sent them back home. But while sons were leaving, daughters were staying, noticed Raymi van der Spek, executive director for administration and strategic development at the University of Wollongong in Dubai.
How better to attract the attention of female prospective students, he thought, than with a young Bollywood actor? Ranbir Kapoor visited Wollongong in November to promote his new film, Rockstar, and hundreds of Indian women—and men—flocked to the university. The event landed on Page 3 of one of the country’s big English-language newspapers, Mr. Van der Spek gloats. “It’s all about promotion, hype, promotion, recognition,” he says. “Everything to get your name out there.”
The down economy looms large for international branch campuses, which now number 200 around the world, mainly in Asia and the Middle East. A handful of optimistic ventures have ended in high-profile closures, and many outposts, both established and fledgling, struggle to succeed. To be solvent requires the steady revenue of tuition, but building a brand and recruiting students are formidable tasks.
Still, college administrators often go in with a “Field of Dreams mentality: If we build it, they’ll come,” says Kevin Kinser, an associate professor of education and co-director of the Cross-Border Education Research Team at the State University of New York at Albany.
Wollongong, a branch of the Australian university in New South Wales, takes nothing for granted. Striving to maintain a strong reputation in the region, the university draws ever more students to its three buildings here in the education theme park of Knowledge Village. Its population of 3,100, evenly split between undergraduate and graduate programs, plus 500 English-language students, comes from 95 countries, and new enrollments in 2011 were up more than a third over the previous year.
Coming to Dubai in 1993 gave Wollongong an early foothold, but it can’t rely on that in a crowded higher-education market, where studies now show that supply exceeds demand.
One of more than 80 universities in this shiny desert metropolis, Wollongong has been agile and aggressive in international recruitment, among other pursuits. Mr. Van der Spek manages marketing meticulously and tracks recruiters’ numbers, rewarding top performers; the Office of Institutional Effectiveness, directed by a sociologist, conducts continuous market research.
Wollongong also invites local high schools to bus over their students, and it takes them to the activities area, usually clacking with Ping-Pong and billiards matches. Franky Barreto, manager of student services and a former player on the Indian national soccer team, knows his role: “We need to make sure that they get entertained.”
Television ads also direct students here, as they watch, for instance, American Idol on India’s Star TV. Glossy color fliers come inside Dubai’s Chinese circulars; Mr. Van der Spek won’t reveal which. Any advantage, he says, must be closely guarded.
Selling a Brand
Wollongong didn’t start life in Dubai with a beach named after it. In 1993 the branch began teaching English in a rented office building, to eight students. It grew slowly, without large grants or loans, investing extra tuition revenue. In 2001, with about 500 degree-seeking and 100 English-language students, the operation moved to a shopping complex on Jumeirah Road, where the strip of sand across the street is still known by old taxi drivers as Wollongong Beach.
Now in Knowledge Village, a special economic zone for international higher education, the University of Wollongong in Dubai offers English-language instruction, 13 bachelor’s degrees, 11 master’s degrees, and two doctorates. It has exemplified what Jason E. Lane, the other director of Albany’s Cross-Border Education Research Team, says is the right approach to branch campuses: “Start small, build your brand, and then expand.”
Local connections help, of course; here such influence is called wasta. Wollongong has endured the shifting, bureaucratic process of seeking and maintaining accreditation in both Dubai and the United Arab Emirates, even when that came to involve both institutional licensure and independent evaluation of each degree program. Through accreditation and other channels, including Emirati alumni, Wollongong has formed strong relationships with several government agencies. When a group of public employees earned master’s degrees in forensic accounting, in 2010, the crown prince of Dubai presented their diplomas.
The university’s branding campaign was in full force by then. Headhunted in Australia for his background in finance, Mr. Van der Spek had come here in 2007 and, invigorated by Dubai, quickly shifted his focus. “This is probably one of the most competitive markets on the planet,” he says.
Mr. Van der Spek, 53, is a fast, intent talker with spiked hair. In perpetual motion one afternoon—checking this number, finding that flier—he finally takes out his lunch, a foil-wrapped sandwich, at 4:30. He proudly endorses a commercial approach to higher education.
“Selling is not a dirty word,” he says. “We have to sell to be able to educate.”
Wollongong’s early opening helped it build name recognition in the UAE, but its brand had become static, and that was a liability, Mr. Van der Spek says. “We kept holding on to the same thing.”
The University of Wollongong in Dubai was too much of a mouthful, he says, so he pushed UOWD. The institution secured the local telephone number 800-UOWD, and across the top of its main building, it mounted 10-foot-high blue letters, visible from the city’s Metro.
In its marketing materials, Wollongong plays up Australia, which is well respected in the region for education, and emphasizes its longevity, a powerful message in a city where universities have closed suddenly, leaving students scrambling. More recently, the campus has started portraying itself as multicultural, to dispel a stereotype that its students are all Indian (actually, about a fifth of them are).
While Wollongong puts up billboards and wraps intercity buses in ads, many branch campuses hardly advertise, says Albany’s Mr. Lane. Top administrators seem to think an international brand will instantly translate locally, he says, but often it doesn’t. Wollongong hasn’t made that assumption: “UOWD has done a great job of branding,” he says. “That’s something American institutions have not been able to do at the same level.”
Strategic marketing is just starting to catch on at international branch campuses, he says. In Dubai, Mr. Van der Spek sees some from Heriot-Watt University, a Scottish outpost, as well as Manipal University and BITS Pilani, both Indian.
Mr. Van der Spek recently consulted with the Knowledge Partnership, an Australian higher-education marketing firm, and he is always scheming to stay ahead. Right now he is trying to shift from promoting the university to selling its individual programs. “Targeted segmented product advertising,” he says, like a quarter-page ad in a conference program on a master’s of engineering management. And scannable QR codes, he says, waving his smartphone, on everything.
No Risks
Many decisions at Wollongong, including new degree programs, have months of research behind them. The relatively few branch campuses that do such analysis, says Mr. Lane, tend to rely on their home institutions or hire outside consultants. Employing a full-time director of institutional effectiveness in Dubai, he says, gives Wollongong better data.
The director, Daniel Kratochvil, a sociologist with a Ph.D. from Columbia University, has been here for three years, in the region for nine. A student of local mores, he just finished a sweeping analysis of demographics and trends in the Emirati education market.
Mr. Kratochvil surveys high-school students on Facebook and job seekers on Bayt.com, a Middle Eastern professional site, collecting information on their backgrounds and considerations for various decisions. What field of study? Which institution? Why? He polls new students, asking which Web banner ads they have seen (Yahoo? Google?) and which radio spots they have heard (104.8 FM?). One of Wollongong’s key selling points, he knows, is that graduates can exchange their Emirati diplomas for Australian ones.
In evaluating possible new programs, he conducts focus groups with students, alumni, and employers. Good decisions let Wollongong snag students like Ahmad Popal, an Afghan expat. Mr. Popal is in his third year of an undergraduate program in digital security. “This is the only university offering this major in the UAE,” he says.
Wollongong’s research recently identified another need: a part-time, evening bachelor’s program. Many prospective students, whether expatriates or Emiratis, don’t want to stop working, the university found. They may have gone from high school to a government job but need a degree to advance. So the university started a part-time bachelor’s of business administration. As with its other programs, tuition isn’t low, but it’s competitive: about $47,200 in total.
Growth can be shaky: The part-time program started in the fall of 2010 with only 28 students and serious scheduling glitches. After a break last spring and summer, it resumed, and last semester 40 students were enrolled in the evening classes.
Wollongong offers no online courses. “We’re in that camp that says you need to have face-to-face instruction,” says Mr. Van der Spek. “There are very strongly held traditional views here,” he says of the UAE. “Traditional ways of doing things are typically viewed as of a higher quality.”
The university’s selection of degrees is also conservative, says Mr. Kratochvil. “Once you’ve gotten away from engineering and business, you have to be careful.” Some branch campuses want to boost enrollment by offering the latest thing, but Wollongong won’t, he says. “If you’re desperate for students, you’re going to take a risk.”
And if enrollment lags, the university may have to close a program. That causes significant reputational damage, Mr. Kratochvil says, because it hurts alumni. It’s better to be deliberate—and patient, he says. “We had a dip, but we rode it out. We didn’t panic, didn’t add anything.”
Wollongong began offering a master’s of engineering management in 2007 and a doctorate of business administration in 2010. It was persuaded by local demand, which is less susceptible to economic fluctuations. A quarter of graduate students at Wollongong are Emirati, compared with 12 percent of the general population.
The university recently conducted “feasibility surveys” to gauge interest in, for example, psychology and culture. It’s not moving on those yet, but as a result of those studies, it found interest in two new master’s degrees, international studies and media and communications, and added them this year. “We won’t start a degree program,” says Mr. Kratochvil, “unless we know there’s room for growth and stability.”
Multilingual Recruitment
For its carefully chosen programs, Wollongong chases students. From 2010 to 2011, it drove up its new enrollments by 39 percent, to 1,360.
Officials here scrutinize their numbers and know whom to keep looking for: expats in Dubai, undergraduates from Pakistan, graduate students from India. Five years ago, international students composed 5 percent of the total population; now they make up 25 percent, a more significant share of a larger number.
UOWD’s recruiters visit fairs and schools across the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa; lately they see a lot of potential in Oman, Kazakhstan, and Morocco. In another growing market, Nigeria, they understand the importance of subtle, focused advertising. In the southern, Christian part of the country, they represent Dubai as a safe, Westernized destination, and in the northern, Muslim region, they play up the city’s Muslim character.
Experiments with technology have sometimes been clumsy, like a live-chat feature on the university’s Web site that didn’t initially filter requests, including lewd ones. Representatives spend more time on Facebook and LinkedIn; the first responders are two full-time staff members and three student employees known as the “call center.”
Many prospective students show up in person, about 50 a day at peak times. When they enter the main building, they step into a busy lobby hung with giant UOWD banners: a South Asian man, an African woman, an Emirati man with an iPad. To the left, a sign tells them—in English, Arabic, Farsi, Russian, and Chinese—to take a ticket and wait to be served. The tickets’ numbers appear on a flat screen, referring bearers to particular windows.
Mohamed Salman, a third-year computer-science major from an Indian family in Abu Dhabi, recalls liking the university’s customer-service approach when he was a bewildered high-school student. “The staff really helped me out a lot and answered all my questions,” he says. “I had lots.”
Wollongong’s recruiters—Mr. Van der Spek calls them the A-Team—are almost all alumni. There’s Abubakar from Nigeria, Ahmad from Pakistan, Ahmed from Sudan, Ekaterina from Russia, Mohammed from the UAE, Shahab from Iran, and Toufik from Algeria. Together they speak 10 languages. As a young man at a window is hesitating in English, Toufik appears, and they begin chatting easily in Arabic.
The recruitment team for Michigan State University’s now defunct campus here consisted of two American women, one of whom spoke a little Arabic. Mr. Van der Spek is now trying to figure out if the Kazakhs are politically comfortable with the Russian woman. He keeps an eye out for university employees of other nationalities. He tapped a Chinese instructor in the English-language program, Cherry Lei, to start recruiting Chinese expats on the side; she would hang around the city’s Dragon Mart. Now he’s after a Turkish-speaking Ukrainian woman who assisted the former vice president for academic affairs.
Ahmed Elsir M.A. Abdelnour, one of the recruitment team’s leaders, describes his work as “results oriented.” Each recruiter has targets and competes for weekly prizes—dinner at a local hotel—in students served, applications collected, and offers made. Objective criteria—high-school or college grade-point averages and English test scores—keep the process honest, says Mr. Abdelnour. At certain levels, students get in; slightly lower, they are admitted conditionally. The university tries to give answers in 48 hours, referring unsuccessful applicants to the English-language program.
Wollongong also offers incentives for current students to recruit. For four years it has run a refer-a-friend program for 10 percent off tuition. Large banners adorn the hallways: “Looking to lower your tuition?” one says. “The more friends you refer, the more discount you get!” says another, describing silver, gold, and platinum levels.
The banners surprised the university’s interim president, David Rome, but he has supported the program. “We have to be innovative,” he says. “We’ve got to move with the times.”
According to Mr. Van der Spek, his commercial attitude hasn’t always gone over well with top administrators. “We’re coming to terms with that slowly,” he says. Last year he fought to separate admissions from the registrar and merge it with the marketing division, to form the recruitment department. “If I had been allowed,” he says, “I would have called it ‘sales.’”
Many branch campuses operate like for-profit companies, say Mr. Kinser and Mr. Lane, the American researchers. Without the benefit of an endowment (or a subsidy from a host country), a branch campus has to stay in the black for its parent institution, which, especially if it’s public, has politics to worry about.
At Wollongong in Dubai, 90 percent of revenue comes from tuition, and the profits go back to Australia. A few years ago, the New South Wales premier called UOWD one of the state’s most successful exports. Success for an international branch campus means quality, sure, but it needs to be financially viable. Otherwise, says Mr. Van der Spek, “there would be questions asked about why we’re here.”
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