NAU GLOBAL
Fall 2013
A Publication of the Center for International Education
Global Education: A Path to Scholarship
and Restored Hearing
by Prof. Mary Tolan
As a child, Tam Nguyen felt “empty
deep in my heart.” The Vietnamese girl
became deaf when she was just nine years old,
losing friendships and her previous way of life.
Tam – pronounced “dom” – now 31 and a biology
student at Northern Arizona University, underwent
two surgeries in her home country, but they did not
improve her hearing.
“I couldn’t be a top student because I didn’t hear what
my teachers were saying,” Tam said over a cup of green
tea. “And my friends and family thought I was annoying.
Tam Nguyen
I had a loud voice.” Assuming she was ignoring them,
they thought she didn’t care, when actually she didn’t
hear. Children teased her, and she began retreating
into a shell of frustration.
It was her father, a self-educated farmer and former
tailor, who became her rock, encouraging his middle
daughter to educate herself in the ways of the world
and beyond.
“I would always ask, ‘Why? Why? Why me?’” she
recalled, her feelings of sadness and anger heighted by
Needlepoint artwork using silk thread by Tam
Nguyen, depicting NAU’s Old Main, a gift to
NAU President Haeger
the fact that she was teased or ignored much of the time. “My father
would say, ‘It’s OK. Don’t compare yourself to anybody.’”
Her father, Nguyen Van An (in the Vietnamese culture the family name comes first), taught her meditation to find peace, needlepoint to release her anger, and lip-reading to survive.
He would wake her up at 3 in the morning “when the second
rooster singer sang” to teach her lip-reading when he thought the
brain was the sharpest.
“This was when our house was quiet. We had a small house and no
privacy like you have here – small rooms, small house. He would use a
blackboard and chalk to teach me.”
Tam lived with her parents and six siblings in the village of Bachoi, near Da Lat City in Vietnam’s Mountain Highlands Region.
Her modest home contained no books, so her father took her to the
(continued on page 14)
FROM THE VICE-PROVOST
Just a few days ago, I
learned about the fascinating story of how the
European Union (EU) came
to consider and ultimately
endorse ERASMUS, the
highly successful project that
facilitates the mobility of
European students within
the European Union. A group
of individuals who came up with
the idea for the general ERASMUS
framework decided to go to the EU
to present the concept. They were
given a hearing but then told that it
would be too expensive to fund, too
difficult to organize, as each country
already had its own system, etc., etc.
They went away a bit discouraged
but decided to look at the agenda for
that very day at the EU. They discovered that just before they presented,
there was a debate about how the
stockpile of stale butter that builds
up within the EU each year would
be discarded. They further learned
that the EU agreed to pay the bill,
which was more than 10 times what
it would have cost to implement the
ERASMUS program. In effect, the
EU was willing to pay millions of
dollars to get rid of stale butter but
unwilling to pay substantially less to
support the international education
NAU GLOBAL
Harvey Charles, Ph.D., Editor
Emma Holmes, Assistant Editor
NAU Global features the work of faculty
to internationalize the curriculum and
the campus; it is published twice yearly by
the Center for International Education
Northern Arizona University
PO Box 5598
Flagstaff, AZ 86011
e-mail: cie@nau.edu
web: http://international.nau.edu/
Tel: 928-523-2409 Fax: 928-523-9489
2 NAU GLOBAL Fall 2013
Competing With
Stale Butter
By Dr. Harvey Charles
of its students, a project crucial for its
own economic and political future.
When the discrepancy in values was
pointed out, the decision was made
to fund ERASMUS.
the EU was willing to pay
millions of dollars to get
rid of stale butter but
unwilling to pay substantially less to support the
international education of
its students
ERASMUS has enjoyed an amazing success story since its founding
in 1987. More than 3 million students have had the chance to study
abroad since then, and more than
300,000 faculty and staff of EU universities have been able to participate
in exchanges (http://ec.europa.eu/
education/lifelong-learning-proThis
gramme/erasmus_en.htm).1
is remarkable by any measure, and
has been aptly characterized as the
world’s largest and most successful
student-exchange program. Because
of ERASMUS, students are having
rich immersive cross-cultural experiences as well as learning new skills
through internships. Faculty are collaborating with their colleagues at
universities across the EU, and as a
consequence, pushing the boundaries
of knowledge and transferring that
knowledge in their classrooms. It is
clear that the Europeans are doing
this not only because they can afford
it, but because they see this as fun-
damental to the integration project,
which, by extension, is the only real
hope they have of avoiding a regression into the internecine warfare that
has shaped so much of European history. With a strong higher-education
infrastructure, with citizens who are
well educated to meet the demands
of a globalized world, and with their
ability to respond to the need for intellectual capital, the Europeans are
better positioned to build a future of
peace and prosperity.
Is there a counterpart to the
ERASMUS program in the United
States? Well, the only one that exists at a national level is the Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship, which
is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the
U.S. Department of State and managed by the Institute of International
Education. Granted, there are other
programs that fund students to study
abroad, like the Truman fellowship
and the Marshall scholarship, but
these are elite programs that fund
very few students per year. The Gilman scholarship is more democratic
in its application and “offers grants for
U.S. citizen undergraduate students of
limited financial means to pursue academic studies or credit-bearing, careeroriented internships abroad” (http://
www.iie.org/en/Programs/GilmanS c h ola r s h i p -Progr a m/ A b o u t the-Program).2 This relatively new
scholarship opportunity funds about
2,300 students per year at an average scholarship amount of $4,000.
Unlike ERASMUS, it does not have
(continued on page 15)
Global Perspectives and Interdisciplinary Research:
Two Necessary Approaches to Understanding
By Prof. Scott Anderson
Our Future
What comes into
your mind when
you hear the word
“ecolog y”?
If in your mind’s eye you
see communities of plants
or animals, fields or forests,
lakes or oceans, you would
be in good company. Now,
what comes into your mind
when you hear the word,
“geology”? Do you think
of rocks, sediments, fossils,
periods of time long since
above: coring the Laguna de Mosca in Spain
past? How about a time when
climate was different than
today? Again, you would be
correct. Ecology and geology - two separate fields of
knowledge in the sciences.
Or are they that different?
Can they be complementary?
One field of science combines these two fields in the
interdisciplinary study
of “paleo-ecology.”
Paleoecology is then the
study of biological communities as they have occurred in
the past, and their relationship with the environment
that existed at that time.
Here at NAU we have
a thriving program in paleoecology, which can be not
only a portal to a study of
the past, but also a means to
(continued on page 18)
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NAU GLOBAL Fall 2013 3
Sprechen Sie
STEM?
From left to right: David James,
Univ. of Pennsylvania; Marianne Lancaster, Emory Univ.;
Katja Fullard, Goethe Institute;
Tobias Barske, Univ. of Wisconsin Stevens Point; Ninja Nagel,
Barrington High School; Damon
Rarick, Univ. Rhode Island;
Gisela Hoecherl-Alden, Boston
University
Taking a Closer Look at Foreign-Language
Instruction for Science, Math, and
Engineering Majors
By Prof. Eck Doerry
Ask an average person on
the street what they think
of first in relation to science
and engineering and they are
likely to say “data . . . lots of
data.” Although collecting data is
certainly an important element of
research and innovation in the science, technology, engineering, and
math (STEM) disciplines, new insights in these areas actually arise not
from the data per se but from the
critical analytic discussion about that
data within the scientific community.
Communicating face to face in labs
or at conferences, writing in e-mails
and scientific communications or via
videoconference in online meetings,
scientists collaboratively test, compare, and discuss their findings to arrive at new insights about what the
4 NAU GLOBAL Fall 2013
data actually tell us . . . about climate
change, or the strength of a new material, or the efficacy of a new production method. Clearly, efficient,
concise technical communication is
the lifeblood of the science and engineering enterprise.
One side effect of the rapidly
globalizing economy has been that
communication among scientists and
engineers has become more challenging, as research and production
teams and facilities are distributed
across many cultures and languages
in countries around the globe. Modern scientists working in globally distributed teams must find a common
language, and even when that language is English, must have a keen
understanding of the difficulties of
communicating in a foreign language
for the sake of non-native English
speakers in their working groups. As
a result, foreign-language training
has become a valuable investment for
engineers and scientists looking for
leadership positions in global enterprises.
The increase in engineering and
science students incorporating foreign-language learning into their
studies has raised an interesting
question: What changes are needed
in modern-language pedagogy to accommodate engineering and science
majors? Most obviously, the content
of language instruction materials
must be adapted and extended to
cover the special practical needs of
engineers and scientists: vocabulary
must strongly emphasize numbers,
calculation, technical equipment,
and scientific processes; the scenarios
presented in learning exercises must
focus less on cafés and marketplaces
and more on factories, labs, and the
technical processes that happen in
them. A somewhat less obvious in(continued on page 19)
Teaching Sustainable
Humanities in a Global Age
below: a scene from Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s
“Allegory of Good Government.”
By Prof. Paul Keim
By By Prof. Gioia Woods
After 12-year-old Cosimo Piovasco di
Rondò got in trouble for refusing the
snails his sister Battista prepared for dinner, he
below: CCS 250 (“Landscape, Literature, Sustainability”) students investigating representations of the pastoral in Buontalenti’s grotto, Boboli
gardens, Florence, Italy. NAU students included here are Devereux Fortuna (at far left) and Kali Bills (second from right).
climbed up the holm oak outside the dining room
window and swore never to come down again.
He kept his word, and during his long life in the
trees, Italo Calvino writes, Cosimo searched “for
a more intimate link, a relationship that would
bind him to each leaf and chip and tuft and twig.”
The 1957 work Baron in the Trees, Italian novelist Calvino tells us, is a conte philosophique—a satirical
exploration of contemporary issues. For Calvino, midcentury Italy—indeed, all of Europe and much of the
Western world—was suffering from an environmental crisis that moved beyond silent springs, proliferation of nukes, and unchecked urban development. The
crisis was existential, and had to do with the difficulty
humans had in making a connection with the natural
world. Calvino’s utopian novel plays with the idea of reinhabitation and its results. Cosimo’s many decades as
an arboreal baron force a radical change in perspective,
not only about the natural world but about gendered
expectations, labor and class, and property and free will.
Calvino provides the reader an opportunity to consider
(continued on page 16)
(continued on page 17)
Fall 2013 NAU GLOBAL 5
Cuisine in
the Ming
Dynasty:
A Window
into Culture
with easy access to the trade
routes used for hundreds of years,
the city of Beijing’s geographic
position brought to it a rich
assemblage of food plants, spices,
and flavorings from a variety of
cultures.
lations on dining protocols, with a
special emphasis on the classifications of dining vessels and their usage. The privilege of rank was a primary consideration when deciding
eligibility to access a certain vessel. For example, dukes, marquises,
and officials of the first and second
ranks were entitled to use golden
wine bottles and wine cups, while
the rest of the emperor’s court was
restricted to the use of utensils
made of silver.
During the Ming Chenghua
reign, it became quite trendy to
pursue material comforts, and the
imperial palace played a leading
role in this endeavor. Although tofu
remained an essential offering on
the royal menu, its courtly version
was made not from bean curd from
yellow beans, but rather from the
brains of nearly a thousand birds,
dressed to resemble the lowly tofu
dish.
As an example, the pastoral peoples
the city faced in the north, particularly the Mongols—who were to
become China’s rulers in the 14th
century—made substantial contributions to the culinary culture. Following the Yuan conquest, the middleAsia collaborators, whose population
penetrated throughout northern
China, brought significant Islamic
influences to regional cuisines. And if
Marco Polo’s travelogue account is to
be believed, there was a sizable population of “Christians, Saracens, and
Cathayans, about 5000 astrologers
and soothsayers” among the “Khanbalik” or Beijing inhabitants at the
time of his wanderings. The conglomeration of foreign and domestic cultures would inevitably bestow
upon the metropolis a vibrant and
comprehensive culinary legacy.
The Ming founding emperor
Hongwu was a man of austerity and
The Hongzhi emperor ordered
all the shops and inns abutting the
avenues in Beijing and Nanjing to
have their lanterns lit in the evening, illuminating the streets as
his ministers returned home from
royal banquets. The writings of later
Ming scholar-officials were filled
with records of parties, menus, and
cooking styles. Indeed, Epicureanism had become such a popular
topic that one’s knowledge of cuisine was reckoned a sign of erudition and nobility. Zhang Juzheng,
the prime minister of the youngster
Emperor Wanli, complained that
he had “nowhere to settle chopsticks” when more than 100 dishes
were laid in front of him at a regular family dinner.
Regarding food today — considered one of the four “primary material concerns” besides clothing,
travel, and housing: it is essential
By Prof. Xiaoyi Liu
Perched at the northeast
corner of the China domain,
frugality. To prevent his descendants
from indulging in gastronomic excess,
he strove to set up an exemplary dining pattern. He demanded that palace
foods be prepared in “regular supply,”
a family-style cuisine. And to show
that he had not forgotten his simple
origins, he made tofu a requirement
for his breakfast and dinner menus.
Empress Ma frequently visited the
palace kitchen to supervise the cooking.
But for Hongwu, dining was more
than an occasion to display the virtue
of frugality. It constituted an important institution in which distinctions
regarding social hierarchies were to be
addressed. He devised a set of regu-
(continued on page 17 )
6 NAU GLOBAL Fall 2013
Just
Food:
F
Exploring the Intricate
icate Web of Sustainability,
Citizenship, and Global Learning
By Prof. Kimberly Curtis
“Democracies do not sustain themselves; they must be nurtured by
engaged, knowledgeable citizens.
Engaged, knowledgeable citizens
are not born; they are developed
through citizenship education.”
— Robert Leming, Center
for Civic Education
As we approach San Luis,
Arizona, at 4 a.m., sky pitch
black, we can see a string of lights
stretching miles and miles to our
left and to our right. Although we
know we are headed to the border,
it takes a while for it to sink in: this
is “the wall.” Once in San Luis, we dis-
embark from the vans. It is like a smalltown version of Times Square in the
middle of the night. In the streets, people
are streaming north. Women stand in
small groups, their faces wrapped in bandanas, hats, gloves — bodies covered head
to toe. There are people of all ages, from
young teenagers to very old men. Nearly
all have been up on the Mexican side of
the border since 1 a.m., waiting in line to
cross so they can work in the vast industrial agricultural fields of Yuma, Arizona.
Our first-year seminar class, “Just Food,”
has come to San Luis in the wee hours to
bear witness, to learn, and to talk to these
mostly Mexican workers. Students are
nervous. We all are. We’ve divided into
small groups, each with someone who can
translate. We ask and we listen, gathering
stories until, as the light breaks, the last of
Yuma lettuce harvest operation
the thousands of workers who cross
each day have boarded buses that will
take them to the fields.
It is late March, the end of the
winter growing season in Yuma,
where 90 percent of the winter greens
consumed in the United States are
grown. Who knew? And who knew
about the lives of those who harvest
and process this bounty? Why must
The course “Just Food” asks
a not-so-simple question:
What might a just food system look like? Few students
have given this question
much thought
they be up at 1 a.m., returning home
after recrossing at 6 or 7 in the evening? How can they raise their families? Go to a doctor? Get their hair
cut? Do they have adequate protection from pesticide exposure? From
sexual harassment or retaliatory firing? Are they fairly compensated for
their back-breaking labor? Why do
they do this? On our three-day field
trip to San Luis and Yuma, students
pressed for answers to these and
many other questions, as they spoke
to migrant workers, the farmers who
employ them, technical experts who
gain their livelihood in industrial
agriculture, human rights advocates,
and border patrol agents.
The course “Just Food” asks a notso-simple question: What might a
just food system look like? Few students have given this question much
thought; most know next to nothing
about where their food comes from,
who labors to get it to their tables
and under what conditions, or how
the current system affects the earth.
In the classroom, they study the industrial food system with special
attention to justice for workers, for
animals, for the health of the soil,
water, and the earth’s climate. Without exception, the field experience
transforms their learning. A political theorist by training, I recognize
what transpired on the field trip as a
powerful instance of citizenship edu(continued on page 16)
NAU GLOBAL Fall 2013 7
Transforming Excellent
Graduate Students
into
Repository
of
World-Class
Professionals
Religious
Objects:
By Prof. Fredricka Stoller
four Fulbrighters currently enrolled in NAU’s MA TESL program from
Yemen, South Africa, Krygystan, and Uzbekistan
The Fulbright Foreign Student Program
(http://foreign.fulbrightonline.org), one of
the U.S. government’s premier educational-exchange efforts, brings international students to the
U.S. for graduate-level study. In fact, more than 1,800
new Fulbright Fellows enter U.S. academic programs each
year. The highly competitive awards are offered to the best
and brightest, typically early-career professionals who, upon
completion of their studies, return to their home countries
to take on leadership positions, often in universities or government service. Recipients of this prestigious award receive
grants that cover all expenses, including travel, tuition, room,
board, and educational materials. To be awarded a fellowship, prospective students apply through either the Fulbright
Commission or the U.S. Embassy in their home countries.
NAU has hosted international “Fulbrighters” across campus in numerous graduate programs. NAU’s Master of Arts
in Teaching of English as a Second Language (MATESL)
and PhD in Applied Linguistics programs, housed in the
English Department, have attracted many Fulbright Fellows
in the last two decades because of the international reputation of the programs and faculty. We have hosted dozens of
8 NAU GLOBAL Fall 2013
fellows from countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Albania, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Egypt, Gabon,
Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Mali, Mexico,
Niger, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Russia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Thailand, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Yemen. At NAU, these students enrich our programs and campus community
in many ways. In class, they offer new insights in
classroom discussions and broaden the worldview of
our domestic students. Moreover, their presence on
campus promotes mutual understanding between domestic students and those from other countries. The
Fulbrighters themselves gain a tremendous amount
from their NAU experiences, including introductions
to and involvement in new types of classroom environments, what they perceive as novel faculty-student
relationships, and current thinking in their fields of
study. MA-TESL Fulbrighters often share their perspectives at local, state, and national conferences, contributing to the professional growth of other language
researchers and teachers.
After the first of their two years at NAU, currently
enrolled MA-TESL Fulbrighters—from Kyrgyzstan,
South Africa, Uzbekistan, and Yemen—have all described their MA-TESL experiences as “life changing.” Their experiences have altered the ways in which
they think, view the world, and perceive the field of
applied linguistics and language teaching, and they
see themselves as “cultural ambassadors” (who can
and do break down the barriers of stereotypes) and
professionals who can make a difference when they
return to their home countries. Their comments capture the value of their Fulbright experiences at NAU:
- “My Fulbright experience at NAU is, no exaggeration,
the most productive and rewarding experience in my
life. NAU has a top-notch TESL program. The inten(continued on page 17)
Museums
as Sites for Global Learning
By Prof. Bruce M. Sullivan
photo © Bruce M. Sullivan
As I walked again through the Buddhist sculpture gallery at the Victoria
and Albert Museum in London, approaching the 18th-century gilded
copper statue of the Buddha seated
in meditation, I was surprised to see
a museum patron seated next to the
statue, emulating the posture of the
Buddha. He left before I could ask
about his motivation for performing
what seemed an act of reverence, perhaps even worship, in a space usually
deemed more suitable to meditation
of aesthetic, rather than religious, intent. His presence raises questions
about the purposes for which museums exist, and the experiences of
patrons in visiting them.
For a recent research project, I
have visited museums throughout
the United States and the United
Kingdom, exploring how museums
represent Asian religious traditions
through the exhibition of objects of
religious significance. Hinduism and
Buddhism are very much minority
religions in the Western world, and
the collection by museums of Asian
religious artifacts is an international
enterprise. The image of the seated
Buddha in a museum in London is a
striking example of the global movement of objects. Created about 1750
for installation in a Buddhist temple,
the statue was commissioned by a
Tibetan Buddhist monk, Rol pa’i
rdo rje, friend and religious teacher
of Qianlong, the Emperor of China,
as its inscription in Tibetan reveals.
Acquired by the Indian Parsi industrialist Sir Ratan Tata, it was donated
to the Victoria and Albert Museum
in 1920 by his wife. So a Tibetan
Buddhist statue from Imperial China, acquired by an Indian of Persian
heritage, can now be viewed in England in the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Gallery for Buddhist
Sculpture! The foundation’s educational mission is to foster “appreciation of Chinese cultural heritage and
the application of Buddhist insights in
today’s world . . . [and] to further Buddhist scholarship and enhance its global
impact” (http://www.rhfamilyfoundation.org/).
Another example of global learning through museum exhibitions
that I have found fascinating is the
St. Mungo Museum of Religious
Life and Art, in Glasgow, Scotland.
Here, the world’s major religions are
represented through exhibited objects, juxtaposed in sometimes startling ways. Opened 20 years ago, the
museum has the explicit mission “to
promote understanding and respect
between people of different faiths
and of none, and offers something for
everyone” (http://www.glasgowlife.
org.uk/museums/st-mungos/About/
Pages/default.aspx). Just a month after the museum opened, its mission of
promoting tolerance was tested by a
fanatic, who threw the bronze statue
of Śiva to the ground, damaging it
while also demonstrating the need
for the museum and its educational
mission. Built next to and in the style
of Glasgow’s Catholic cathedral, in
mostly Protestant Scotland, the museum also features a “café, which
opens out into the first Zen garden in
Britain.” Its exhibitions are explicitly
comparative, inviting visitors to apprehend religious traditions’ similarities and differences.
Museum collections are vast, and
there are many kinds of museums.
Some include in their collections objects that were previously in worship
contexts (temples, monasteries, etc.).
Are such objects to be regarded as still
religiously significant or as formerly
religious but now art objects, or do
they occupy a category all their own,
simultaneously of religious, cultural,
and aesthetic importance? Visitors
may have different attitudes toward
and experiences of the objects in museums: what for one visitor is an art
object can be a religiously significant
symbol for another. And for some, an
object may convey both artistic and
religious resonance. Art museums
(continued on page 18)
NAU GLOBAL Fall 2013 9
By Prof. Fred Summerfelt
the author dwarfed by a telescope at Mauna Kea, Hawai’i
If you’ll pardon the pun, astronomy is
a universal human interest. The basis of today’s
astronomical systems began in ancient Greece, and
just about every native culture around the world
has astronomy mythology as part of its origin story.
Modern astronomy is also universal. My collaborators and
our observatories are all over the world, and our conferences
are truly international. Astronomy is a great way to see the
world, and I have traveled, in the name of work, to Europe,
South America, Asia, Oceania, and Africa. Cultural difference is encountered not only on trips abroad; even in this
country, astronomy travel frequently involves visiting land
that is treasured by Native Americans.
Being an astronomer who is aware of cultural diversity
means more than just wearing Hawai`ian shirts to work. How
should I be an astronomer in this global field? As with any
other foreign travel, be patient and humble. Astronomers
and technical staff around the world have learned to speak
my language, and are sharing their technical and natural resources with me. I don’t speak much Spanish — hello, goodbye, please, thank you, and a bunch of food words — but it
Astronomy as Perspective
on the Universe and
Our World By Prof. David Trilling
is a good start in connecting with and showing gratitude to my local hosts. Be interested. Talk to the locals. When I go to Hawai`i for work, I don’t stay in the
resorts on the beaches; instead, I room in the rather lower-rent astronomer dorms, shop where the locals shop,
and find out from the locals where the best beaches are.
Be thankful and respectful. I am fortunate to visit
many places that welcome astronomers — sometimes
even to holy mountains where observatories are now
located — and we should acknowledge people sharing
their places with our facilities. Many astronomers now
include a phrase in Hawai`ian in the acknowledgments
sections of papers that use data collected in Hawai`i.
The core of all our work is physics, of course, which
contains more universal truths. The equations are the
same everywhere. Optics works regardless of what language you trained in. It always feels like a great success
to travel halfway around the world, navigate unfamiliar
transportation and logistical issues, and end up at a telescope on some remote mountaintop. This is our common ground, where I interact with local astronomers
and staff and with astronomers visiting from elsewhere
in the world.
We take great pleasure in our arcane technical discussions. After all the travel and language issues, at the
bottom we share a fascination with the universe and a
thirst to understand our origins. This is truly a common
interest.
What is the importance of teaching NAU students
how to work in this global intellectual community? This
generation of students will only know instantaneous
communication with people around the world. On the
one hand, this gives our students an opportunity to talk
to and work with people from around the world with
essentially no barriers. The world is their oyster. On the
other hand, e-mail and social media can mask differences: We assume that the person on the other end of
the communication has the same cultural background,
leading perhaps to misunderstandings and confusions
and worse. The human element is critical. We must encourage our students to meet people from other backgrounds face to face, to create relationships and deal
with people directly.
(continued on page 18)
Educators Push for School Access
for the World’s
Children
By Prof. Rosemary Papa
Meeting in San Francisco in collaboration
with the American Educational Research
Association on May 1, 2013, a group of eighteen
prominent national and international scholars met in
San Francisco and recommitted themselves to confront issues of poverty faced by schoolchildren in the
world and to work towards global improvement in the
education of girls. These urgent matters are a worldwide
problem with over 100 million children not in school,
the majority being girls. The two primary thrusts surrounding how to enable Flagstaff Seminar research to
activism was seen as a clear call to action for the participants to continue their work towards ensuring that
education is a basic human right and that educational
leaders can and must become emboldened to seek solutions that go beyond the school house door, even if this
means confronting historic cultural and political forces
that act as barriers to basic improvements in the reach
and quality of education in the world. Reaction to the
concept paper framed the discussion, that is, how do we
extend what we do beyond leader preparation? Points of
discussion included the following:
1. A document of intentional work—A call to action and
activism
2. Three issues-access, quality, and equity- all must be
addressed
3. Education, all in education, must tackle all together
4. Shortage of teachers-what values are held-have a
smaller focus-what could be a narrower focus?
Quality of pre-service training and in-service
is critical.
5. Holistic language in education-what’s missing becomes the notion of the purpose of education; going
beyond schools; so tied to comprehensive reform
that the beauty gets co-opted by language used by
educational researchers.
6. Food scarcity exists for 25% of children in the world:
they go to bed hungry. What does this mean just
to the US? And, to the education system that really teaches the whole child? What is the role of
the school in that community? How do we promote
sustainable development?
7. Leaders in schools want to know how to do Educational Sustainability Develoment. Leaders without
borders know what is happening elsewhere. They
must know the How but also the moral Why.
8. How do we extend what we do beyond leader preparation and focus on Purpose, not just the How?
9. There are lots of borders, not just geographical. Our
responsibility is to prepare educational leaders.
Standing left to right: Carol Mullen Virginia Tech University; Martha
McCarthy Loyola Marymount Los Angeles; Jim Berry, Eastern Michigan
University; Nathan Bond, Texas State University; Uche Grace Emetarom,
Nigerian Professors of Education Administration; Faye Snodgress, Executive Director of Kappa Delta Pi International Honor Society in Education; Carolyn Shields, Wayne State University; Ira Bogotch, Florida
Atlantic University; Michael Sampson, Northern Arizona University;
Concha Delgado Gaitan, University of California-Davis; Jane Lindle
Clemson, University of South Carolina; Lisa Ehrich, Queensland University of Technology, Australia; and Don Scott University of Calgary,
Canada. Seated: Fenwick English, University of North Carolina-Chapel
Hill; Rosemary Papa, Northern Arizona University
Discussions and commitments focused on the compelling needs of education worldwide: the de-profes-
sionalization of the teaching profession, the increasing poverty
gap between the have’s and have not’s, and the political world
issues that address political issues: resource allocation, partnerships with organizations to leverage political clout, global marketization and how not to feed the beast, access to technology
and the generation of knowledge, and how we organize to address the policies that we do not have much leverage over. We
concluded this meeting with the following actions:
1. Continuing to develop the networking with individual
scholars and professional organizations worldwide
2. Continue to identify the issues
3. Identify the opportunities for action
4. Identify the efforts to work for locally based solutions
The collective research and scholarship of the group spans four
decades of national and international work and exceeds 100 books,
handbooks and encyclopedias, as well as hundreds of research journal
articles in most major North American, European, Australian and
African nations.
The FS scholars have set the next meeting for August 2-3, 2015 in
collaboration with the National Council of Professors of Educational
Administration. For additional information, visit www.flagstaffseminar.com or www.educationalleaderswithoutborders.com
Fall 2013 NAU GLOBAL 13
(continuation of articles)
Scholarship and Restored
Hearing
(continued from page 1)
library and encouraged her to read.
He took her out into nature and the
family farm to teach her to observe
and meditate.
While her mother, Le Thi Sen,
wanted to protect her deaf daughter, her father always pushed her out
into the world and encouraged her
to pursue education, including the
study of English. In fact, he found
people to introduce her as a child
to English, Chinese, German and
French.
Because of her society’s belief
in karma, Tam was burdened with
deep questions about her hearing
loss, the result of an infection.
“If you have good karma, you have
a good kid,” she said. “So how can you
have good karma if you have a child
with a disability?”
Tam’s karma was never bad, of
course, and finally led her to Flagstaff and NAU.
After finishing high school in
Vietnam, Tam went on to earn a
medical-assistant diploma from
Lotus University in Ho Chi Minh
City, formerly Saigon, and traveled
throughout her country for two
years. Her father encouraged her
travel, knowing that while she could
not hear, she could observe people
and nature and life to educate herself. She continued improving her
silk needlework, becoming a skilled
embroidery designer and artist.
In 2007, Tam crossed paths with
an American who was visiting Vietnam. She met him through her sister, who asked Tam to show him
around the country. After he left,
they stayed in touch. It wasn’t long
before he asked her to visit him in
Flagstaff. With the blessings of her
parents, she traveled to Flagstaff
14 NAU GLOBAL Fall 2013
“Inner Peace,” Tam Nguyen
Much of her delicate, realistic
embroidery is of birds (which
represent freedom to Tam) and
of flowers.
photo: David Edwards
where her sister already lived. Later
that year, she married Sam Neeley,
and they live in Flagstaff.
In Phoenix, Tam found a specialist and after three operations, her
hearing was restored. Because she
had been deaf for two decades, she
needed to improve her speech. She
wanted to be heard and understood.
She spent three years in NAU’s
Speech Therapy program to learn
how to articulate English words better.
Now she is working on a biomedical degree at NAU, and has participated in research in the Biology
Department as an undergraduate.
She balances her schoolwork with
her needlework.
Much of her delicate, realistic embroidery is of birds, which represent
freedom to Tam, and of flowers. The
(continuation of articles)
framed artwork ranges from a family
of cranes to sprays of orchids, with
vivid colors shining through the silk.
She began the work as a hobby, but
now hopes to sell some of her art to
help pay for her education.
Her artistry in needlework is also
reflected in a 3-D embroidered piece
of NAU’s Old Main, which she presented to President John Haeger in
the Fall Semester, 2013. “It is simply exquisite,” said Harvey Charles, NAU’s Vice Provost
for International education. But his
praise goes beyond her artistic talent.
Charles marveled at Tam’s resolve.
“How could a non-native speaker
of English overcome all these pretty
significant challenges, come to the
US, have her hearing restored and still
be so motivated to invest all the time
and resources necessary to pursue a
career in scholarship?” he wondered.
For Tam, it is all about her father, and others who have helped her
along her path.
“He sacrificed his life for me,” she
said in a soft yet strong voice. “When
I was young I was not appreciating
him. I would get upset with him when
he would wake me at 3 in the morning.
But now I see all he did for me.”
And he encouraged her to travel
to the United States to try to regain
her hearing, and better her life.
“In my country, traditionally the girl
cooks, does housekeeping, manages the
family and raises kids,” she said. “The
woman doesn’t have a voice to talk. My
parents told me, ‘There is no way to get
out,’” because the family was working class.
“OK, I’m starting my life,” she
said of her Flagstaff life, as her voice
bubbled in laughter. “I want to be a
researcher.”
Tam Nguyen is a client of Literacy Volunteers of Coconino, and
has published several articles in the
Arizona Daily Sun “Gardening Etcetera” column, edited by Dana
Prom Smith, one of Tam’s Literacy
tutors. Her most recent column focused on the vegetable daikon, and
her mother’s cooking of this leafy
plant with its white root. She has a
deep knowledge of plants and food
production.
“I can never say enough thanks to the
people who have helped me,” she said
of Smith and of Ann Beck, former
executive director of Literacy Volunteers. “Ann is second mother to me.”
Beck called her young friend a
phenom.
“Tam’s enthusiasm for life and
learning is infectious. She makes
friends everywhere and learns from
everyone she meets,” Beck said.
Tam received an International
Office scholarship to pursue research
with biology professor Sylvester
Allred, focusing on the traditional
and commercial impact of foods.
“The knowledge he knew, I carry with
me,” she said of her father. “His life,
his secrets. My father said, ‘Education
does not make your stomach full. But it
will make things different.’”
Mary Tolan is Associate Professor in the
School of Communication
needlepoint by Tam Nguyen
Stale Butter
(continued from page 2)
an exchange component, but this
scholarship has made a profound difference in the lives of many of these
students. They return preaching the
study-abroad mantra, which is, “study
abroad has changed my life!”
What is astounding, however, is
that while the EU spends more than
$600 million per year on ERASMUS, the U.S. government spends
barely more than $9 million on the
Gilman program. This is happening
at the same time as there is, in the
U.S., an obsessive focus on MOOCs
and three-year bachelor’s degrees, and
while we witness the largest decline
in state and federal funding of higher
education in U.S. history. So we are
now able to save millions of tax dollars -- big deal! But what are we losing as a consequence? What could we
possibly be thinking, a question that
historian Timothy Garton Ash recently chose to ask in his own way, in
a piece in The Guardian in which he
recommends that “America should
do a reverse Columbus.”3 He argues
that the world has long lost reason
to discover America, given our penchant for inflicting self-harm (the
shutdown of the U.S. government
being only the most recent example),
and the consequent erosion of political power and prestige. Rather, he
believes, Americans need to discover
the view of America by the rest of the
world.
I think that Ash is on to something, but I would extend his belief a
bit further. It’s not good enough for
Americans to only discover how the
rest of the world sees them. In fact, it
is much more important for Americans to learn about the rest of the
world, and in doing so, they will also
learn about how they are perceived by
the rest of the world. And it is in this
photo: David Edwards
latter pursuit that providing opportunities for students to travel and live
in places far away from home, as the
Europeans do through the ERASMUS program, becomes critical.
Not only do they learn about their
host countries, but they learn about
themselves in ways that might otherwise be difficult, if not impossible. If
the federal government is unwilling
to support a program comparable to
ERASMUS and if the state of Arizona is unable to do the same, maybe
it is up to individual institutions, like
NAU, to ensure that all of our students get a chance to learn about the
historian
Timothy Garton Ash
recommends that
“America should do
a reverse
Columbus.”
rest of the world. Through education
abroad or even global learning in our
classrooms, students have a chance
to engage with the rest of the world,
and in so doing, acquire the skills,
knowledge and dispositions necessary to make our globalized world a
better place in which to live.
The European Commission, Education
and Training, The ERASMUS Program―
Studying in Europe and More
1
Benjamin A. Gilman International
Scholarship
2
Ash, T. G. (Oct. 15, 2013). Americans
Need to Discover How the World Sees
Them. Adapted from: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/15/
americans-need-discover-how-world-seesthem
3
Fall 2013 NAU GLOBAL 15
Sustainable Humanities
(continued from page 5)
the nature of reality and the abstractions humans use to make meaning
about reality. The deforested Liguria
of the author’s youth provides the
inspiration for the fictional kingdom
of Ombrosa: “once upon a time a monkey left Rome and skipped from tree to
tree till it reached Spain without once
touching the ground...Now the hillsides
are so bare that it gives us a shock when
we look at them, we who knew them
before.” The new perspective Cosimo develops from this informs the
epistemological setting, too: Cosimo
made friends with peasant workers
and asked “questions about seeds and
manure which it had never occurred to
him to do when he was on the ground”;
he also plays with new ways of representing meaning by trying to “repeat
the twitter of the birds which woke him
in the morning.”
Teaching a novel like Baron in the
Trees is central to my contributions to
global learning. As an ecocritic, I’m
curious about how people across cultures have constructed and expressed
relationships with the natural world.
Because my training, teaching, and
research have been focused in 20thcentury literature, I turn most often
to cultural narratives to find that expression. Reading Baron in the Trees
with NAU in Siena students during the spring of 2013 engendered
research and discussion into Italian
environmental history and the ways
“nature” has been represented over
millennia. From Theocritus to the
rise and fall of Rome, from manorial
farm ecology to the legacy of Francis
of Assisi, from Mussolini’s “Battle for
Grain” to the post–WWII miracolo
economico, we gathered contextual
clues that would help us understand
why Cosimo takes to the trees in
Calvino’s novel. We looked outside
the literary text, too, to consider built
environments. Centuries-old foun16 NAU GLOBAL Fall 2013
(continuation of articles)
(continuation of articles)
tains in and around Siena provided
clues to the physical and metaphorical meaning of water; Tuscan farms
allowed us to experience sustainable
agricultural practices; traditional villa
gardens inspired our learning about
landscape design, class, and the staying power of pastoral values. Visual
art, too, helped us develop environmental memory. Ambrosio Lorenzetti’s fresco The Allegory of Good
Government gave us a glimpse into
14th-century Siena. Lorenzetti’s Siena, so realistically rendered, provided
the grounds for cultural comparison.
The relationship between nature and
culture is not hidden, as it so often
is in the 21st-century United States,
but shown as intimate, inextricable,
and labor intensive: Traders move
between city and country laden with
grain or driving livestock, city artisans make shoes or add on to existing
buildings, peasant communities tend
field and vine.
The creation of a narrative—whether visual, literary, or architectural—is
an exercise in making a world. The
practice of engaging narratives from
across cultures is powerful because it
teaches students to imagine, analyze,
critique, and love worlds they do not
inhabit. This critical imagining is the
heart of what many are calling the
sustainable humanities, interdisciplinary, multitextual inquiry into the
way humans make meaning and value about the natural world. And if it
is true, what cultural critic Raymond
Williams wrote, that “nature” is the
most complex word in the language,
then it behooves us as students and
educators to engage that word from
many languages and many cultures.
We can be like Cosimo, whose encounters with “the stem of a plant, the
beak of a thrush, the gill of a fish, those
borders of the wild” made him more
human, not less.
cation, for after the field trip, the students’ questions deepen, go more to
the root of things, get more structural: What does it mean to be a citizen
of a militarized, fenced land? Why
is labor so controlled when trade is
not? What kind of immigration policy would be just? Who really has the
power to make change?
This last question students explore in a completely different way
throughout the semester in “Just
Food,” as they participate three hours
each week in one of two community-based Action Research Teams,
part of NAU’s CRAFTS initiative
(Community Re-engagement for
Arizona Families, Transitions, and
Sustainability). In collaboration with
Flagstaff Foodlink, an organization
at the center of the local sustainable
food movement, one team works in
a community garden in one of Flagstaff ’s most socially and economically diverse neighborhoods, while the
other works in elementary schools
helping to build permaculture gardens, teaching (as they themselves
learn) sustainable gardening to young
children, and deepening the school’s
commitment to sustainability education. Exploring alternatives to the
industrial food model, students work
together toward community-based
transformation, gaining concrete
social-change skills. For most, this is
their first experience of being part of
a great democratic social movement,
a first taste of the great joys and challenges of democracy.
Our Fulbright-sponsored TESL and
Applied Linguistics graduates have,
indeed, made a difference. Some have
gone on to pursue doctorates and
have now contributed to the field
in the areas of disciplinary writing
(Marwa Haroun, Egypt), secondlanguage reading (Eun Hee Jeon,
Korea), and applied corpus linguistics and cross-cultural communication (Eric Friginal, Philippines).
Many have taken on leadership roles
in universities, language programs,
and language-teacher associations.
Eliana Lili (Albania), as an example,
was hired in the only American university in Albania. She states that her
Fulbright experience gave her the
“competitive edge.” She is educating
a new generation of Albanian students, who see her as a role model.
Kabelo Sebolai (South Africa) is
transforming the curriculum at the
Central University of Technology
in Bloemfontein, South Africa, with
a focus on the literacy needs of historically disadvantaged black South
African students. Billa Annassour
(Niger) has taken on a leadership
role at the American Cultural Center in Niamey, where he serves as
English Language Program director. SonCa Vo (Vietnam) has codeveloped an online teachertraining
program to reach English teachers in
rural Vietnam. Sultan Mohammad
(Pakistan) was promoted to assistant professor at Hazara University,
where he serves as coordinator of
the Master’s in Applied Linguistics
Program and president of the Academic Staff Association. These few
examples demonstrate that NAU’s
Fulbrighters have built upon their
educational experiences in our TESL
and Applied Linguistics programs to
become world-class professionals.
Gioia Woods is associate professor in the
Department of Comparative Cultural
Studies
Kimberly Curtis is interim director of the
Master’s in Sustainable Communities
program
Just Food
(continued from page 7)
above: NAU “Just Food” students with interviewees
Transforming Excellent
Grad Students
(continued from page 8)
sity of the program has instilled in me
a passion to rise up to the challenges of
graduate study in the U.S. and be a successful professional in my field.” (Mastoor Al-Kaboody, Yemen)
-”My time at NAU will help me
achieve my goal to be a first-class specialist in the field of language teaching. I’ll be able to train other specialists
and contribute the knowledge gained
at NAU to the future development of
education and the economy in Uzbekistan.” (Anastasiya Bezborodova, Uzbekistan)
-”My NAU experience has exposed
me to opportunities for professional
growth that extend well beyond the
classroom. I’m certain that the valuable education and professional skills
gained at NAU will carry me through
my career, during which I’ll be able to
enhance, promote, and contribute to
TESL in South Africa and make a difference in my professional community.”
(Kelello Thamae, South Africa)
-”My Fulbright experience has contributed to my academic, professional,
social, and personal growth. The challenges faced make me a stronger person.
As a result, I’ll be able to share the skills
and information gained, adapted to
the Kyrgyz education system, with my
peers, colleagues, and students for years
to come.” (Altynai Abdukarimova,
Krygyzstan)
Fredricka L. Stoller is professor in the
Department of English
Ming Cuisine
(continued from page 6)
for a cultural observer of China to
understand that food and cuisine
play roles beyond that of merely fulfilling nutritional needs.
Over the past three years, I have led
three study-abroad trips to Suzhou,
China, a southeastern city famous
for its garden and cuisine cultures.
When taking students to banquets, I
ask them to reflect upon the menu,
the seating order, the toasting language, and other customs, and try to
relate these observations to whatever
bit of Chinese culture they may understand. While teaching LAN 399,
a survey course of Chinese civilization and history, I briefly cover the
topic of sumptuary laws and raise
questions such as, Who is to use
what utensil made of what material
under what occasion? Correlating
facts the students know, and the familiarity with history that they gain
from books and lectures, deepens
their understanding of the structure
of social hierarchies of imperial China.
A global education requires that
students learn not only about themselves in relation to a global context
but also seek to gain cultural insights
through the dominant and not-sodominant features that can mark cultural distinctiveness. It turns out that
the cuisine of a particular region or
place, and how it is negotiated, can
speak volumes about a culture. Never
again should we take a superficial
perspective on the range of cuisines
to which we are fortunate to be exposed. They each tell unique stories
that involve history, religion, lifestyles, and values. Most important,
however, they tell stories of the human experience, and, ultimately, offer
insight into who we are.
Xiaoyi Liu is a lecturer in the Department
of Global Languages and Cultures
Fall 2013 NAU GLOBAL 17
18 NAU GLOBAL Fall 2013
Global Perspectives
(continued from page 3)
study the connections of one place to
another. For much of my life I have
been interested in how plant communities change through time and what
specific processes are important in
driving that change. These processes
include climate, fire, insect infestation - and for the last few thousands
of years, humans. This interest has
led me – along with my students and
others – to try to better understand
how environments have changed not
only here in western North America, but also to be able to place this
understanding in the greater global
context.
Perhaps the relationship between
ecology and geology, both local and
global, is better realized through using an example. It is difficult to find
a place on Earth that has not been affected by human activities over long
periods of time. Our species has
been particularly good at changing
the landscape to best suit our needs.
One way that paleoecologists can
deduce the history of human impact
over time is to look at the record of
activities as found in the sediments
of lakes and bogs. Muds and other
deposits accumulate in the bottom of
lakes over time and those muds include pollen and seeds from plants,
and soils and other particles from
environments near the lake. If in
the past, a society specialized in, say,
farming, animal herding or mining,
evidence of those activities would
end up in the lake. Taking a sediment core from that lake and studying the fossil remains allows paleoecologists to reconstruct the changes
in the environment through time.
Ecology and geology, combined.
Even though cultures differ from
one place in the world to another, we
can learn volumes about our species
and our relationship to Earth’s environment by comparing the records
(continuation of articles)
(continuation of articles)
of human impact from different locations. For example, in Spain we
have been working with our Spanish
colleagues in both the Sierra Nevada
and in the Pyrenees examining sites
that help us understand the landscape changes associated with human
activities during the last 6,000 years. In Norway we are examining sites
that are in association with the first
Nordic inhabitants that settled in far
northern Norway at the end of the
last ice age (about 11,000 years ago),
and whether they had any impact on
the landscape at that time. Looking at the charcoal particles from a
lake core, we are studying the potential impact of the ancient Mayan
culture on forest management and
agriculture in the Yucatan Peninsula
We can learn much about
our future by studying how
human societies the world
over have responded to
changes in the past.
Religious Objects
(continued from page 9)
strive to educate their visitors about
the world’s cultures; indeed, American museums receive 850 million
visits annually (http://www.aam-us.
org/about-museums/museum-facts).
Efforts by museums to aid people in
understanding world cultures, appreciating cultural differences and similarities, are of enormous importance.
Bruce M. Sullivan is professor of
comparative study of religions and Asian
studies in the Department of Comparative
Cultural Studies
Astronomy as Perspective
(continued from page 12)
possibilities for the future.
It is critical to help our students
learn to navigate these international
waters, capitalizing on access to people around the world while meeting
individuals from other cultures in
order to share and better understand
others. The measure of our success
will be in training globally competent students who will succeed in
walking this path.
In modern astronomy, it is impossible to achieve important astronomical advances without collaborating with scientists from around
the world. In turn, these international collaborations allow us to answer
questions that are common to all
humanity. And yet, despite our common scientific and technical ground,
the way we understand problems
and our approaches to problem
solving may vary as a result of cultural differences among researchers.
As global citizens, we must learn
to work with these differences to
achieve our goals.
R. Scott Anderson is Professor in the School
of Earth Sciences and Environmental
Sustainability
David Trilling is associate professor in the
Department of Physics and
Astronomy
of Mexico. And closer to home, we
have focused on the last 1000 years of
environmental change along the California coast, where we are interested
in the relative environmental impacts
of Native American peoples prior to
the colonization by the Spanish, and
the large changes associated with the
Spanish Mission system.
It’s all connected – time and
space, ecology and geology, the local and the global. We have a saying
in paleocology – The Present is the
Key to the Past, the Past is the Key
to the Future. We can learn much
about our future by studying how
human societies the world over have
responded to changes in the past. If
we do not take this global approach
we can only envision a limited set of
Sprechen Sie STEM?
(continued from page 4)
sight is that engineers and scientists
may actually learn language differently, due to a more analytic approach to problems and learning
than students from other majors.
This suggests that not only changes
in content but also in the kinds of exercises presented in foreign-language
curricula may be needed to maximally accelerate foreign-language learning for STEM majors. Finally, the
need to incorporate complex content
from engineering and the sciences
into a STEM-oriented foreign-language curriculum raises the question
of how such materials could be effectively developed, presented, and
taught by faculty in the modern languages who, of course, are not themselves engineers and scientists.
Efforts to answer these questions
to date have been haphazard and
informal, with individual language
instructors at a handful of institutions around the nation developing
and experimenting with specialized
course content. In an effort to organize these efforts into a vibrant new
area of language pedagogy, Northern Arizona University’s Center for
International Education (CIE) recently hosted the 1st Annual Workshop on Languages for the STEM
Disciplines. Supported by funding
from the Goethe Institute, the workshop brought nine innovators in developing STEM-oriented materials
and techniques for German instruction from around the nation to the
NAU campus September 19–22. The
main goal of this intensive workshop
was to establish a foundation for the
“Languages for STEM” area by tackling three central tasks:
- Concisely define the novel
challenges raised by teaching
language to STEM majors and
articulate the areas in which
new pedagogy must be developed to meet these challenges.
- Inventory the techniques and
materials already developed by
forward-looking language instructors, using these concrete
examples as a basis for defining
the complete spectrum of concepts, vocabulary, and linguistic skills that must be mastered
by STEM majors. This defines a
pedagogical framework that must
be fleshed out with actual exercises,
projects, and other learning materials.
- Develop a roadmap for rapid
coordinated development of
missing curricula and teaching
materials to populate the framework, including work plan, technological infrastructure, and
funding strategy.
The vision developed by workshop participants, called the
STEMINTegrate model, was centered around a first draft of a hierarchical knowledge schema for
representing the specialized STEMoriented language concepts that will
be critical for competent STEMoriented communication. The schema focuses on numbers, counting,
and other basic STEM-oriented vocabulary at the lowest level; moves to
second-order concepts like measurement, calculation, and description of
complex machines or laboratory instruments; and then on to advanced
descriptions of complex STEM
processes across different time scales
and tenses. To support efficient development and sharing of teaching
materials, the team outlined a vision
for a sophisticated web-based portal
and archive to serve as the cornerstone of the Language for STEM
community. In this portal, language
instructors could collaborate with
STEM professionals from around
the world to develop, post, and review new course materials, indexed
by skill level, nature of concepts being taught, and specific STEM discipline that the materials are based on.
The overall goal is that any foreignlanguage instructor at any university
in the United States should be able
to very quickly download curricular
plans and course content to develop
a STEM-oriented language course
customized to the particular mix of
STEM majors in an upcoming semester.
Adding foreign-language training offers ambitious STEM majors
significant competitive advantage in
tomorrow’s global STEM labor market, but it can be challenging with a
program of already quite dense study
in engineering and the sciences. This
goal places a premium on efficient
language learning tailored precisely
to the very practical applied language
(learning goals of scientists and engineers), vocabulary and processes in
each major. The STEMINTegrate
model, once completed, will provide
a basis for revolutionizing language
instruction for the STEM disciplines, allowing faculty to easily share
their best practices, course materials,
and curricula with colleagues nationwide. This will allow easy integration
of STEM-specific teaching in any
foreign-language program, but will
be particularly useful for intensive
STEM internationalization initiatives like Northern Arizona University’s own Global Science and Engineering Program (GSEP; www.nau.
edu/gsep), which incorporate foreign-language learning as a central
element of internationalized STEM
degree programs.
Eck Doerry is faculty director of the Global
Science and Engineering Program and
Professor of Computing Science
Fall 2013 NAU GLOBAL 19
International Visiting Scholars at NAU, Fall 2013
VISITING SCHOLAR
DEPARTMENT
AKERELE, Oluwatoyosi
HOST FACULTY
HOME INSTITUTION
Criminology & Criminal
Justice
ANTONCIC, Iva
Mathematics & Statistics
CAO, Zhiling
CIE and Business
CASABURI, Giorgio
Biological Sciences
CHEN, Yongjin
CIE and English
CUI, Zhanqin
CIE and Engineering
DE ALBUQUERQUE, Fabio
Forestry
EJARQUE MONTOLIO,
Earth & Environmental
Ana Belen
Sciences
GARCAI MEDINA, Nagore
Forestry
GUO, Yingjie
CIE and English
KANG, Yongjin
CIE and Engineering
LI, Hong
CIE and Engineering
LI, Jun
CIE and Engineering
LIANG, Hongmei
Applied Linguistics
LIU, Yunlin
CIE and Engineering
MOMMERT, Michael
Physics & Astronomy
NIE, Zuoxian
CIE and Engineering
PENTEADO, Paulo Fernando
Physics & Astronomy
SALMINEN, Joni
Business
SASAKI, Akiko
College of Education
SONG, Jiling
CIE and Political Science
SONKAR, Kanchan
Chemistry
TANG, Pan
CIE and Health Sciences
TANG, Yaocai
CIE and English
VAN GROENIGEN, Cornelius Jan Merriam-Powell Ctr for
Environmental Research
WU, Bei
CIE and Business
YANG, Qingguo
CIE and Communications
YANG, Hai
Business
YU, Li
Engineering
Robert Schehr
Griffith College Dublin (Ireland)
Stephen Wilson
Ding Du
James Gregory Caporaso
William Crawford
Allison Kipple
Paul Beier
Scott Anderson
University of Primorska (Slovenia)
Hunan Institute of Technology (China)
University of Naples Federico II (Italy)
Hefei University (China)
Xi’an Shiyou University (China)
N/A Universidad de Granada (Brazil)
Universite Blaise Pascal (France)
Matthew Bowker
John Rothfork
Chun-Hsing Ho
Otte Deiter
John Tingerthal
Douglas Biber
Allison Kipple
David Trilling
Eck Doerry
David Trilling
Talai Osmonbekov
Gretchen McAllister
Robert Poirier
Matthew Gage
Roger Bounds
Okim Kang
Bruce Hungate
Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (Spain)
Shaanxi Normal University (China)
Xi’an Shiyou University (China)
Hefei University (China)
Ningbo University of Technology (China)
South China Normal University (China)
Southwest Jiaotong University (China)
Institute for Planetary Research (Germany)
Fujian University of Technology (China)
Universidade de Sao Paulo (Brazil)
Scientists to the World Organization (Finland)
N/A (Japan)
Shaanxi Normal University (China)
Centre of Biomedical Magnetic Resonance (India)
Hefei University (China)
Beijing International Studies University (China)
Trinity College (Ireland)
Xiaobing Zhao
Norm Medoff
Ding Du
Philip Mlsna
ZAGO, Raffaele
ZHANG, Baoshan
ZHAO, Chunjiang
ZHAO, Xiaoyan
ZHAO, Lu
ZHAO, Yuhua
ZHU, Ruiqing
Douglas Biber
Matthew Gage
Philip Mlsna
Nancy Paxton
Rick Stamer
Ding Du
Luke Plonsky
Yunnan University of Finance & Economics (China)
Hefei University (China)
Central China Normal University (China)
Nanjing University of Information Science &
Technology (China)
Universita Degli Studi Di Pavia (Italy)
Shaanxi Normal University (China)
Hefei University (China)
Jinan University (China)
Shaanxi Normal University (China)
Beijing International Studies University (China)
Beijing International Studies University (China)
English
CIE and Chemistry
CIE and Engineering
English
CIE and Music
Business
CIE and English
NAU GLOBAL
Center for International Education
cie@nau.edu http://international.nau.edu/
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