Vol. 15 No. 4 Newsletter, Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching at Western Kentucky University

Engaging Students Globally: WKU and the University of Quebec

Dr. Randy Capps, Visiting Executive in Residence in Management, is literally pushing the boundaries of international education. He is offering a class jointly to students at Western and the University of Quebec. The class embodies the theme of Western’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP): “Engaging Students for Success in a Global Society.”

The two-semester class is currently comprised of six students from each university. A mixture of technology and traditional methods is used to bridge geographic and cultural gaps between the student groups. An initial two-day meeting was held in Quebec in the fall, followed by two teleconferences later that semester. Students meet weekly with faculty sponsors on their respective campuses, and communicate regularly through email and instant messaging. More teleconferences and a visit of the Canadian students to Western are planned for this spring. Todd Shomo, an MBA student and program manager for the class at Western, says the technology has worked tremendously; the video- conferences, conducted from MMTH, have been “like sitting in the same room with the students from Canada.”

The class, “Contemporary Issues: Consulting” has a goal to familiarize students with international consulting, while they also develop an appreciation and skills necessary for working with a different culture. The first semester’s task is to lay the foundation for creating an international consulting firm, called Atrium Solutions. In the second semester, students actually solicit clients and deliver services. The firm has a large marketing focus, and promotes organizational process-oriented services and organizational trust.

According to Shomo, a big selling point for the firm is that students have many perspectives, and this augments the possibility for creative solutions. Shomo says he feels this is a good class on many levels. It diverges from traditional methods and shows the potential for extending education through technology. It enhances the MBA program by making it more relevant in a world where economies are increasingly more global. Also, with Canada being our closest neighbor to the north, important connections and contacts are being made.

This endeavor grew out of several management grants Dr. Capps has worked on with the Canadian government. This class attempts to bridge the gap between theory and practical application, and to give students real-world opportunities for creating and working in an international consulting firm. Even though 65 percent of MBA students say they are interested in consulting, this is Western’s first curricular venture into this area.

In the future, Dr. Capps would like to expand the program throughout NAFTA, including more participation in Quebec, and also in Mexico. Dean Robert Jefferson, of the Gordon Ford College of Business, strongly supports the consulting and international aspects of the program. Students additionally benefit from a focus on teamwork and the forging of potential future business relationships. When soliciting clients, the students deal with senior level managers, which may afford a segue into future employment or, at least, help create a strong network of business contacts for the future.

Campus Screenings
Discovery Times University

The New York Times and the Discovery Times Channel are collaborating to bring films to Western that focus on the most critical issues of the day. All films are open to students, faculty and the public. They will be shown in DUC Theater at 7:00 pm. Refreshments will be served.

MLK Boulevard (2003) Traveling the more than 500 Martin Luther King Boulevards across the country, talking with people about their communities, this film is a microcosm on the African American experience in America today.
February 14, DUC Theater, 7:00 pm

Reporters at War (2004) A four-part series giving firsthand accounts from war correspondents on the front lines. From Normandy to Iraq, hear reporters who have covered the most historic conflicts of our time.
February 18, DUC Theater, 7:00 pm

9 Days in New Hampshire (2004) A documentary about the 2004 race for the White House. Nine Days in New Hampshire takes you behind the scenes of the critical first-in-the-nation primary to reveal the powerful political forces and human dramas unleashed when the candidates, their handlers, and the press descend on New Hampshire.
March 4, DUC Theater, 7:00 pm

Stolen Treasures The shadowy world of illicit antique trafficking, follows the trail of an ancient Egyptian headstone.
April 1, DUC Theater, 7:00 pm

Reinventing the Taliban (2004) Sharmeen Obaid travels through Pakistan to track the surprising political rise of radical Islamic ideology and the leaders who seem to be following in the footsteps of the Taliban.
April 15, DUC Theater, 7:00 pm

Book Review: Education and the Rise of the Global Economy
Spring, Joel., Education and the Rise of the Global Economy. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (1998).
Reviewed by Barbara Pinson, English Dept., and Ken Kuehn, Geography and Geology Dept.

Prolific author Dr. Joel Spring’s Education and the Rise of the Global Economy was the reading selection for the Fall 2004 FaCET Book Club. It was an especially relevant choice in light of the university’s emerging Quality Enhancement Plan, “Engaging Students for Success in a Global Society.” Spring has been called “…arguably the most important educational historian writing today” (Peter McLaren, UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and author of Revolutionary Multiculturalism).

Spring traces globalization’s educational requirements, philosophies, and practices from European colonialism at the foundation, through the models of Japan, Singapore, the European Union, the United States and the United Kingdom, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank (“the two agencies responsible for spreading human capital analysis of education to developed and developing countries”), and ultimately through that of the United Nations.

He observes, “Since the Marshall Plan and the founding of the OECD, there has been an assumption that economic growth and free trade will lead to peace and world prosperity,” but then adds, “Evidence seems to contradict this utopian vision” (225). Spring notes early on that, “Economic and educational competition means winners and losers,” citing Ethan Kapstein, Director of Studies at the Council of Foreign Affairs, who warned in the summer of 1996: “The global economy is leaving millions of disaffected workers in its train. Inequality, unemployment and endemic poverty have become its handmaiden” (7).

Spring concludes, “There is nothing in the present trends in education policies and the global economy…that will reduce economic inequalities among people and among nations…nothing that will reduce exploitation, abuse, poverty, homelessness, unemployment, and the number of excluded youth and children. Improvement will occur only when people learn to exercise their rights and evaluate which cultural values contribute to or diminish human happiness.... [A] true multicultural education is one that examines all cultures for the purpose of understanding what each culture offers to improving human culture” (227-28).

Spring agrees with the “19th-century Japanese philosophers who proposed that the right to an education should include an education in human rights and democratic power” and further believes that the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be “the guiding educational document” (xi). He calls for an amendment to the United States Constitution “which gives everyone the right to an education and clearly states that this includes an education in human rights and the exercise of political power.” He emphatically asserts, “This right should be the global standard for education” (xi).

Perhaps Robert Phillipson (University of Roskilde, Denmark, and author of Linguistic Imperialism) best sums up the book: “This powerful, honest, concerned, wide-ranging book demonstrates scarily how education is increasingly being shaped to fit a global economy dominated by corporate interest. It is an inspired synthesis that should trigger a reconsideration of how education should serve humans rather than humans serving economic purposes in an increasingly harsh and inhuman world.”

Join FaCET’s spring 2005 Book Club on What the Best College Teachers Do and receive a free book. Choose to join either the Tuesday or Wednesday discussion group, which will meet semi-weekly at 3:40-4:40 pm, starting on March 1 or 2, respectively. Call 745-6508 to sign up. Do you have a suggestion for a book club reading? Email us at facet@wku.edu.

Mugs on Parade

Thanks are given for the newest addition to our coffee mug collection from faculty alma mater institutions is:

Carl Myers, Psychology - Iowa State