 Good afternoon. Welcome to Global Connections. My name is Dr. James Brown, and I'm sitting in for Dr. Grace Chang. I'm an associate professor of international relations at Hawai'i Pacific University. And what I want to talk about today is I would call it perhaps integrated education. Kind of historically we thought that what college is all about would be the kind of disinterested pursuit of knowledge that people would leave the real world, go to a college campus, and not really kind of be involved in kind of data activities. And that's, that's, that's, there's a purpose for that. But I think more importantly, in this kind of interconnected global world, that it really is hard to disassociate, disassociate yourself. So I teach international relations and globalizations in my classroom. But in 1997, I adopted a little girl from Cambodia. And since that time, I've been going out there twice a year. And I've been working with several orphanages out there. And we bring books and computers and medicine and school supplies. And it's really been kind of a wonderful experience and a labor of love. About 10 years ago, my chairman kind of said, well, why don't you bring students out to Cambodia? And they can study out there. And my first response was, that's nuts. You know, I don't want to bring a bunch of college kids out to a third real country. But then eventually I said, yeah, that's probably a pretty good idea. So for about the last seven years, I've been bringing students to Cambodia. And we really kind of do what's called service learning. We work in villages and we work in orphanages, mostly teaching English as a second language. And it's been a great experience for certainly the children there. There's probably even been a greater experience for our, for some of our students. Last summer, I decided to expand that. And I expanded the program to Thailand. This is what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk, and I have with me two students from HPU, both who enjoyed me and joined me in Thailand. And now we'd like to have a discussion about that. So please, I want to introduce the two students right now. So first of all, Gabby. Hi, I'm Gabby Fuentes. And so I'm an international student. Sorry, I'm international studies major here. And I'm graduating in December. And it was actually my first time in Asia. Okay. Nicole. Hi, I'm Nicole. I'm Monterey. And I'm a social work student at BSW at Hawaii Pacific University. And I graduated in May 2017. Okay, good. Let me get just a little bit of your background. You know, very short. Where are you from? What, you know, what, what brought, what brought you to HPU and how you kind of got interested in your particular majors? You're the one. Okay. Yep. So I'm from Chicago and I transferred out here last semester. And I really liked HPU just because it was advertised as one of the most diverse universities. And so being an international studies major, I found it important to be able to draw from a bunch of different cultures. So that's what really drew my interest. Also, I have a certificate in teaching. And so the Tesla program here aided in that decision to come out here. Well, I'm originally from New York, Brooklyn. And what brought me to Hawaii was I became a federal worker out at a school field, Hawaii at the school field barracks, acute care clinic. And I got called for a position there, April 2011. And I came out there. And eventually I ended up enrolling in school at HPU as a social work student and been here ever since loving it and just looking forward to progressing further into the master's program here. Very great. Now, this is kind of a tricky question because students like to be kind of honest and dishonest about why they take particular courses. But what made you kind of think about, okay, I'm going to go to Thailand. How did either one, either one of you kind of get to that point where you want to sign up for this particular course? Well, for me, so at my last community college, I did two other faculty-led programs. And so I did a community college, Harper in Illinois. Okay, but I thought, did you try them abroad? Yeah, so I did a trip to Costa Rica with a biology course. And then I also did a trip to Germany and Austria with my German language course. And so when I saw the short-term program at HPU, I thought, oh, that's great, because I can do the same thing again. And unfortunately, I'm not able to do a full study abroad. So that really prompted me. And I talked to a lot of the kids who had already done the Cambodia program, and they said really good things. And so especially because I haven't had the opportunity to travel to Asia, it was really nice that you were offering the trip still for kids in the summer. Let me interject a little bit because at HPU, we have a lot of classes, which are, as you say, study abroad for either a semester or sometimes for a full year. There's very, very few programs, which will kind of have small, shorter times, three weeks at a time. One, I think was going to Costa Rica, another one to Vietnam in the past, and another one to Vietnam and Cambodia. So this is in Japan. So this is a little bit different. So Nicole? Well, originally, last year, when we first started the school year, we met Dr. Pram. And I had no idea that I would ever get the opportunity to study abroad. As the time went by and we got an email in our student account, and it said Thailand, I was like, wow, that's really interesting. Seems like I would be able to go there. So I did a petition with the school in order to substitute one course for another in order to be afforded the opportunity to go to Thailand. I was amazed that I actually was able to go to Thailand and I mean, I've never studied abroad before, but I've lived in other countries before and I've traveled to other countries and I've lived in Germany. We'll get to that. But I was so amazed at just learning the culture and just trying to have that experience that I never had before my life. That's good because yesterday I had a student come in to talk about wanting to go to Thailand next summer, you know, on your recommendation, which is great. And I said, why do you want to do this course? And she was brutally honest. She says, well, I'm taking global systems online. I don't like the teacher. I don't like the work. I was too hard. And this was kind of a course where you can get the same credit or type of credit and spend three weeks in Thailand. So it was kind of self-serving, but it's an education itself. It's kind of very special. Now, let me pick up on the last thing because I know both of you have traveled. So where have you all traveled first? And then after that, maybe you could talk about how traveling to Thailand in an educational setting rather than another might be a little bit different. So either one of you can jump in. Well, I would say I've traveled to Germany. I've lived here for three years. In one context, you could say. I was a military spouse at the time and I lived here for three years. Excuse me, were you not in the military or just a spouse? I was just a spouse. I was in the military at the time and currently in the reserves now. I also went to be muted at the same time as Puerto Rico, Bahamas and I've just various states, you know, all over for the last 20-something years. And I've never just had the opportunity to go there and study. What I would say would be the benefit of the Thailand mission was we were actually going there to help people, help people that was less fortunate than we were and just being able to provide, you know, something that they don't have that we take so much for granted here in the U.S., you know, schools and learning English and just having a school period to study in. Like, we went there and built the school and we went there and taught English. We have those opportunities, like, all the time but they don't have those opportunities. So it was great. Okay, great. It's funny because both of you I know have traveled a fair amount. I had some students, not necessarily in this class, but other classes where they've never left the United States or even never left Hawaii. So it's a little bit different when you haven't traveled at all and you've done a fair amount of traveling. Yep. So as I said, I've done Costa Rica and then a fair amount of countries in Europe. And I'd say the biggest difference between the other faculty-led programs I did in this one was, as Nicole said, we went more so with the intent to help others. And so I think with those other programs we were more helping ourselves and learning for ourselves, especially in Costa Rica. We did a lot of biology projects and research, whereas here we tried to give back to the community as best we could, whether it was through the teaching English or the volunteering that we did up in the village. So that was, I think, one of the more rewarding parts of the trip. Okay, good. Now, this is, we'll go more specifically in that because this was the first time for me as well. I've been to Cambodia many times and I'm going to take other students to Cambodia. But now I'm dedicated going back to Thailand because I think it was a very worthwhile experience. You guys can weigh in on that one way or the other. But it was tough. It was tough. So there was, and I had gone to Thailand before with my brother where he lives there. And I'd actually gone to visit international volunteers where you guys stayed. But I didn't go out to the village. So it was very, very kind of interesting and some good things and bad things. But I don't want to do my own highlights. But now the next question is, you know, what were kind of, I say, the highlights for you, the low lights for you? What kind of surprises? What kind of use? Oh, I've kind of done this and always kind of easiest and hardest perhaps. And you can expand as much as you want because there's, you know, there's just a lot of different stories and experiences. Well, I would say the highlight of the event was just meeting the Thai people and learning their culture. And they were the most amazing people. They were very friendly. They had extreme aloha. Like everywhere you went, they were speak to you, bow, talk to you, ask you how you're doing. Say you welcome your thank you. Thank you for anything that you've done for them. And just very gracious people. And I would say that was the most rewarding thing that I would say there. I would say the hardest part for me was when we went to the village. And I'm because I'm from the city. I'm from Brooklyn. And being in the village, living in a hut, like basically like a hut type home, the utilities wasn't like, like, you know, the way we live here, you know, and the bathroom was down the ways. And it was outside basically had to go outside to get to the restroom. That was an event for me and, and animals, you know, just roaming around, you know, walking next to me. I was like, wow, you know, that was something different. You know, for me, that was, I would say that was the hardest part, living without technology too. Because I wasn't able to like update my Facebook and get on the phone as I normally would. And, you know, just basically it was about helping those people. And, you know, basically not being selfish and giving back. And that's what I really enjoy. So not to be too selfish, but one of the first things I was just really excited to be in Asia. And so we had to read the book before we went. And it was, what was the title? Crisis in the Kingdom. Yeah, Crisis in the Kingdom, Thailand Struggle for Democracy. And so just learning about the different culture there and their political views was really eye-opening. And so I'd say one of the best things was being able to see it in person. And especially, I think a lot of us view the classroom as just something, four walls and reading books and being able to go out into the different culture and fully immerse yourself and be unsure and be lost and maybe unwelcome. It really challenges your personality and so I like that aspect of it. But also one of the best things was being in the village and seeing the differences that you could make with the people and getting off the grid, as Nicole said, and showing that I think there's so much we can learn from those people there and that you don't need the technology. You don't need the modern things that we so heavily depend on. And so getting back to that was really eye-opening. Also the teaching while I think some of us struggle through it. Let's talk about that a little bit later because I want to kind of interject, I think, with things that you mentioned. Because yeah, I mean, most of the time we think of education, you say, in the classroom. And what's important in the notion of globalization, we Americans were five percent of the world's population. We don't travel much. We don't really are very good at languages. We don't really know other people's cultures. We don't know the world history, which I'm kind of embarrassed to say that. But so the kind of the so-called the theory of globalization, you can sit in a classroom for a year and say, okay, this is another book. I'll regurgitate on the test. But once you get out to a third-world country, you say, okay, now I understand the notion of poverty or understand the notion of inequality or understand the notion of, say, political oppression. The book really kind of focused on the government in Thailand, which is not a democracy, but they have elements of democracy. And they have a king. And the king just died today. And kind of what the really, the book, which could not even be published in Thailand, you could read it here. You couldn't read in Thailand. You could put a jail or either writing or reading it, said that the king is very beloved. He's the longest reigning king in Thailand in the world in 1946. And he just died today. And the question was, who is going to replace him? And there was a lot of the book was very critical of the son, kind of a narrative well, had some problems. And so the people say, yeah, but he's still the first in line, so he has to go. And the daughter is also somebody who's more into social services, giving back. But yeah, but she's the daughter and she's a woman. So now there's going to be this, and then the military's in power now. It's going to be an amazing power struggle in terms of how they're going to figure that out. And hopefully it's going to be without violence, but I'm not, I'm not that particularly optimistic. So maybe let's kind of take a break here for a minute and we'll come back and maybe expand on some of the things we're already talking about. Aloha, everybody. My name is Mark Shklav. I'd like you to join me for my program Law Across the Sea on ThinkTechHawaii.com. Aloha. Aloha, my name is Danilia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. We are the co-host of Keys to Success, which is live on ThinkTech live streaming network series weekly on Thursdays at 11 a.m. Aloha. Aloha. For a very healthy summer, watch Viva Hawaii. We're giving you the best tips and with our best health coach here. So Viva health coach. Viva la comida saludable. Hello again. This is Dr. James Prem, a professor in international relations at Hawaii Pacific University. And the topic today is kind of several fold, number one study abroad in Thailand, but also how does that work in the context of liberal arts education? Hawaii Pacific University really kind of prides itself as being a, you know, one of the most internationally kind of diverse universities in the country. We have people from over 125 nations, but most of the kind of so-called international students are students coming from other places from Asia, from Latin America, from Europe and California, that foreign place. And we don't have as many students going over to, to other countries. And so several professors of myself think this is really important that we as Americans kind of need to get out of our, our comfort zones and really kind of discover many more things about the world. And so luckily I've been able to take about seven classes to Cambodia for three weeks at a time. And then this last summer I decided to expand that and I took a group of seven women, great, you know, students out to Thailand. And I have two of them with me and we're discussing different aspects of their experiences, both academic and intellectual, cultural, personal in terms of going to Thailand. So okay. So let me go back to, to, to Gabby because we talked about perhaps, you know, just simply highlights a lot, but personally how your two things, academically, how did this maybe change you or not? Because it wasn't a normal class. And then maybe personally, how did it kind of affect you? Because it certainly was a, again, a different kind of experience. Well, as I said, I really like that we've had the opportunity to get out of the classroom to learn. And so, especially with international relations, international studies, my focus is specifically on sustainability and development. And so last semester, we talked a lot about development and especially the history and poverty issues and inequality. And so academically, learning about all this. So you should, you should just class? Yeah. So having all this information is makes you empathetic, but I'd say one of the best things is just being out there and being able to see it and experience it and really feel it. It makes you want to make a difference. So I'd say it changed me personally, but also have better more appreciation for learning this and seeing that it really is important that we try and tackle these issues. That's a good point because, you know, whether we like it or not, most students and you guys are both a little bit different, go to high school and then you enter into college right away. Suppose you're there for four years. So at 18 years old, you're going to be given in a classroom a lot of theory, you know, theory of development and equality and Marxism and liberalism, but you have absolutely no life experience that kind of to compare it with the basis on. So even as you say, and he's Dr. Bibby's class, she talked about all these things, but then you say, okay, now I go out there, I understand these things because I have kind of a practical under, you know, experience with it. I think that's really kind of good and kind of important. We know that in Europe, many students take something called the gap year. They go to high school, they take a year off and they travel or they can make, you know, try to make some money to go back to school. We don't do that in America. We actually kind of discourage that rather than encourage that I think that's the problem. In my own experience, because I was a child of the 60s, had high, not gone straight from high school to college, I would have also gotten a study abroad, but it would have been in place like in Vietnam and out of my choosing. So I stayed in school, but at the same time, I think this is where I really initially became interested in this idea was called praxis, is you have to have theory, but practice together mesh together. And that was mostly came from the opposition to the Vietnam War, that lots of students who came back like your age, they came back from Vietnam and they, you know, had lots of problems, but they also had lots of experience. And I kind of drew upon that. And then in our kind of opposition to the war, we'd say, okay, we need to get out of the classroom and out in the streets and protest because we think a system, you know, any immoral illegal war. So I think that was my experience. But I also had my brother who was two years older and he just said, he wasn't necessarily political. So he stayed in the classroom and didn't do any of that. So he had a very different education. So I think in my generation, we kind of had the kids who stayed in the classroom and some of the kids who got out of the classroom. And I think kind of very diverse ways in terms of how we went. Any other particularly specific personal experiences or anecdotes, you might want to tell kind of funny things or dangerous things are crazy. Here, let me tell one is because a lot of the students, well, I'll start it off and see if we're interested in insects out there in the jungle. So would you care to talk about that a little bit? I didn't have much issues with the insects other than the spider that I took a picture of outside the hut that we stayed in. I kind of tried to stay away from the insects. I'm from the city. I'm not really keen on insects at all. My biggest thing was mosquitoes. I mean, I made sure to try and get every single shot that I could before going because you never know where you're going to be. And especially with how our plans changed, the school you're supposed to teach at felt kind of fell through and we ended up luckily by chance working in the village. And so I think the day before we left, he said, Oh, yeah, there might be some mosquito problems. And so neither of us were vaccinated. But thank you. Another thing about the one thing I remember about the mosquitoes was I don't know something about the mosquitoes. I just really wasn't really that fearful about even though they have malaria. I deployed twice to Iraq and I had never got malaria anything like that. So I was kind of comfortable with as long as I wear something with deed in it, I wouldn't be affected by it. So I was a lot more, I guess, not as uncomfortable as the other students were that never went to those type of places. So they were like, I remember we were running to 711 trying to get all by all the mosquito repellent that we could buy and slapping it on because during the day that we had to worry about, I think it was malaria and Zika in the evening. I was like, the mosquitoes were taking shifts on it. Well, I kiddingly kind of said to you guys, you forget about those mosquitoes, they're problematic. But let me get you back to reality when we go back to Bangkok, where you can really worry about things like getting mugged or getting robbed. And but it was too different. He has an urban experience over there. And also the kind of so called the rural experience. Yeah, definitely. And if anything, we all hear about culture shock. And so I think some of us came back to Hawaii afterwards. Some of us went on or went home. And but just going from our village stay, going back into the city was almost a culture shock because we were so remote and removed from society, going back into this city with millions of people. Yeah. Yeah. So let's let's talk a little bit about maybe, well, first of all, maybe some advice you would give to other students, because I'm going to go back to Cambodia, and I've learned a lot. And I'll change my kind of orientation preparation, you know, preparation. But when you know, what are things that maybe I missed that you said, okay, in hindsight, this is, we all have to do reflection papers and you reflect in the semester. So maybe some of these you could offer to a student going back or going next time. I want to say there was something that you missed. But I was just saying they need to just try to be open to new environments and learning about people and different cultures, because at first, you know, when we had our briefings and we had the do's and don'ts about Thailand, I was kind of scared, you know, because we couldn't show our feet, we couldn't don't touch people in the heads, you know, just certain things that we weren't allowed to do. And then it was like, oh, you have to worry about somebody possibly mugging you. And I mean, granted, I'm from New York, you know, but I'm used to New York, I'm not used to the Thailand experience. So that part, I would say, be open and willing to find out before you get so apprehensive about not going. Because once I got there, I wasn't as as afraid as prior to going there. So prior to going there, I was kind of like, Oh, my God, you know, what should I expect? You know, but once I got there, it was like the most extraordinary experience that I'm so glad I had the opportunity to happen to me. Let me tell the viewers a little bit about what we actually kind of did, because we did some tourism stuff we traveled around, which was which was nice and good. You need to because the class is actually INTR 3933, which is kind of what's called contemporary nation. So you learn a lot of different aspects of the country you stay in. And that's history, that's culture, that's economics, that politics. So there's an academic component of that. But really what we really do is service learning, and the two kind of major service learning activities. One was we were at a middle school in a Thai school. And all the our six kids taught English in the second language, or a couple hours a day for about a week. And that was they had to prepare. And they, you know, these are not all necessary. They're not teachers. They had to learn about that. So that was difficult. And then we went to what's called a Lahu village. These are indigenous people. They're not Thai. They don't speak Thai. And they we had a six hour walk to be able to get in living on the ground. It was just incredibly basic. And you have to just to learn to adapt or you're not going to survive. And you know, they all survived. And I'm not sure they're kind of totally adapted yet. So did I question about I'd agree a lot with Nicole. I'd say that basically the only advice I can give is just push yourself. Do it. Don't question whether you should or shouldn't travel. I think we get so caught up in this idea that oh, once we graduate, we have so many things ahead of us. But just do it when you're young and you can. Okay. Yeah, that's that's fantastic. Because again, I've taken over about 75 students to both Cambodia and Thailand. Every student has enjoyed it. Nobody's ever said, boy, that was a waste of time. Or I didn't get anything out of that. I'd rather go back in classroom and read seven books. And I see the I see the incredible personal growth of all the students. When I'm going back to Cambodia in December, I've got probably three students who went last year, they're going to come back. So I think this is an amazing way of kind of integrate academic kind of work in the classroom and the real world. And that's what we're going to have to do more because it's, you know, this is called global connections, this particular program. And that's what we do is kind of his global connections. So go ahead. And I would like to say that there's no other way to learn how to interact with people other than to get out there and actually talk to people and actually live around them and find out about them in their culture. The book just isn't going to teach you that. Absolutely. Okay. Well, I want to thank you guys for coming with me. And I'd like to thank the people at Global Connections. And again, I'm Dr. Prem and HPU and it's been a good half an hour. Thank you very much.