CULTURAL CHANGE - FlipSeek, Inc

A highlight of the trip was when Marietta’s chorus was
the first American college choir to perform during the All
China Choral Directors Seminar. The climactic event of
the journey, though, was a reception attended by some
influential officials in China, including those from the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the University of International
Relations and a representative from the U.S. Embassy.
“What I hope students gained was an appreciation of
the Chinese culture,” says Monek. He hopes that this
10-day introduction to Asian culture will go a long way to
help enrich Sino-American relations in the future. “The
music is a great way to open these doors,” he says. “They
automatically know that they have a shared interest…
I’ve got several students who are dying to go back.”
When MC officials decided back in 1999 to make “internationalization”
one of the College’s Nine Core Values,
Marietta already was well on its way to changing the
cultural face of those attending the college campus. Since
1995, Marietta has hosted a group of Chinese students
each year and that program has now evolved into The
China Institute, which was introduced at the Beijing reception
in May (See sidebar, pages 16-17). Exchange agreements
have been made with three Methodist colleges in
Brazil and the Latin American program may expand into
other countries as well. (See sidebar, page 15).
In recent years students have been offered even more
programming that enriches their cultural experiences. Two
> CHINA TOUR In May, 33
Marietta College students traveled
to Beijing and Xian in China on a
tour organized by chorus director
Dr. Daniel Monek. Students
were invited into private homes
for luncheons and performed with
choirs at churches throughout the
regions. “Internationalization” is
one of MC’s Nine Core Values.
years ago, Monek took his choir to Italy for a trip that was
as successful as the most recent China experience. The
College now provides international travel grants to faculty
members who are preparing to teach specific courses, and
for the first time a handful of Investigative Studies students
received grants to take their work to foreign cultures for a
few weeks of study this summer. Richard Danford, who
oversees the Study Abroad program, says that 25 to 29
students this year will spend a semester abroad, with many
choosing European countries, but others going to India,
China and Australia.
College administrators continue to examine possibilities
for providing more international experiences. “In five years,
it is a goal that every student has a significant exposure to
another culture,” says Marietta Provost Dr. Sue DeWine.
“I don’t think that as a country we’ve done a good job of
teaching people about different cultures. I hope what this
does is open up the world to our students. That they learn
that there are different cultures than what they are used to.”
In 2001, Dr. Dan Huck was teaching his first semester
in the McDonough Leadership Program when the planes
struck the twin towers in New York. Two weeks later, he
started teaching a curriculum that he’d quickly developed
that emphasized the global world. Now, he says, “the curriculum
really recognizes what we teach, that we’re part of
an entire human universe.”
Huck started organizing summer study tours soon after,
and other professors have followed suit. In May, he took
a group of students to Egypt, Greece and Italy. “This is
something that I would really like to find the funding for to
make it more possible for students who can’t afford to go,”
says Janie Rees-Miller, director of International Programs,
who joined Huck on the trip. “It’s the first time most of
our students had been confronted with a developing country.
I think that was useful information.”
Huck, who spent 14 years as an attorney prior to his arrival
at Marietta, agrees. “My students had not really seen poverty
until they went to Egypt,” he says. “They live their lives, they
do what needs to be done from a different perspective. You
have to take students some place that challenges them. That’s
why I wanted to take them to an Islamic country.”
Back on Marietta’s campus, Rees-Miller emphasizes
how far the school has come in the last 10 years. The
international student program was in its infancy when
she arrived on campus to teach English as a Second
Language in 1996. Even the student population from the
Middle East, once drawn by the Petroleum Engineering
Department, had decreased since countries in that region
had established their own universities. When Professor
Xiaoxiong Yi started recruiting Chinese students in the
mid-1990s, Rees-Miller says, “We wanted it to be one of
the foundation stones of our international programs.”
Marietta is developing a three-fold focus on international
student recruitment: Asia, Latin America and Europe. The
first two programs are well underway, and more European
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