Taylor University - Ilium / Gem Yearbook (Upland, IN)

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... Taylor ' s efforts to internationalize its curriculum? % by Pamela Teo There is a world out there that few people have had the opportunity to visit and appreciate. Taylor University will enable its students to learn about different cultures through organized trips or classes taught by professors whom the school has helped to go abroad. Dr. Richard Parker ' s trip in the fall of 1987 to Japan, Kenya and Nigeria gave him a greater awareness of the contrast in cultures. As a professor of music, Parker has developed a class he calls Music and World Cultures which will expose students to the music of the European, Asian and African cultures and various cultural areas including religion, social factors, historical considerations and learning processes. This course meets the general education cross cultural requirement; more importantly, however, it assists students in furthering their understandings of and ridding their ignorances about their surrounding world, said Parker. Another professor who has recently returned from her journeys is Dr. Jessica Rousselow, professor of communication and theatre arts. Rousselow spent her sabbatical visiting theatres and other performing arts such as dance and dance dramas and schools where artists were trained in these traditions in the Far East and Southeast Asia. I ' ve learned that the aesthetic theory of these cultures grows out of a particular religious experience and notions about the world just as the western ones do. I ' ve also learned just how much I don ' t know and how much I need to immerse myself in these cultures ' philosophical traditions before I can even attempt to understand the aesthetic theory, Rousselow said. She will be offering a course in eastern drama which will include segments in Japanese, Indian and Chinese drama and will be a cross-cultural course offered by the communications department. A variety of personal and professional changes occurred to Dr. Gary Newton after he returned from his trip to Kenya the summer of 1988. My trip to Kenya has helped me to appreciate a culture that is radically different from ours. I came home with some difficult questions like ' How can a people that is poor materially be so rich spiritually? ' said Newton. My experiences taught me that we must be very careful not to identify western values with biblical values. Economic success cannot be equated with spiritual maturity, Newton added. Newton, assistant professor of religion, is organizing a trip to Kenya in August 1989, with a group of six to eight students. This would give students an opportunity to teach and counsel young people in a different culture. In the chemistry department, Drs. Stan Burden and Dan Hammond spent the summer of 1988 in the Dominican Republic with Margaret Coles, a medical technologist. She approached Burden for assistance in making refinements on a portable laboratory that is used in primitive situations. That experience has encouraged these professors to offer an opportunity to science students with health related skills to leam to use this equipment and to donate their abilities on these trips. Our hope would be that we would get undergrads to learn how to do this and to devote at least pan of their career to this type of service whether over a summer or two or three years, Burden said. Taylor University ' s vision has been supported by a grant from the J. Howard Pew Foundation, which it received through the Christian College Consortium. Perhaps, in time, this vision will expand to include more students. Internationalize curriculum 3

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RAFFLES CIT APORE Above - Margaret Coles makes use of the portable laboratory (background) to administer medical aid to cane-field workers around the town of Sabana de Grande in the Dominican Republic. Upper left - Dr. Gary Newton with family members of Dr. Michael Otanga, head of the Pentecostal-Assembly of God denomination in Kisumu, Kenya Upper left - Raffles City, Singapore, a tourist attraction famous for its numerous hotels and malls; the Taylor extension on this island will provide for students missionary and educational cross-cultural opportunities. Left -Malaysian university studentsdiscuss with DrRousselow the Hindu temple (background) found on the island of Bali. 2 Internationalize curriculum

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:.-r ' rt» ' i Mi ' -ii - ff - f -. Top -The thirteen modular units of West Village house 91 students. Center right - The new residence hall which can hold 156 students will be completed by the fall of 1 989. Center left - P. A. Laura IVIay Chitwood, junior, music education major, occupies a room in modular unit K. Bottom - Penny Polsgrove and Laura Anderson, both sophomores, make themselves helpful to freshmen as they move into their living quarters 4 West Village