Connecting

The following feature article appeared in the campus publication Mosaic in December, 1999. Although some of the courses, students, and faculty members referenced in the story may have changed in the meantime, it still provides a full and accurate picture of the Global Learning Program. For the most current course information and faculty listing, we encourage you to visit the program's homepage.

A culturally diverse city in a country that is politically, socially, and economically in transition, Cape Town, South Africa, has become a crucible for learning for Trinity students.

As Trinity’s first "global learning site," the Cape Town program offers a distinctive term-abroad experience in which students participate in an on-line core course that keeps them in touch with faculty and advisers at Trinity via the Internet. Students take courses of their choosing at the prestigious University of Cape Town, engage in community learning with both compelling academic merit and enormous personal rewards, and synthesize their experiences in a public presentation given to the Trinity community upon their return.

The Cape Town program and the College’s other global learning sites – one in Kathmandu and one in Trinidad – address the College’s strategic goals of expanding curricular emphasis on international issues and powerful forces of global change and forging global educational connections that are both innovative and up to Trinity’s high academic standards. They are designed to, in the words of President Evan Dobelle, help prepare students for a "conversation with the world." Key to this global learning concept is establishing the Trinity sites in world cities and affiliating them with world-class universities.

Associate Professor of International Studies Michael E. Niemann, a faculty sponsor who helped create the Cape Town program, says that the city offers a unique setting for learning. "Cape Town is a prime example of a multicultural society, a mixture of many cultures that have to negotiate their coexistence on a daily basis," he says. "In many ways, Cape Town is the world of the future in which our students will have to function, and I hope that they are able to grasp that excitement but also the problems associated with living in such a world."

Students who studied at the Cape Town global learning site last semester chat with faculty members connected to the program prior to delivering their presentations to the campus community, shown from left to right, are: Associate Professor of International Studies Michael E. Niemann, Kate Weingartner ’00, David Kyle ’00, Lucie Leblois ’00, and Assistant Professor of Sociology Johnny E. Williams.

The program’s core course, "Imagining South Africa," is intended to provide a context for the students’ stay in Cape Town. Reading material includes comparative history, autobiography, fiction, and essays that address race relations not only in South Africa but also in the United States. Niemann says that the comparative nature of the course is key: "It is the hope of the faculty members who organized the seminar that the students learn to look at their own country anew through their experience of being in another country."

Assistant Professor of Sociology Johnny E. Williams explains that the core course is a "cyberseminar" taught from Trinity’s campus via the Internet by him, Niemann, or Assistant Professor of Sociology Lori G. Waite. For each reading assignment, he explains, "the teacher initiates a conversation by asking a number of questions that the students must respond to." Students read and respond to each other’s comments and create a virtual classroom dialogue. Students also gather like a traditional class for weekly lectures from community leaders.

In addition to the core seminar, students take at least three courses at the University of Cape Town. Says Niemann, "Our program is selective in that students must have a 3.0 G.P.A. to be admitted. This standard is set by University of Cape Town, which is an indication of the quality of the institution our students attend while in South Africa."

Community learning
Bringing the seminar’s perspectives to life is the role of the program’s required community learning component, which immerses the students in projects that connect them directly with local people and their daily lives and problems. David B. Kyle ’00, whose self-designed major includes elements of economics and psychology, spent a large portion of his weeks in Cape Town last semester establishing a children’s library in a day care center in one of the townships, which are districts outside the city where blacks still live in dire poverty. He considers the community learning to be a crucial element of his education. "Academics is only a part of college," he says. "The people we meet and experiences like internships — they’re important, too. A liberal arts college education takes into account the overall picture. You’re making yourself more learned, and that includes practical knowledge and personal skills." Cape Town is, says Kyle, "an incredible opportunity to satisfy academic requirements in a completely different cultural environment."

David B. Kyle ’00 with students from a school in the Kaayelitsha township, where he started a children’s library.

Another student, Katherine L. Weingartner ’00, who was in Cape Town last semester, volunteered in a township health clinic, where she educated young adolescents about AIDS, one of South Africa’s biggest public health issues. A neuroscience major, Weingartner says, "I was looking for a program where I’d be able to both do community service and nurture my interest in science." Cape Town offered "the opportunity to take the scientific knowledge that I’ve accumulated at Trinity and apply it to a community context, which is what I’ve always wanted to do with a career in public health."

An integrated educational experience
According to Associate Academic Dean Nancy Birch Wagner, who chairs the Global Studies Advisory Committee, a term at Cape Town or another global site is intended not to be an isolated event but rather an integrated, interwoven part of the entire educational experience at Trinity. Katherine Weingartner’s educational choices exemplify this cohesion: Prior to her semester in Cape Town, she took courses on race, gender, and ethnicity to complement the science courses of her major. She also did an internship with the Hispanic Health Council in Hartford. In South Africa, she was able to enroll in a course at the University of Cape Town medical school that would count toward her Trinity major. She also did a research project at a psychiatric hospital to explore the relationship between culture and mental health and the extent to which cultural factors impact treatment. Now that she is back at Trinity, all of these experiences will shape her perspectives in current and future courses and culminate in her senior thesis, which is on depression in the Puerto Rican community in Hartford. In December she shared some of her broadly based and locally specific knowledge in a presentation on campus about her experiences and the state of health care in South Africa.

A stated goal of the global sites program is "to transform the ways in which undergraduates both understand and act upon the modern world." The dozen alumni of the Cape Town program assert that they valued both the exposure to South African cultures and world views as well as the opportunity to interact with international students at the university. Moreover, their projects in the community transformed them from mere visitors, tourists, and students into agents of change. Says Kate Weingartner, "You have a chance to make an impact, to make a contribution while you’re there."

Lucie B. Leblois ’00 with students she tutored last semester at the Ukhanyo Primary School in Masihumelele township.

"I realized how similar people are despite cultural differences, how powerful the human experience is," says Sara J. Nethercote ’00, an anthropology and political science major, who taught English to young refugee children at the Trauma Center for Victims of Violence and Torture in the fall semester of 1998. She is following her global site experience with a thesis on community development in Hartford. "The biggest thing I learned was how to reflect upon myself, my place, and the United States’ place in the world. The thing that will stick with me for the rest of my life is how a developing nation looks at the United States. Although we are a very powerful nation, we aren’t willing to recognize the vast resources that other countries have to offer, and by that I mean people and culture as well as economic and political resources."

Recalling an encounter with a black man who had been tortured in police custody and who sought out and ultimately forgave his white torturer, David Kyle reflects, "I liked talking with South Africans and getting completely different views of the world. The worries I have in my life pale in comparison to what so many of these people have experienced."