Global learning

Fully immersing oneself in a new culture and a new language takes more than just a tourist's vacation overseas.

That is why Dr. Hui Wu, University of Central Arkansas professor, said she wrote a grant to allow UCA students to experience and learn about China firsthand.

"In the whole state we did not have a degree program in Chinese, so in my opinion, writing a federal grant for it was the best chance for UCA to sell itself to be the center of global learning," Wu said Friday.

In September 2007 UCA received $166,339 to develop a Chinese language minor and a major in Chinese studies and Wu said the culmination of the program recently resulted in the students' first study abroad trip after taking the courses.

Seven UCA students, all from different departments across campus, recently returned from a five-week course in the Chinese language at the East China Normal University in Shanghai.

"Before this language program we had business, physical therapy and nursing students who went on China trips but it was more of a tourist visit than studying on campus," Wu said. "This was the first time we actually had students on a Chinese university campus who stayed on campus for five weeks and were taught by faculty from that college."

Language immersion was a requirement of the federal grant the university received, according to Wu, but it was also an excellent way to allow students to discover the language for themselves.

UCA first offered Chinese courses in the spring of 2007 and Jon Musser, who attended the study abroad trip, is one of the students who has taken full advantage of the classes.

"I was one of the students who took Chinese for an entire year and I was really surprised at how much I was able to pick up being there in a culture where that's the native language," Musser said Friday. "It is one thing to study here where you're sort of isolated from the Chinese culture and another when you're using it on a consistent basis in your everyday life."

Musser, who will be a senior psychology student in the fall, had traveled to China before on a health care trip and said his most recent experience was much different. He said he now has a new perspective of China and a new appreciation for study abroad programs.

"In an area like Arkansas, this is sort of a new concept and there aren't a lot of students who are really interested in studying abroad," Musser said. "But what it provides for students is a really unique and life-changing experience that you don't get just from the classroom."

More than a memorable college experience, Musser said he also took away from the trip the importance of the Chinese language in a global society.

"For students who are in the business, health care and really a wide range of disciplines here on campus, Asia in general, and more specifically China, is becoming so much more of a force and a lot of industry corporations are developing offices there, so it is becoming a factor students need to look at," Musser said.

The students who traveled to China to study language include Musser, Jessica Rucker, Kyle Tarpley, Sara Haddox, Craig Pafford, Cody Wilson and Sam Ashim.

(Staff writer Jessica Bauer can be reached by e-mail at jessica.bauer@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1236. To comment on this and other stories in the Log Cabin, log on to www.thecabin.net. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)