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Global Seminars Program Brings Academics to Life for Students

Jan. 10, 2011

Students in the Cadiz Global Seminar attended flamenco performances.

Related link:
Global Seminars 2011

On her first day of class in Turkey's capital, Istanbul, UC San Diego freshman
Jessica Ko attended a lecture about Hagia Sophia, the city's famous cathedral turned
mosque turned museum. Then, she and her classmates went to visit the monument, built in the fourth century.

"It was just super cool," Ko said. "We had just learned about it in class and we went
out to see it. There was just so much history in that building."

That's the sort of experience UC San Diego's Global Seminar program affords
undergraduate students, said James Galvin, a director in the Programs Abroad
Office at the International Center. The program brings academic subjects to life by
taking students to the very places they're learning about. Students go abroad for five
weeks and earn eight units of UCSD credit. The priority application deadline for the
program is Jan. 26.

This year, students for the first time will be going to Australia, to watch the
country's Olympic team train and learn about exercise physiology They will also head to to China to learn about the country's art forms.

Other destinations include Paris, Rome and Berlin. Students aren't traveling as
tourists—they're doing hard work, instructors said. "Beaches in the summer can
be a distraction," said John Moore, a professor of linguistics who will teach flamenco and Spanish dialects in Cadiz this summer. "But I do make them do a lot of work and they do do it."

Diverse experiences

Students from the Cadiz Global Seminar snap a group picture.

One of the goals of Global Seminar is to make the program accessible to a more diverse population—and it's working, Moore said. He is himself the product of a somewhat unusual education. He started playing flamenco guitar as a teenager, and later on went to Spain and toured the Middle East. He spent three months in Baghdad before Saddam Hussein took power in Iraq. Moore was just 20 at the time. He worked in a nightclub and lived in a hotel full of other performers, including a bunch of Egyptian belly dancers.

This summer, his students will have quite a different experience in Cadiz. UCSD
works with a company that takes care of most of the trip's logistics, Moore said. His goal, he added, is to use Cadiz, both the cradle of flamenco and a point of departure
for many colonists who sailed to the New World, to teach students about this art
form and Spanish dialects.

Exploring the Muslim world

Students from the Istanbul Global Seminar pose a group portrait.

Matthew Herbst, director of Roosevelt College's Making of the Modern World program, said he hopes his students will fall in love with Istanbul, where he will teach two classes this summer. "I hope the history of the city will become alive and tangible and meaningful," he said.

Istanbul was once called the "heart of the world's desire" and is an overlooked key player in Western and Eastern history, Herbst said. The city, known as Constantinople at the time, was first the capital of the Byzantine Empire, ruled by Christian emperors. It then became the capital of the Ottoman Empire, when Turkish sultan Mehmed II conquered the city and the Byzantine Empire fell.

Istanbul also lets students experience the Islamic world in a safe environment, said Herbst, who will bring his children, ages 3 and 5, on the trip. "The students will realize these are people like us," Herbst said. "They go to work, they fall in love and they have to pay taxes. They happen to be Muslim."

Jordan's capital city, Amman, is another safe haven where students will get to know
the Islamic world, said Galvin, the International Center staff member. Jordanian
officials signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 and the country also is friendly
with its other neighbors.

A Focus On Health

UCSD students in Amman, Jordan, visit the local U.N. headquarters.

The Jordan-based seminar focuses on public health, and more specifically, on
tobacco consumption, which is still widespread in that country, especially among the local male population. Students, under the wing of Dr. Wael Al-Delaimy, of the
UCSD School of Medicine, will gather data in health clinics serving Palestinians and
Iraqi refugees. They will then prepare a report that will help the clinics better serve
their patients, Galvin said. "We want to give something back," he said.

Students also will study the Middle East peace process and its impact on public
health. They will visit the United Nations headquarters in Jordan and meet with
the organization's head of public health for Jordan. Classes will take place at the
King Hussein Cancer Center, named after the country's former monarch, a life-long
smoker who died of cancer in 1999.

Health, with a focus on physiology this time, will be at the heart of the new Exercise Physiology program in Canberra, Australia. Students will live at the Australia
Institute of Sport, where the country's Olympic team trains. They will eat in the
same cafeteria as Olympic athletes. "It's really unique," Galvin said.

While in Jordan, students took the time to visti Petra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

They will also spend time in the lab learning about training at altitude, among other subjects. Their professor, Dr. Peter Wagner, is a legend in the field of sports physiology, Galvin said, and a native Australian. One of the Global Seminar's goals is to give students access to leading faculty members in a small-group setting, Galvin pointed out.

"Faculty repeatedly told us that the Global Seminars are one of the highlights of their teaching experience at UCSD," Galvin said.

That's certainly true for Herbst. "In some ways, I feel like I work here 47 weeks for these five weeks," he said.


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