The University invites the general public to take advantage of more than 35 hours of panels, presentations, informational sessions and cultural events from Thursday, Nov. 12, through Thursday, Nov. 19. Most will take place in Goodwin Forum (Nelson Hall East) or the Kate Buchanan Room at University Center. A detailed schedule and directions are available at www.humboldt.edu/iew.
Sponsored by HSU’s Office of International Programs, the International Advisory Committee, the President’s Office and the Diversity Program Funding Committee, International Education Week showcases the involvement of faculty, staff, students and community members in a wide variety of international initiatives. Paul Blank, chair of the International Advisory Committee and the presenter of the ever-popular ‘Walk on the World,” said, “A university is not really a university unless it is globally connected. IEW celebrates and reinforces that fact.”
Starting off the week’s events on Sunday, Nov. 15, will be a keynote address by Annette Makino, Senior Vice-President for Communications and External Affairs at Internews of Arcata, titled, “When Information Saves Lives: Engaging Local Media in Global Conflicts and Crises.” She will speak at 7 p.m. in the Kate Buchanan Room. Makino will focus on Internews’s experience in engaging local media in humanitarian disasters, from Kenya’s post-election violence to the Israeli airstrikes on Gaza to the Darfur refugee crisis. She will also discuss her organization’s work teaching reporters in conflict zones how to “report for peace.”
Drumming from West Africa will call the campus community to the Opening Ceremony on the Quad (in the Goodwin Forum in case of rain) on Monday, Nov. 16, at noon.
On Tuesday, Nov. 17 at 7 p.m. in the Kate Buchanan Room, the week’s second keynote speaker, Kamran Pasha, will address “Islam and Hollywood: Past, Present and Future.” Pasha holds a JD and MFA and is a published novelist, screenwriter and director. His talk will center on the historical representation of Islam and Muslims in cinema and how it has evolved in the post-9/11 world. He will talk about his own experience as a Muslim in the film industry, and how Hollywood is changing its relationship with the Islamic world in the Obama era.
Among the week’s many other events will be scholarly presentations about China’s rise, this year’s coup in Honduras, traveling to New Zealand, working and studying abroad and language and politics in South India. Combined faculty, staff and student panels will examine globalization and development, AFS programs and the experience of being an international student at HSU. Volunteer and study abroad opportunities will be surveyed and an International Fashion Show, a multi-ethnic Noodle Tasting and the “Walk on the World” interactive experience are scheduled. In the latter, participants literally globetrot with the aid of oversized maps covering the floor of the Kate Buchanan Room.
The Arcata Post office will be on campus to help with passport applications on Friday, Nov. 13, from 10 to 3 p.m. in the South Lounge.
The week is a unique academic experience, said Sam Sonntag, Professor of Politics, Fulbright Scholar and past chair of HSU’s International Advisory Committee. Almost 50 students earn academic credit as part of a colloquium jointly sponsored by a half-dozen departments across the University, from Anthropology to World Languages & Cultures. But the events are directed ultimately at the campus and the community at large, Sonntag emphasized. “What people see and hear during IEW broadens horizons. We are helping to fulfill HSU’s commitment to internationalization of the campus while offering the community the opportunity to participate in these attention-grabbing events. ”
Students from abroad are among the presenters. “These international students are very excited to participate in IEW,” said Marci Fradkin, International Programs Coordinator. “They are great friends, not only with each other but with American students as well. These are people who would never normally meet under any circumstances except at Humboldt State. This event allows them to showcase the rich diversity of the 32 countries represented at HSU.” A growing number of international students, approximately 140 this year, are now attending HSU.
Reciprocally, more than 150 HSU students went abroad during 2008-09 and are studying in 28 different countries from Ghana to Taiwan. “HSU students are very adventurous,” said Penelope Shaw, Study Abroad Advisor. “Even though there is an economic downturn, HSU students are attending informational meetings in record numbers. They realize the importance of an education with a global focus and International Education Week gives them a chance to share their international experiences with their peers.”
The State Department emphasizes that international education readies U.S. citizens to live and work in an increasingly “globalized” world. It is also a vital service industry, bringing more than $14.5 billion into the U.S. annually.
IEW was first held in 2000 and is now marked by communities and universities in more than 100 countries worldwide.