Daily Pioneer News

PLATTEVILLE - "We need to present the world as it is" and "look at what our country is doing from other country's perspectives," said Joseph Elder, UW-Madison professor of sociology, languages and cultures of Asia. Keynote speaker at the International Education Workshop held recently at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, Elder shared his experiences with international cultures and curriculum development.

Born to missionary parents in the Kurdish section of Iran near the Iraqi border, Elder spent most of his boyhood in Tehran, Iran. From school age until age 15, Elder attended school with children from 20 different nationalities. His mother tongue is Farsi, and he remembers his father spending a lot of time translating Farsi to English. At age 15, his family returned to the U.S., and Elder ended up completing his undergraduate and graduate degrees in sociology at Oberlin College in Ohio. He traveled to India as an undergraduate. In the late 1950s as a Ph.D. candidate with Harvard University, Elder lived in a tent in a northern India village with his wife and two children. He gathered research for his dissertation for 18 months in that village and then graduated from Harvard in 1959.

Elder has been teaching the social structure of Muslim society for 20 years. He developed the Global Cultures Certificate Program for UW-Madison and has taught Introduction to Global Cultures in the program for 10 years. The Global Cultures Program comprises interdisciplinary coursework from 30 different departments, focused on comparisons between Western and non-Western cultures. The program requires students to explore a multitude of cultures, to study a foreign language for three years, to study abroad, and to complete a capstone research project of 80-100 pages comparing a Western culture to a non-Western culture.

Patrick Hagen, German professor and chair of the University International Education Committee, commented, "Professor Joseph Elder provided our faculty and staff with an excellent model on how each of us can work to internationalize our particular field through a willingness to embrace interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and learning."

Elder's experience also includes heavy involvement in the College-Year-in-India and -Nepal programs at UW-Madison. These programs require students to study the languages intensely before going to India or Nepal, to continue studying the languages while staying in India or Nepal, to attend a tutorial on Indian or Nepalese curriculum before becoming a part of it during their stay in either country, and to complete a field study on a research topic of their choice.

In addition, Elder described the international residence hall experience at UW-Madison. Two residence halls at the school have been dubbed "international," in that they accommodate students from abroad and students wanting international exposure throughout their academic careers. Students pay a little more to stay in these dorms that offer more than just "living together" experiences. UW assigns faculty to the dorms to facilitate added programming and community events to truly foster cultural understanding and integration.

According to Donna Anderson, director of UWP's Institute for Study Abroad, "From an organizational and administrative standpoint, Elder's comments provided a good springboard to further international development at UWP. Elder also lent some creativity to what we can do internationally at UWP."

Hagen thought, "Elder provided some rich examples on how one professor was able to become active on his campus in curricular and extra-curricular activities in globalization, despite not having a background in global studies."

Because, as Elder said, funding international initiatives can prove difficult, Stephanie Branson, UWP English professor, pointed out that "faculty should strive to find monies to do international collaborative research," as mentioned by Abdollah Soofi, UWP economics professor, during the latter part of the workshop. Branson does international research with a professor in Poland as an extension of her Fulbright grant.

Anyone interested in learning more about UWP initiatives to internationalize the curriculum may contact Anderson at (608) 342-1727 oranderdon@uwplatt.edu.

Contact: Donna Anderson, director, Institute for Study Abroad Programs, (608) 342-1727,anderdon@uwplatt.edu

Prepared by: April Schmidt, UWP Public Relations, (608) 342-1194,schmidap@uwplatt.edu