BGSU students recognized for embracing global engagement

Eight winners recognized by CURS for their research

By Kandace York

Their travels spanned 9,000 miles and five continents, but the Bowling Green State University undergraduate and graduate students shared a common experience; they embraced global engagement.

Hosted by the Center for Undergraduate Research and Scholarship (CURS), the Embracing Global Engagement award ceremony recently recognized 8 winners from 42 presentations by more than 50 students.

Dr. Theodore Rippey, interim vice provost of academic affairs, praised the students’ openness to explore other cultures, relating his own 1990 experience alongside the Berlin Wall after it had opened the previous autumn. Holding a piece of the wall in his hand raised questions that took a long time to answer, and new questions continued to arise from those answers.

“I walked away with this ‘hunk of concrete,’ thinking about the structure it had come from — a structure that had defined a culture and a generation,” Rippey said. “That structure, the Berlin Wall, was now crumbling. I wondered what that meant for me, for the city it had divided, for the two countries it had defined and for the world.”

He encouraged students to “ask those questions, answer those questions and then update those answers as your life continues.” The process, he said, never ends.

That perspective relates directly to the University’s strategic plan, Focus on the Future, which emphasizes innovative learning experiences in its first objective: Redefining Student Success.

Embracing Global Engagement represents this innovation by providing students with a structure through which they can “find purposeful ways, individually and collaboratively, to relate experiences to university studies,” Rippey said.

He thanked the winners for their work, which exemplified the integrated experience that the University seeks to foster for all students.

Recognized at the November 20 event were:

College of Arts and Sciences

• Quinn Eberhard, “Cambridge, Culture and Concatenation”

        Advisor: Neocles Leontis

• Benjamin Rosales, “El Milagro Del Muro”
  

        Advisor: Dena Eber

• Kelsey Wurster, “A Comparison on Japanese and American Educational Systems”

        Advisor: Akiko Kawano-Jones

College of Education and Human Development

• Miranda Fox and Scott Knapke, “Cultural and Learning Experience in China”
• Tiara Hicks and Noah Brown, “Cultural and Educational Learning in China”

        Advisor: Gabriel Matney

• Jordan Arrington, “Global Brigades 2019”

        Advisor: Jessica Kiss

Dr. Cordula Mora, director of CURS, said, “Participating in a global, international or intercultural project while here at BGSU often has profound impacts on students' lives.” It prepares them in many important ways for life after graduation, she said, “irrespective of whether this project was conducted on campus or while traveling abroad.”

The Embracing Global Engagement conference is one of three the center coordinates. In addition to the October conference, it hosts the Undergraduate Symposium for Research and Scholarship in April, as well as the Undergraduate Symposium on Diversity in November.