Cultures Converge for International Week 2008
In a seven-day celebration of diverse perspectives from across the Earth, Rider University celebrated International Week 2008 on its Lawrenceville campus from October 17 through October 24. Over the course of the week, students, faculty and staff experienced the tastes, sounds, films and activities of innumerable cultures the world over. Highlighting the week was the satisfying introduction of the Center for International Education, balanced by the sobering story of the third-world health pandemic in places like Haiti, as presented by the week’s keynote lecturer, Dr. David Walton.
The Center for International Education made its formal debut on Monday, October 20, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at its headquarters in the Room 124 of the Bart Luedeke Center. The new center, formerly known as the Office of International Programs, will focus on study-abroad opportunities, services for international students and special events for exchange students.
“Working to achieve the goals set forth in the five-year Internationalization Strategic Plan, currently under discussion in our community, the Center and its staff will serve to support and promote the University’s international mission to prepare its students as global citizens and socially responsible leaders in an increasingly interdependent, diverse and complex world,” said Dr. Donald Steven, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, who presided over the ceremony.
Students also shared their experiences abroad during the ribbon-cutting. Joshabel De La Cruz, a senior Global Multinational Studies major, said she has traveled to Greece, Hong Kong and France, and had the desire to share her experiences with other students, so she contacted Dr. Linda Materna, director of the Center for International Education.
“This is an epic moment for Rider,” said De La Cruz about the Center for International Education. The center sends the message that there is a way to study abroad and resources are available to help students, explained De La Cruz, who recently created the Study Abroad Club.
David Walton, Ph.D., M.P.H., delivered the International Week Keynote Lecture, entitled Health, Human Rights and Social Justice: Why We Can’t Afford to Wait, to an audience that filled the Bart Luedeke Center Theater on Tuesday, October 21. Walton, who appeared at Rider on behalf of the Boston-based Partners in Health, an organization dedicated to providing a preferential option for the poor in health care, explained the inverse relationship between the number of children dying in a poor country such as Haiti and the low number of physicians located there. “There aren’t many children dying of acute illnesses in this part of the world,” he said, referring to the United States.
Walton, whose time is divided between the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and the Hôpital de Lascahobas in impoverished Haiti, a place where he is witness to inequality and devastation on a daily basis. He punctuated the Caribbean nation’s dire economic plight by showing a photo slide of a woman making “mud cakes,” a dish Walton said is typically eaten by rural Haitians, and not because of its nutritional value. “They’re just dirt, butter and sugar – the cheapest things out there – so you can imagine the malnutrition these people face.”
Not only do Haitians face a dreadful economy, but their country, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, is 98.5 percent deforested. The result, Walton explained, is unimaginable flooding in the wake of the hurricanes that typically strike the nation each fall. “Hurricanes Gustav and Hanna produced 800 deaths in Haiti, compared with just 50 in the Dominican,” he said. “The earth just does not absorb the water, and you wind up with incredibly fierce flash floods,” as well as the proliferation of water-borne diseases in the storms’ wake.
After graduating from Harvard Medical School, where he worked as a research assistant to Partners in Health founder Paul Farmer, Walton says he was guided by Farmer to Lascahobas in 2002. There, Walton and his group focused on establishing four pillars of health for the hospital: Introducing essential drugs, establishing a laboratory, training and paying community health workers, and working more closely with the government to steer aid to the rural areas.
“When we reopened, people showed up in droves,” Walton recalled. “When I asked one women why so many patients had suddenly showed up at the once-underutilized facility, she answered me, while politely trying to hide her withering sarcasm, ‘we couldn’t afford it before, so we stayed home and died.’ That’s when I realized just how desperate they were for health care.”
The Center for International Business held a lecture, entitled Into Africa!, on Wednesday, October 22, where William I. Campbell, senior Advisor for JPMorgan Chase & Co., talked about his business career and his recent experiences of traveling to Africa.
Campbell shared a number of tips he learned along the way with the audience of students and faculty and staff members, including the importance of giving back. Campbell said he has had success in his career, and he and his family felt it was important to give back to society what they had gotten out of it. Recently, they decided to go to Africa to investigate the situations in Tanzania, Kenya and Niger, particularly in hospitals and schools.
“You’ve seen pictures,” Campbell said. “And they are true. Africa is in terrible shape.”
International Week events varied from international sports activities and foreign films to stress relief techniques and wine tasting from around the world. Other highlights included the Community Crop Walk, which increases awareness about hunger and helps to raise money for hungry people around the world. A Cultural Expo, held in the SRC Lobby on October 20 allowed Rider’s various cultural and diversity groups to showcase their talents and backgrounds. Students had the chance to find out about the many international opportunities that Rider offers during the International Opportunities Fair.
“The idea of the week is to recognize the international flavors of our campus and raise the awareness of people in our community about the world around them,” explained Dave Keenan, director of Campus Activities at Rider.
