Creative, innovative faculty and staff are involved in important work that is making broader and deeper internationalization of St. Cloud State a reality. Here are just a few good examples of faculty initiatives and activities that are strengthening the university’s global focus.
Eddah Mutua
- Communication Studies Professor Eddah Mutua has worked on issues involving post-genocide Rwanda, using a collaborative approach to promoting cultural knowledge exchange between Rwanda and St. Cloud and involving students in support for Rwandans’ efforts to reconstruct their country and engage in peace building. Locally she has encouraged and engaged students and diverse representatives from local high schools in discussions to promote intercultural and interracial understanding through the Communicating Common Ground service-learning project.
Orn Bodvarsson
- Interim Dean Orn Bodvarsson is bringing a strong international dimension to the School of Public Affairs curriculum, student experiential learning and research, faculty research and community outreach. A partnership with the Zhou Enlai School of Government at Nankai University in Tianjin, China, and others are expected to lead to faculty and student exchanges.
- Sociology Professor Abbas Mehdi’s experience in international affairs — including work with the World Bank, the U.S. government, and the Office of the Secretary General of the United Nations and the League of Arab States — has enriched understanding of the connections between local and global issues and their implications for higher education and the state’s business environment, as well as training in cross-cultural understanding with the Minnesota National Guard.
- Working together to internationalize curriculum for the Master’s of Engineering Management program, five years ago professor Ben Baliga and professor emeritus Warren Yu designed an annual industrial tour to Chinese sites in order to offer students a global perspective on their studies. Participants in this successful cohort program are executives from Twin Cities companies that primarily have operations throughout the world. These graduate students meet with top leadership at Chinese companies and offices of U.S. corporations, as well as government-owned and joint venture companies, with time for discussion and exposure to both business and cultural aspects of Chinese life.
- Faculty members Mikhail Blinnikov, who also is director of global studies, and Christopher Thoms are involved in a new education abroad model for St. Cloud State aimed at creating a 360-degree global experience. A course in Experiencing Nepal: Environment & Society in the Himalayas — an academic and life experience dubbed Nepal 2013 — is the pilot for an emerging education abroad program that will have general themes and move to a different country each year, promoting learning about a country globally and locally with studies that include environmental issues, political and economic relations, social diversity and public health.
- Educational leadership and higher education professor Christine Imbra has been instrumental in an institutional partnership with the University of Macerata, founded in 1290. As a result of this agreement, the first graduate-only summer education abroad trip to Italy was launched. Graduate students from the two universities participate in exchange internships working side-by-side with their Italian and U.S. academic and student affairs professionals, learning about each other’s higher education systems.
Mumbi Mwangi
- Women’s Studies Professor Mumbi Mwangi has initiated projects and activities in and outside of the classroom through which students learn and participate in addressing contemporary global social and political issues, particularly in Africa. She has led education abroad opportunities and independent studies internships in Tanzania and initiated national and global activities including the founding of NGATHA International to facilitate thrift and humanitarian aid.
- Professor of religious studies Joseph Edelheit has participated in interfaith programs with the Pontefical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and was the first rabbi to lecture in a Mosque in the Brazilian city. He has spoken to students at interfaith gatherings at Jewish and Catholic schools and discussed future seminars for Brazilian faculty on how to teach about Jews and Jewish life in their Christian curricula. He has consulted with the first museum of the Inquisition and a new museum and memorial to the European exiles that came to Brazil and continued his long time work in HIV/AIDS with a pediatric clinic and the largest Rio AIDS organization.
- Jason Lindsey, associate professor and chairman of the political science department, is representing St. Cloud State as a Fulbright Scholar this Spring at the Yaroslav the Wise Law Academy of Ukraine, teaching both an undergraduate course on American Government and a graduate course in Political Theory.
- Math faculty member Jeff Chen is on leave as a Fulbright research scholar this year at Inner Mongolia Normal University in China. He is studying the history of mathematics in late Imperial China with a focus on spherical trigonometry in the 17th and 18th centuries.
