Intensive Study Abroad for First-Generation College
Students
I watch Rubi Garcia, a rising sophomore at the University
of Southern California (USC), expertly negotiate a conversation with three
Japanese students at a reception in Nagoya, Japan, even though she speaks only
a few words of Japanese and these students speak little English. Rubi is
nearing the end of her first trip outside of the United States, part of a class
I teach on America culture in Japan and Japanese culture in the United States.
At the beginning of this study abroad intensive course, I didn?t imagine that
Rubi or her peers could successfully engage in this international dialogue,
given their limited language skills. Rubi is a first-generation college student
from the Watts area of Los Angeles, and she has travelled with twelve other
students, freshmen to seniors, who are all the first in their families to
attend college. These students are Norman Topping Scholars at USC, a fellowship
program that identifies low-income students who have overcome major obstacles
to a
ttend college.
These thirteen undergraduates have travelled to Japan with the student service
professionals that run the program, along with a team of two PhD students and a
working professional I have assembled to provide them a first-rate educational
experience.
Developing an Intensive Study Abroad Course
As a faculty member dedicated to working with
underrepresented minority and low-income students, and a dean whose
responsibilities include ensuring that diverse students take full advantage of
their college educations, I have been overjoyed by the chance to develop this
intensive study abroad course. It is currently a three-and-one-half week
?Maymester? course that takes place immediately after commencement and before
our regular summer sessions. This allows our students to enroll in this
four-unit course as part of their regular spring curriculum, taking advantage
of their respective financial aid packages, while also being supported in their
travel by the exceptional funding of the Norman Topping Program and research
support from the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences.
This is the second Topping student group that has gone to
Japan under the auspices of this course. I initially developed the course with
Christina Yokoyama, director of the Norman Topping Program, in academic year
2009?10, after we realized that first-generation college students were among
the least likely USC students to participate in traditional study abroad
programs. Although the university was proud of producing ?global leaders and
citizens? among its undergraduates, very few students from our first-generation
college population?which accounts for 16 percent of our student body?pursue
traditional study abroad opportunities. The Topping Scholars were perfect
partners to create a new cohort of global leaders, since the scholarship
program consisted almost exclusively of first-generation college students, many
of whom were already campus leaders committed to community involvement. What
was needed was a course dedicated to their particular needs and interests.
We chose Japan as a site to study because it was a
relatively safe environment for a first trip abroad, as well as a non-Western
culture that had deep connections to our region of southern California. I
wanted to make sure that students could see Japan in our local culture, while
also experiencing how features of US society and history made their way across
the Pacific to Japan. Unlike study abroad programs made for students familiar
with international travel and cosmopolitan culture, this program would make
global culture itself part of the investigation, trying to show how Japan and
the United States were interrelated societies that had made connections despite
differences in race, class, and culture over time. Those transnational
connections included a history of war and violence, corporate relationships,
and the movement of people and culture back and forth for over a hundred years.
Topping Scholars for the class were selected through a
competitive interview process at the end of the fall semester. During the
spring semester, we met as a group once a month to have beginning conversations
and introductory presentations about Japanese culture and society. Students
were introduced to select faculty members and graduate students whose academic
work concentrates on Japan; they also had a chance to meet and interact with
current USC undergraduates who grew up in Japan. Just one month before getting
on the plane, we held a joint class over Skype with students in an American Studies
class at Doshisha University in Kyoto, individuals we would meet in person on
the trip. Each class was asked to view one motion picture about the other
culture and prepare questions for each other from those viewings. While we
watched ?Shall We Dance?? about ballroom dancing in Japan, the Doshisha
students viewed ?Freedom Writers,? a documentary about an urban high school
classroom i
n southern
California. This early experience in learning about each other was critical for
future exchanges in person.
We also made provisions for our students? entire families
to find out about the travel, including a workshop for parents and families to
explain the entire trip. In addition, we had learned the importance of
maintaining a college-sponsored blog while we were traveling so that student
reflections and photographs could be posted regularly and families had a
low-cost way of keeping tabs on the group as we travelled. This blog led many
younger siblings in the student families to express interest in college, study
abroad, Japan, and attending USC in their own academic futures. Not only did
this provide extra outreach to these families to share in this experience along
with their students, it also helped to provide additional encouragement to our
undergraduates from their own families to fully participate in the intellectual
activities that this study abroad experience could generate.
Pre-Travel Studies
When we gathered on Monday after commencement for our
first class meeting, the excitement of the students was palpable. We spent that
week preparing the students to travel abroad by learning about Japan in Los
Angeles, then got on the plane at the end of the week for the two-week
intensive part of the class in Japan. The students had mini-lessons that week
in Japanese history, language, and etiquette, which was reinforced with course
readings. But our major activity was to explore aspects of Japanese culture and
economy in Los Angeles. We started with a session by staff from the Toyota
Corporation, who introduced us to their assembly plant where they receive
automobiles from Japan at the Long Beach port to prepare them for the US
market. Toyota corporate headquarters is located nearby in Torrance, and we
visited there to hear about Japanese corporate culture in the United States, as
well as internship possibilities for our students upon their return. Truck and
train traffic t
hrough south Los
Angeles, where many of our students reside, was chock full of international
trade from the busiest ports in the United States, moving through their
neighborhoods on the way to communities throughout the nation.
The American company we explored in Japan was the Disney
Corporation, a Southern California institution, and in this pre-travel week, we
had presentations from the vice presidents in charge of international
operations and park relationships with Japan before visiting Disneyland in
Anaheim. Each of these corporate visits was intended to give our students a
background that makes their engagement in Japan more meaningful. In addition,
we spent a day learning about Japanese American history in Little Tokyo and
through the Japanese American National Museum. Besides learning the tragic
story of Japanese internment in US concentration camps during World War II, we
also experienced a lecture on Shinto religion in a Little Tokyo temple, as well
as learning about a lost village of Japanese fisherman on Terminal Island.
These days were also our first encounters with Japanese cuisine, with many of
our students using chopsticks to feed themselves for the very first time.
Another highlight
of these days was
the send-off provided by the Consul General from Japan in his offices in
downtown Los Angeles.
Early on Saturday morning, the traveling group of
nineteen?thirteen undergraduates and six advisors?gathered anxiously at Los
Angeles International Airport for their air travel across the Pacific. Many
parents and family members were there to say goodbye to their children, as this
trip was the first ever flight of any kind for several of the young scholars.
Once on the plane for the eleven-hour flight to Tokyo, I took advantage of the
time to have office hours with the students individually to discuss their class
research projects. Each young scholar had crafted a research project that they
would work on in Japan.
We did not expect these students to become experts in
Japan; rather, we helped them develop a research project that extends their
primary intellectual interest in their majors with a comparative focus on that
subject in Japan. Consequently, Jasmine Torres, who was interested in reforming
the American foster care system, planned to explore how orphans from the recent
tsunami in Japan are being reincorporated into Japanese society. And
Ant?Quinette Jackson, whose academic work was focused in a pre-health career
major, would be exploring how Japanese diet and exercise affects overall health
results in comparison to US populations. For several first- and second-year
students, this would be the first research paper they complete at USC, and the
academic team leaders have already helped them craft their questions and find
preliminary readings on their subjects. Even more importantly, none of the
students had ever spent every day for three weeks with a faculty member, so
this intens
ive experience of
exchange made them more comfortable interacting with faculty overall in the
future.
Learning Through Immersion
We arrived in Tokyo exhausted but excited about the
learning opportunities ahead. We spent our first full day exploring the
vastness and diversity of the Tokyo metropolitan area. The students were
initially amazed at the efficiency of the train and subway system and the
commitment to parks and green space amidst the skyscrapers and elevated
highways. We followed up on our Los Angeles activities by visiting Tokyo?s
Disney Sea theme park and hearing from park operations and management about how
they incorporate Japanese culture, including manga and anime, into their
imagery and design. A day trip to rural Mishima allowed us to meet with
Japanese college students at Nihon University, where the students there had
prepared presentations for our students on their individual research areas. We
were treated to an inside look at Google Japan, to understand how high tech
companies take advantage of the creative impulse and talent in East Asia. By
the end of this first week, we had expl
ored Japanese
imperial society, Shinto religious practice, and contemporary department store
culture, all while taking in the sights and sounds of modern Japan. We even
dedicated several hours for the students to explore Tokyo for their specific
research interests, taking photographs of relevant sites and having
conversations with local informants. By the end of that week, the only
undergraduate who had already participated in a study abroad experience before
this trip, Debbie Rumbo, told us that, upon reflection, she had learned more about
this culture in a few days than she had in an entire semester in Spain in a
traditional program.
As we boarded the Shinkansen?the bullet train?at the end
of this first week, students and advisors had their first collective time to
reflect on their journey so far on the six-hour trip to the other side of Japan
in Hiroshima. We spent the second week of the trip visiting three different
cities in Japan?Hiroshima, Kyoto, and Nagoya?to understand the diversity of
Japanese life before returning to metropolitan Tokyo and our departure to the
United States. It was this part of the class that had the largest cultural
impact on our students, as they began to understand the long and complicated
history of the nation, the strength of Japanese culture, and the power of
interaction with Japanese people of all ages. That night, we were warmly hosted
to dinner by the USC Alumni Club in Hiroshima and were able to meet fellow
Trojans and hear their fascinating stories of combining American and Japanese
lives. Several of our students learned about Japanese internment first-hand
from eighty
-two-year-old
Marie Tsuruda, who was incarcerated with her family in Arkansas and Tule Lake
and deported after the war. Since that time, she has lived in Japan teaching
English. She earned her degree in teaching English as a second language at USC.
The impact of the Atomic Bomb Museum and Park in
Hiroshima stayed with our students throughout the trip. The reality of the
destruction of an entire city by American forces?and days later the second city
of Nagasaki?is much more complex to assimilate when you are physically in the
revived city itself. For many, this was the first time that they struggled with
their American identities, having lived their lives in the United States mostly
as racial minorities to this point. They were able to reflect on this
experience in Miyajima Island, after a lunch cruise to one of the most
beautiful spots in the Japanese nation. After a powerful evening of discussion
and sharing, we traveled the next day to Kyoto, where we had the privilege of
hearing from Professor Fanon Wilkins, an African American historian who has
taught at Doshisha University for the past five years. Contrasting the
comfortable heterogeneity of the United States with the homogeneity of Japan
was a revelation for our d
iverse students,
and we linger in discussions about the meaning of blackness and immigrant
status in Japan. The beauty and the simplicity of Japanese temples and gardens
in Kyoto positively overwhelmed our students, and we shared these experiences
openly and honestly with newfound friends among the students we interact with
in the classroom at Doshisha.
Nagoya, sister city with Los Angeles, was our last stop
before returning to Tokyo. Here we fully understood our connection to
automobile culture by experiencing the automation of the Tokyo Corolla plant
that produces many of the cars we will see on the streets of Los Angeles. The
Aishi-American Friendship Society hosted our reception in this city, and the
students had the chance to interact not only with another group of Japanese
students, but also business and education leaders and US Consulate officials in
Nagoya. Upon our return to Tokyo, we had another day to focus on individual
research projects before concluding the trip with a final Karoake celebration
and exchange of gifts. After the long trip back to the United States, we met
for two days at USC to go over final plans for research papers, as well as
prepare for public presentations each student will make to the entire Topping
scholarly community of over one hundred students at the program?s annual
retreat in August.
Combining international travel, undergraduate research
projects, and intense interaction with faculty and PhD students is a textbook
example of several high-impact practices wrapped into one academic experience
that will last a lifetime for most of these students. Transformations in
intellectual perspective and personal growth take place during and after the
trip by the bucketful, as individual students change their majors and
incorporate plans for further study abroad into their academic schedules.
First-year student Eric Ochoa decided to concentrate his academic major in
industrial engineering, after meeting working engineers at Disney, Toyota, and
Google, while sophomore Johanna Becerra plans to participate in a summer
overseas program for engineers before she graduates. South Los Angeles native
Jessica Guevara began contemplating the possibility of working abroad after
graduation, while four students decide to enroll in a course on Japanese
religions in the fall, despite
never previously
having an interest in that topic of study. The fact that all the students on
this trip come from low-income families and are the first in their families to
experience college means that these transformations ripple across various
communities, including racial minority organizations and diverse student
outposts in residential life. What makes the success of this experience
possible is the partnership between academic life and student services,
specifically the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences and the
Norman Topping Student Aid Fund. The trust and camaraderie of leaders in these
two entities make for powerful intellectual experiences for the most vulnerable
of our undergraduates.
Promoting Global Leadership
As a faculty member committed to diversity through
excellence in programming, classroom work, and student achievement, my role in
organizing and teaching this intensive course to Japan has been among the most
satisfying experiences in my academic career. I see the difference the course
makes in students? confidence, scholarly performance, and ability to
conceptualize new places for themselves in global society. We need to promote
global leadership among all students in American higher education, not only
students born to money and privilege. Given the diversity of youth in the
United States and the undergraduate population in our colleges and university,
we must find new ways to introduce the world to all students and make
comfortable the international exchange of ideas and experiences. I see my own
personal contribution to this effort to be only possible by working with other
education professionals, both academics and those in student services, who are
committed to the succ
ess of students of
color and those who come to college from modest backgrounds. In this way, I can
make my own small contribution to an equitable global society of the future,
one in which every student from every background can feel that they can make a
positive impact on the world.
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