Diversity, multi-cultural & global awareness is a huge issue on college & university campuses. International students are a large portion of today’s college campus student body. Therefore global & multi-cultural awareness should be embraced, but most American students have never traveled abroad and don’t understand other cultures or ethnicities.

Invite worldwide speaker and life-changing author Paul F. Davis to speak to your college students about success secrets for multi-cultural & global awareness!
RevivingNations@yahoo.com
407-967-7553

As a world traveling humanitarian worker, minister and professional speaker I serendipitously stumbled upon the need of multi-cultural and global awareness on college campuses while participating in a volunteer international language conversation hour for foreign students desirous of learning English.

It was a small way of giving back, not to mention after traveling to over 50 countries and 6 continents myself I was a bit bored with speaking only to Americans. Every time I came home from overseas, I went through reverse culture shock and felt homesick. Yet I was home. I eventually discovered that my heart is most at home abroad among the many wonderful people of the world.

I particularly took a shine to Asia, where two-thirds of the world lives. India and China alone account for two-fifths of the world’s populace. Yet if an American college student were to see a Sikh from India on his college campus, he might mistake him for a Muslim not being multi-culturally aware of the difference.

After working on ground zero the first week of 9-11, I immediately sensed a danger in America’s future foreign policy were we to go full force into “theaters of war” and prematurely and hastily demonize other nationalities and nations we know little about.

Unfortunately my instincts proved to be correct and our government did precisely that. Hence we are now paying for their foreign policy blunders and still trying to clean up the mess, while simultaneously endeavoring to regain the international community’s trust at large. The latter will not be easy as America has grossly violated and alienated the Arab and Muslim world.

Nevertheless Arab, Muslim, and Asian students continue to come to America to study at our colleges and universities. Here then is our opportunity to begin to build bridges, create multi-cultural and global awareness, and embrace diversity on campus.

I believe the colleges, universities, and academic institutions have embraced Muslims and Arabs and will continue to do so. The challenge remains educating (and re-educating) Americans who have no travel experience about other ethnicities and nationalities before stereotypes, misnomers, erroneous presumptions, flawed predispositions, rude prejudices, and belittling biases arise on campus to create conflict.

It is far better early on to invest in establishing a multi-cultural and globally aware student body that embraces every ethnicity within the academic family, than alienate the bright international students and many wonderful ethnic groups among us and find ourselves devilishly divided and later embroiled in a lawsuit.

Truly diversity and cultivating a multi-cultural, inclusive attitude on your college campus is serious and should be strived for to ensure success for your college and university.

It’s time diversity became a cause for celebration not division. The world is getting increasingly closer thanks to the arise of the Internet and modern technology. Our paths are crossing throughout the world more and more frequently. The potential for new breakthroughs and success via cross-pollination academically is limitless.

Therefore let us create an academic community where global & multi-cultural awareness is cultivated on campus so we can transcend the tendency to fight one another and begin to passionately feel for one another as family.

Invite worldwide speaker and life-changing author Paul F. Davis to speak to your college students about success secrets for multi-cultural & global awareness!
RevivingNations@yahoo.com
407-967-7553

Paul is an exceptional and frequently requested speaker for college student success, leadership, orientations, and to kickoff college events.

Paul’s 17 life-changing books have landed him celebrity guest appearances on Fox News Radio, Investor’s Business Daily, and 3 times on Oprah & Friends.

After a 45 minute interview on Playboy Radio, Afternoon Advice host Tiffany Granath calls Paul an awesome relational coach and recommends his books on love, dating, and sexuality.

Paul’s academic success & leadership secrets for college students are unparalleled and greatly empowering. Paul has a history of global & multi-cultural awareness, building bridges cross-culturally, celebrating diversity, while empowering college students to discover their destiny and live their dreams.

A master in NLP & life coaching; Paul’s humorous, fun, playful and transformative messages graciously challenge college students to ask themselves hard questions and be their personal best.

As a former high-school senior class teacher, Paul understands the challenges facing incoming college students. Moreover Paul personally knows what transfer students go through as he himself attended a community college where he graduated with a 3.8 GPA before entering UCF, where he graduated Cum Laude. As a worldwide professional speaker Paul has touched more than 50 countries and 6 continents, greatly inspiring international students throughout the world.

Paul worked at Ground Zero in NYC during 9/11; helped rebuild a home at the tsunami epicenter; comforted victims of genocide in Rwanda; spoke to leaders in East Timor during the war; inspired students & monks in Myanmar; promoted peace & reconciliation in Pakistan; and has been deep into rural Africa where villagers had never before seen a white man.

Paul empowers people to love passionately, work together globally, and live their dreams fearlessly.

http:///www.PaulFDavis.com

Just over a year ago, I wrote a letter to the University of Illinois’ President, B. Joseph White, suggesting that the University could benefit and contribute tremendously to the Open Courseware Initiative, a collaboration between M.I.T. and several other universities that provides virtual courses for free over the internet. My letter is below (if you’d like to read it before continuing).

“President White:

It is with tremendous enthusiasm that I write to you today about a program I believe the University of Illinois can both greatly benefit from and contribute to. As you may be aware, advancements in internet technology, data storage and communications speed have culminated in the creation of an Open Courseware Initiative, a program by which Universities and learning institutions the world over are making their course materials available openly and freely to anyone with internet access. It is an unprecedented and ambitious program designed with one goal in mind – the fast, free, open sharing and dissemination of the world’s collective knowledge.

Advancements and ongoing research in every field imaginable are now in the process of being placed on the internet, allowing students, teachers, and lifelong learners the opportunity to benefit from a larger knowledge base than ever before. As the program grows, it stands poised to become one of the grandest academic accomplishments in history. And it is with this goal in mind that I write to you today.

As an alumnus of the University of Illinois, I have firsthand experience with some of the amazing faculty, facilities and resources that the U of I has to offer. Without question, the instructors, advisors and researchers that I have been fortunate enough to know during my time here are on the leading edge in each of their respective fields. As a result, their departments and their students are capable of expanding both their own knowledge and that of others around them.

Through the Open Courseware Initiative, the University of Illinois has the chance to extend that reach worldwide, encouraging discussion of the latest findings and enhancing future research. The U of I continues to seek out teachers and academics at the top of their fields, thus keeping the university on the leading edge of education. Likewise, participation in the Open Courseware Initiative provides an opportunity to enhance and augment the University’s already prestigious standing, while at the same time benefiting students, teachers and learning institutions across the globe by making the most up-to-date educational material available.

It is my sincere belief that the University of Illinois can make contributions to the Open Courseware Initiative above and beyond that of nearly any other institution, and in so doing will continue to uphold the outstanding reputation and academic vision that the U of I is renowned for. While other universities and learning institutions are already involved, the program is still in its infancy and can only benefit enormously from the University of Illinois’ involvement.

I am unaware if discussions are already taking place about how to get the U of I involved in such an ambitious project, but I sincerely believe that my interest in such an undertaking is far from isolated. I hope you and the entire University of Illinois staff, some of which I have copied on this letter, will further investigate this outstanding opportunity to keep the University at the forefront of education in the 21st century.

Best Wishes,

J. Brown”

Unfortunately, at the time the University was working towards launching a project called “Global Campus”, which is not a free resource, but does aim to make University of Illinois-level education available to those who can’t be a part of the physical campus. The response that I received to my letter from the President’s office essentially stated that that’s where they were focusing their energies.

As luck would have it, I came across a piece in the Daily Illini from yesterday, pointing out that in spite of their best efforts thus far, and in spite of spending upwards of $3 million on the Global Campus program, it currently claims only 10 enrollees.

Additionally, it appears that President White’s intentions were not initially aligned with maintaining and upholding the University’s high academic standards, but rather the goal was to develop a quick revenue-generating stream that would provide the University with an additional source of funds. According to the letter from a University Faculty-Student Senate representative, it was only at the behest of the University Faculty-Student Senate that equivalent academic standards were implemented as part of the program. The letter is available here at the bottom of the page. (Daily Illini Opinion Page from 04/08)

While the tone and tenor of the representative’s letter may need to be taken with a grain of salt, it nonetheless points to the significant failings thus far with the program, and the amount of money (which is desperately needed by other departments and programs within the University) that has been essentially “thrown out the window”.

What is equally disconcerting is that, to my knowledge, the only department with a well-functioning online education program (the school of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois) was not consulted in the creation/implementation of the Global Campus. I’m familiar with several people who have completed graduate studies through this program, and have had nothing but positive comments about it overall.

Why the University would neglect to call upon LIS for advice, and reference them as an example of a successful program that they could scale up to a larger overall offering, is beyond me. Additionally, I fail to understand why the University of Illinois feels that it could or should compete with established online programs like the University of Phoenix, etc.

I can understand the desire to find new revenue generating streams, since money has been in (seriously) short supply at U of I for the last 6-8 years. But it would appear, at this point at least, that the Global Campus is not functioning according to plan.

Were the University to offer certification programs, rather than attempt to offer credit and degree-relevant courses, they may have an easier time attracting students and bringing in money. The oversight needed for full-blown courses requires a level of instructor commitment that is virtually impossible to provide with an already overtaxed staff. Certification courses and professional development, on the other hand, would not require the same level of staff time or infrastructure. Moving to a system that focuses on these sorts of courses or programs would then allow the University to seriously consider participating in the Open Courseware Initiative, which could only benefit from the U of I’s involvement, and requires little, if any, development time (as M.I.T. and others have already done most of the work).

Of course, that assumes that President White is comfortable giving knowledge away for free, to the betterment of everyone, everywhere. It would appear, however, that this is not his M.O. Additional hikes in tuition and fees (both of which have nearly quadrupled at U of I since my 1998 enrollment) cannot simply increase unabated without eventually leading to a serious backlash in one form or another. Thus, new sources of revenue are needed, but so far the Global Campus has only served to lose money for the University. Reducing costs is the next logical step, but not at the expense of the high standards that have garnered the University its good name.

Being an admitted “green freak” as I am, I would assert that an easy way to lighten the expense burden on the University would be to explore energy conserving changes campus wide. But that’s obviously only one step. Hopefully the “powers that be” will take up the task of ensuring the bright and well-funded future of the University and roll out some changes in the coming months and years that will benefit faculty, students and the city as a whole.

As for the country itself, I would be ridiculous if I pretended after two days spent here that I grasp even a bit of its reality, beyond the fact that yes, the stigmata of the civil war are everywhere here, that Beirut is a great city without too much signs of visible poverty and with obvious signs of wealth (though one has to be cautious about assessing signs of wealth or poverty. As J* the driver of the French Embassy, and a remarkable example of what a man is and can be, puts it: “do not believe that a Mercedes here is a sign of wealth; due to our roads, a Mercedes is a utility vehicle”). I could also say that food is so fantastic-check your memories of a real good Lebanese restaurant, remember how good it was. Well, here, it is far better-but I doubt this true though touristy remark would raise great interest. As for the people I meet, yes, there are fantastically nice.

Writing this, I have the uneasy feeling that blogging from Beirut might be comparable to something like sending an academic postcard without the picture. “Much work here, food’s fantastic, people so nice, weather little cold. See you soon, guys.”