Balancing Tradition and Change in Senegal
Dr. Wyndham Whynot
History Department, Livingstone College
This was the first time I traveled in Ireland and the IFDS was my means of starting the development of a course on Irish natural history I will be teaching in Ireland in 2010. I am part of the three-professor team (including English and Psychology) who will be teaching in Ireland during the Spring 2010 term with 30 undergraduate students. While we have been meeting regularly through the last academic year, the opportunity to travel in Ireland this last summer was invaluable for me to see Ireland first hand.
Besides the development of my natural history of Ireland course for 2010, one future activity I will be involved with is a presentation in an open forum for Augustana faculty during the current acl fademic year. The forum will be organized by our Office of International Programs and serves severaunctions:
- Share with faculty what I did during the IFDS in Ireland and explain how I’ll use what I've learned in developing my course for the Ireland 2010 term as well as courses I
would teach at Augustana
- Promote CIEE and its programs
- Help re-enforce the College’s commitment to international education.
I will be co-presenting this with my colleague in Psychology
This spring I will be teaching a conservation biology senior capstone course and I hope to include what I learned in Ireland during the IFDS. While the students in this capstone course have more control in setting the content, I plan to make them take an international perspective because conservation issues are global issues and vary country to country. One potential activity is for each student to research a conservation issue in a different country and develop a proposal if they were selected to head that country’s department of interior. Then they can present their proposals to the class and we can discuss each country, comparing and contrasting them.
I look forward to the opportunity to develop other courses with an international perspective, but my immediate focus will be on my Ireland 2010 term course. While my course will be focused on the biology of the country, the Celtic Tiger IFDS provided me with a broad experience in Irish identity so I can help my students appreciate the complexity of Ireland from more than just a biological perspective. During the CIEE IFDS I was immersed in Irish culture from multiple disciplines and I learned about Ireland through visiting sites, interacting with locals and other educators dedicated to international education. This opportunity gave me a great introduction to a country in which I will spend a great deal of time and gave me the confidence that I can enrich the lives of 30 students in 2010.