Rakiraki, on Fiji's central island of Viti Levu, is some 8,000 miles and sixteen time zones away, about as far as you can get from Schenectady.
But you wouldn't know it from Fiji.net, an interactive Web site that brought seven students doing anthropology field work last fall in the Pacific archipelago as close as the nearest computer. With a few clicks, you could check in on Erinn Gregg '00, Megan Lee '01, Michelle Nason '01, Apryle Pickering '01, Stephanie Sienkiewicz '00, Emily Sparks '00, and Andy Spitz '01.
There are dozens of photos of the students with their homestay families, detailed field notes about everything from learning local customs to joining celebrations, and e-mails — lots of e-mails. The site was popular with the students' friends on campus and with students in “Introduction to Anthropology.” Of course, the site's biggest fans were parents and other family members of the students.
Fiji.net is the brainchild of Steve Leavitt, associate professor of anthropology, who with his wife, Karen Brison, associate professor of anthropoplogy, led the field program. Leavitt, who updated the site almost daily from Fiji, says he hopes his “experiment” can be useful in creating a model for connecting the campus to students abroad.
“We've never done anything like this with a term abroad before,” says Bill Thomas, director of international programs. The College's “virtual term abroad,” started in 1996 by Ron Bucinell, associate professor of mechanical engineering, uses the Internet to join design teams of Union's mechanical engineering students with their counterparts at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey.
Leavitt says he found during a 1997 trip to Fiji that students were a “bit more diligent” if they knew they had an “interested-but-uninformed audience” — their parents. He also has been involved the past two years on a terms abroad collaboration with Hobart and William Smith Colleges, exploring ways to enhance connections between students on campus and those abroad.
“One way was to develop a Web site chronicling the progress of the term abroad,” Leavitt said via e-mail from Fiji. “From there, I came up with the idea of including the two sections of 'Introduction of Anthropology.' I wanted it be interactive, so I developed the idea of e-mail questions/comments going back and forth.”
Fiji.net gives good exposure to one of the strengths of the College's Anthropology Department — the strong emphasis on field research by undergraduates. Professors George and Sharon Gmelch developed the Barbados field school on which the Fiji term is modeled. “There's no question that (ethnographic field school) is the ultimate term abroad experience,” George Gmelch says. “The students are out there living in the community by themselves, and that forces them to examine the host society in ways that do not happen in a classroom.”
Leavitt thinks the Web site may be valuable to the Fiji students long after the term is over. “They'll be able to read each others' notes, show Web photographs to friends, and alert professors and fellow students to passages that may relate to issues they're studying. The parents loved it, and that alone justified the time we spent on it.”
That seems an understatement when you talk to Susan Pickering, mother of Apryle: “It's wonderful that you can feel so close. As a parent you are apprehensive and you miss them so much. To see their pictures and see what they are going through is very reassuring.” Adds Corki Gregg, Errin's mom, “I don't know how our family would have made it through these past eight weeks if not for their (Web) site.