They confess to feeling a bit like “guinea pigs.”
But Beth Fuller, Emily McConnell and Danielle Faul also say they are excited about being the first Union students to take a term abroad in Vietnam. And they say they look forward to sharing the experience with classmates and helping to recruit for a program there next fall. The juniors are going to Vietnam for the winter and spring terms as part of the Partnership for Global Education, a collaboration between Union and Hobart and William Smith Colleges. The partnership is using a grant of nearly $200,000 from the U.S. Department of Education to develop a joint program in Hanoi.
The Union trio has joined 17 of their HWS counterparts for videoconferenced classes taught by Jack Harris, a sociologist at HWS, who will lead the term. The two groups met recently when the HWS students came to Schenectady for a Vietnamese music program. HWS has sent students to Vietnam three times; this is the first time Union students have gone.
The Union coordinator for the Vietnam term is Ted Gilman, acting director of East Asian Studies, who will lead the term in Vietnam next fall.
The students will take three classes, one each on the language, culture and sociology of Vietnam. In addition, they will do an independent study that Faul said, “may totally change after we get there.”
For now, Fuller, an economics major, plans study the impact of technology and the role of U.S. policy on productivity in Vietnam. McConnell, an interdepartmental major in economics and anthropology, will investigate cottage industry and market structure. Faul, a biology major, will compare socialized medicine between rural and urban areas. Faul also plans to provide content for an environmental science Web site that an HWS student is using to teach youngsters at a Geneva, N.Y., school. Faul said she hopes to be able to extend that program to one of the Schenectady schools.
Faul, who moved throughout Asia as a child, says the trip will be “kind of like going back home,” adding she is eager to compare Vietnam before and after the war. Fuller says she expects a visit from her father, a veteran of the war who has not returned since 1969. McConnell says she looks forward to an extended stay in a Third World country that is unlike anything in the West.
“It's hard to be the first to go, and we're going to fumble our way through,” said Faul. “But it's exciting. Our friends can't believe we're going on a term in Vietnam.”