November 6, 2004
Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota
Greetings everyone,
Thank you president Rosenberg for your introduction
As I see it, my task tonight is briefly to describe to you the ways in which Macalester has assisted in helping me to become a responsible global citizen. To illustrate this I would like to tell you how Macalester has allowed me to deepen and develop a passion of mine, which is my interest in Tibetans and Tibetan culture.
This passion began before I came to Macalester when I elected to take a year off between high school and college. Half of this year I spent working and the other I spent on a youth travel- service trip to South-East Asia. Among many fabulous experiences, I found myself living with a Tibetan family in northern India. This encounter taught me about the situation that Tibetans are placed in—they are constantly reminded that they have no country to call their own. This experience instilled in me the desire to learn more about the Tibetan people and their history as well as to continue working with them. Furthermore, I developed a commitment to aid them, to promote Tibetan freedom, and to assist the needs of the exile communities.
Upon returning to the states and beginning my first year here at Macalester I was happy to learn that the Twin Cities had the second largest Tibetan population in the United States, second only to New York City. Through my participation in the Lives of Commitment Program with the community service office, I was able to tutor Tibetan students at a Minneapolis high school.
This led me to apply for the Phillips Scholarship which is funded by the Minnesota Private College Fund. My sophomore year the community service office provided information for this scholarship. A pamphlet described it as the Minnesota Private College Fund's attempt to promote student initiative in designing projects which would in some capacity aid a Minnesota community. If awarded the scholarship, the student would be given a large grant to act as aid over a two year period. Sophomores at all private colleges in Minnesota compete for the project and six awards are given annually.
While I found great value in the high school tutoring program, I came to realize that it served a limited segment of the Tibetan population. After a conversation with a Tibetan community leader I learned about some of the community's other needs. The Tibetan leader suggested finding ways to help elders develop computer skills in order to promote both American assimilation and simultaneously Tibetan cultural retention. With this idea and the Phillips scholarship in mind, I submitted my grant proposal in the fall of my sophomore year.
In the meantime while waiting to hear about the scholarship I sought out opportunities to examine Tibet inside the classroom by taking the only course offered on Tibet called "From Tibet to America." In this class the students looked at the historical, cultural, religious, and political issues surrounding Tibet since the country's inception. Furthermore, I explored Tibet and the notion of self-determination in another course called "Advanced Themes in Human Rights."
In the spring of my sophomore year I was fortunate to learn that I was one of the recipients of the Phillips scholarship. As such, I spent my junior year preparing for my project and this past summer I taught a basic computer skills class to ten Tibetans, as means of promoting adaptation to life in the United States and Tibetan cultural retention. Four nights a week the Tibetan students came to Macalester and for two hours each night I taught the Tibetans about computer skills and they taught me about themselves.
Finally, I now might have the opportunity to pursue my interest with Tibetans further as I recently became one of Macalester's four nominees for the Watson Fellowship. If granted the Fellowship I wish to carry out a photographic documentary of the Tibetan Diaspora and look at how Tibetans are adapting to their new host cultures around the world and at the same time celebrating, preserving, and retaining their cultural heritage.
So the question is: where do all these Tibetan-related experiences leave me?
In reflecting on these events I know I have learned many things. But perhaps the most important is the idea of exchange. I believe all too often students feel as though they are solely the recipients of knowledge that streams from an outside source (usually from the professor) into them. What I think students fail to fully appreciate, however, is that as students by engaging with others (both inside and outside the classroom) we become teachers, and thus knowledge is passed not in one direction from the professor to the student, but rather it is exchanged in all directions to all those involved in the conversation.
Such exchange is important for two primary reasons. The first is so that we can become aware of problems that affect humanity: such as human rights, race, class, gender the environment, etc. The second reason is so we can learn of ways to then create solutions for those problems. To me it seems that everything that we study in school is a means, in one way or another, of learning how humans have progressed over time. I also believe that one of the primary purposes of life is to locate problems and then generate solutions. Therefore, if we are able to look at both the successes and failures of human history, and locate current problems through the exchange of knowledge with others, then we can begin to enhance our own abilities at being problem-solvers, so that we can approach the problems that impede human progress with greater efficiency and clarity.
The end result of partaking in exchange is that our world-view is broadened and therefore enhanced, and as people we can then move on to tackle global problems in our role as responsible global citizens.
I know this is certainly true in the exchange I have had with Tibetans. I never would have known in depth about the challenges facing Tibetans, had I not engaged with Tibetans about those challenges. Likewise, I would not then have had the opportunity to discuss and create solutions to those problems had I not had the exchange of knowledge and ideas with Tibetans.
I want to conclude by telling you something which I think perhaps you already know, but I wish to emphasize it nevertheless. And that is, that responsible civic engagement and global citizenship comes not just from the academic or the co-circular experiences. Rather it comes from both. The two mutually reinforce one another and quite honestly in my mind, cannot be separated.
For me, my time out of class at Macalester provided me with the experiences, and my time within class provided me the tools and ability to think critically about those experiences, to analyze them, and to be able to describe them to others as I am currently doing to all of you.
Though my exposure to Tibetans first came from India, my interest in their culture would not have been developed or acted upon had I not come to Macalester and the Twin Cities. In the end, I would certainly say that the chance to have had these opportunities makes me truly thankful and appreciative.
I therefore applaud Macalester for its efforts to provide a dynamic learning environment in which the student becomes holistically educated by his or her exposure to learning from both the circular and the co-circular. And I encourage Macalester (and the other schools present at this conference) to further their efforts at creating well-rounded students. Because as I see it, the success of academic institutions depends on providing such a holistic education. I therefore want to end saying that if academic institutions can do this, then I believe they will immensely help their students to become the responsible global citizens that Project Pericles envisions.
Thank You
