Global Connections

In May 2006 Oxford College Chaplain, Rev. Judy Shema started Global Connections. After beginning her own world traveling while in college, Rev. Shema was passionate about the importance of engaging students with their religious convictions and a compassionate involvement with issues such as peace, hunger, human rights and care for the environment. Because quality of life is an ethical issue for all people, Global Connections travel seminars hopes that through internal, private dialogue with oneself, as well as, meaningful dialogue shared with others on these trips, students, staff and faculty participants will begin to recognize their own participation in similar systems at home. Through this transformative process of contextual dialogue participants will passionately want to be agents of change for healthy living both here and abroad.       

The first trip was to Montana for the purposes of studying issues facing people in rural declining population communities. Co-led by Oxford Professor Sociology, Mike McQuaide and the Residential Life Director, Jeff Hale, students, faculty and staff studied environmental, health, education and economic issues facing people in rural Montana.                    

In May 2007, Dr. Ken Anderson Associate Dean, Academic Affairs and Associate Professor Philosophy co led a trip to Poland with Rev. Shema. Again, the team consisted of faculty, staff and current as well as former Oxford students, a strength and benefit of the Global Connections program. Attention is carefully given to inclusivity in age, gender, race as well as place of involvement in Oxford College. While traveling in Poland the team visited the Gadansk shipyards, observed communist architecture in Warsaw and prayerfully walked the grounds of Auschwitz and Majdenak Death Camps. The team listened to professors from the ancient Jagellonian Universit, home of Copernicus and his research. They heard stories of modern Poland's break from communism and entry into the European Union. Every evening the team conversed over dinner about how they personally were impacted that day.

The May 2008 trip will be co-led by Dr. McQuaide and Rev. Shema to Viet Nam. Special attention will be paid to issues of tribal life and health care in Viet Nam. We will visit a traditional western hospital, as well as, a hospital using native medical practices such as acupuncture and holistic medicines. We will stay in a Hmong hill tribe village and observe their subsistence farming practices. An important part of the trip will be encountering issues of a small nation's efforts to export their products when they cannot produce in huge volumes like their huge neighbor, China.

Students interested in more information about the program may contact Rev. Shema (jshema@emory.edu)
770-784-8392.