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It really is hard to believe that another year is nearly over. Students are intently and intensely focused on finals, and there’s not a parking place to be had in front of any coffee shop in town (What’s a desperate Chapel Hillian to do!). Good luck to all our students in your final exams!
Some Carolina School of Public Health students will graduate December 16th. It is easy for December commencement to be overshadowed by the larger one in May. But for those who are December graduates, size should not matter. It’s the accomplishment that counts, and there’s a warm intimacy about the event. Congratulations and best wishes. Please stay connected to us. We need your assessments of your experience, positive and negative. We want to help to you in the years ahead. Please keep in touch.
Over the weekend, I heard Lou Urenick (Chair, Journalism, Boston University) do a wonderful reading about his new book, Backcast (St. Martin’s Press, 2007). The book chronicles a journey he and his son took through Alaska, and documents not only the experience of travel but his reflections of growth and development in his relationship with his son Adam. As I read the book and listened to Lou, I wondered if we provide enough opportunities for reflection not only about travel and education but about global travel experiences. Education should change students, and global travel alters us all in some ways. Do we provide enough opportunities for people to reflect and process the experiences? I hope so but would love to hear from faculty, staff and students.
(Disclaimer: Lou Urenick is a family member.)
Comments
I can't help but agree with Prof. Runyan below on the blogging endeavor. Much of the space for reflection on global travel seems a type of "research as reflection," which doesn't capture the depth and complexity of experiences abroad (or elsewhere in the U.S.). I would love to see artwork displayed by School of Public Health students who are artists or by other artists on campus that tackles the complexities of the School's priority areas through the politics and aesthetics of art instead of through research. That should open space for some of the reflection, personal and with others, that you mention.
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The views expressed in this blog are Barbara Rimer’s alone and do not represent the views and policies of The University of North Carolina or the Gillings School.
Joseph Lee