Ithaca College

Two graduating Ithaca College students have been awarded Fulbright grants that will take them to Asia for the 2006-7 academic year. Julie Perng, who will earn her degree in organizational communication, learning, and design, will spend the year in China's Shaxi township in Dali Prefecture studying the effects of migration on local families. Philosophy major Kiehl Christie will be leaving in the fall for South Korea, where he will teach English to secondary school students and research religious transitions in the Korean peninsula.

"I already have ties to China," Perng says. "My father is Chinese, and I spent eight years of my life in Taiwan."
She also spent her junior year in Yunnan province, researching rural-to-urban migration and its effects on the people who stayed in their native villages. One of those villages was Shaxi, where Perng spent three days talking to the villagers and listening to their stories.
"I was basically performing a complete ethnography and snapshot of the village," Perng says. "Every day I learned something new, and often it completely contradicted what I had 'known' the day before. What I came to realize was how many factors needed to be pulled together. In addition to the villagers' ethnic and cultural minority status in China, the effects of an eco-tourism project had to be considered, along with the ways the area had been affected by the Cultural Revolution. Going back to Shaxi for several months will be completely different from anything I've ever gone through, but I hope my research work as a Fulbright scholar will contribute to developing policies that can achieve maximum economic development while preserving the culture of the people in the township."
Perng says her major in OCLD will be especially valuable in her research because her courses taught her how systems work internally and how they connect with other systems. She also credits her experience in the College's Martin Luther King Jr. Scholar Program, an interdisciplinary learning community that emphasizes citizenship and service in the global community. The program is open to academically talented students from ethnic or racial backgrounds that have been historically underrepresented in American higher education.
"Being an MLK scholar gave me a much broader and more intense educational experience than I would have had otherwise," Perng says. "The program was invaluable to me."
When her time in China is over, Perng plans to work in Washington, D.C., either for the federal government or a think tank, and eventually apply to graduate school and study economic development.
Kiehl Christie has also studied in China. The experience taught him that staying in the homes of local residents was the best way to become immersed in another culture. He hopes to use that same approach in South Korea, where he will be living with a host family just outside Seoul.
"My Fulbright experience will first of all have a practical aspect," he says. "Teaching is something I have considered for a future career, and the Fulbright will let me try that out for a year. In addition, I'm interested in understanding how people think. Studying a people's language and some of the fundamental beliefs that they hold gives powerful insights into their thought processes. So besides teaching English, I will also be studying the Korean language as well as the country's religious and philosophical traditions."
Christie's personal give-and-take with Korea was preceded on a national scale.
"I want to live, study, and teach in South Korea because of the singular way that different foreign influences have mixed there," he says. "Historically Korea has been influenced mostly by Japan and China, but in the last 100 years the American occupation has also had interesting effects. In spite of all these pressures, though, the Koreans have changed and assimilated these influences in a uniquely Korean way."
Christie expects the process of assimilating his own Korean experience will leave lasting effects on him.
"Studying and living abroad exposes us to ideas in a way and a context that is much different than reading about them," he says. "When I start thinking about the ideas of others, inevitably I think more critically about my own beliefs. Studying abroad provides insight into the culture of others while simultaneously giving a lens for powerful self reflection."
When Christie returns from Korea, he will have some decisions to make. Right now, he's considering studying philosophy in graduate school and teaching at the college level. He is also keeping open the option of studying education and teaching high school.
"I may also do something completely different," he says. "I have a lot of thinking to do before I make a decision on that."
In the last 15 years, 12 Ithaca College students have received Fulbright grants. This year marks the first time two students have been awarded Fulbrights in the same year.
The Fulbright program was established at the end of World War II to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries, through the exchange of persons, knowledge, and skills. In addition to the student program, Fulbright grants are awarded to faculty and professionals who wish to teach and do research abroad.