Profs like summer, too
As students look forward to summer trips, outdoor activities and seasonal sales jobs, their professors are preparing for their own summer endeavors. USU professors travel to foreign countries, host internships and still find time to enjoy the warm season.
Dr. Vijay Kannan, director of international programs and Huntsman School of Business professor, will have an eventful summer including a study abroad program, teaching in Vietnam and a family trip to Europe.
Kannan said his travels begin in June by taking 20 USU business students to Russia, Armenia and Turkey. The focus of the trip, he said, will be for students to see business in practice and to understand how diverse business environments are and how the broader social environment affects business practices. He said the study abroad program also allows students the opportunity to appreciate cultural differences in the places they will travel.
The trip will include a tour Wrigley Gum factory in St. Petersburg, Intel, Coca-Cola and the Istanbul stock exchange.
“Students can see what those organizations do to understand why they do things they way the do,” Kannan said.
On the cultural end, he said the group plans to visit Peterhof in St. Petersburg, which was one of the palaces of Peter the Great. They will also visit a fourth- century Armenian apostolic church in Armenia, he said.
“The students can understand some of the differences in culture,” he said. They will also spend two days working at an orphanage in Armenia; Kannan said they have a service project in each Huntsman School study abroad program.
“We want them to get a sense of what is out there so then as they develop they connect with the world more meaningfully,” Kannan said. “It is a good opportunity for them. We’re preparing them in terms of history, political environment, and cultural environment so they can have an understanding of where these countries are coming from and what the issues are they face.”
After the study abroad session, Kannan said he will travel to Vietnam to teach and conduct a workshop at a University where they are upgrading their levels of faculty.
“We’ll have some other faculty, myself included, critiquing the research so faculty can understand what they need to do to develop that work for publication,” he said.
Kannan will also meet up with his family for a vacation in Europe. He will visit Luxemburg, Southern Germany and London with his wife, daughter and son.
“My summers are usually busy,” he said. He usually makes at least one or two trips per year, which does not leave much room for down time.
“But it is what I enjoy doing and going with students is fun. They get so much out of it; it’s great to be so involved with helping them learn and grow,” he said.
Dr. Alvan Hengge, department head of chemistry and biochemistry, is co-running the USU High School Summer Internship in Chemistry and Biochemistry. The weeklong internship program began in 2007 with a small group of students and has grown to the point where they cannot accept every applicant.
Hengge said the goal of the program is to get high school students on campus for a weeklong experience and to spend a big chunk of time in a research lab.
“They can get a sense of what real science discovery is like,” he said. “For a lot of these students their main experience is sitting in a classroom and doing cook book labs and we want them to see the other side.”
Following the internship week, Hengge said he is looking forward to working more with his research students. He said the program has great students who have taken ownership of their projects and have gotten a lot done independently. As department head, he said he has not had as much time to work with his students, but fortunately they have been doing very well.
Dr. Christopher Fawson, economics professor, will also travel with students for a study abroad trip and will help facilitate an international reading program in Cache Valley.
From the end of May to the end of June, Fawson, program creator Bob Winward and 40 business and art students will make connections between the right and left brain while getting a semester’s worth of credit in Switzerland, he said.
“I think it’s one of the most extraordinary summer programs at Utah State, Fawson said. “The curriculum is a focus on what we call design thinking for innovation,” he said the program is an opportunity for business students to be challenged in their areas of creativity and innovation and for art students to be challenged in their understanding of analytical foundations of business practice and to stretch across that divide.
He said the trip is more than an opportunity for gaining artistic and business aptitude, but also gives students the chance to connect and network with practicing professionals who are working in an international setting.
Fawson said even the professors are required to participate in the learning experiences. He described a day in a small alpine village, where he and his students observed cows fighting in a pasture.
“The task was to draw pictures of it,” he said. “We spent an afternoon just sitting on a fence in a pasture just watching cows fight and trying to draw pictures of them. It’s a great experience and it’s a way to connect with a different part of your brain that for a business person you don’t typically draw from.”
When he returns from Switzerland, Fawson said he is involved in hosting a group of international students in a summer reading program in Cache Valley. They will read a wide variety of books from classical philosophy to evolutionary biology and some fiction, he said.
“The overall topic of the course is how order is created in complex systems,” Fawson said.
He said he also plans to find time for some fun.
“Summer is just a great time to catch up and prep for the next year,” he said.
Dr. Nick Eastmond, instructional technology and learning sciences professor, is travelling with his wife to Madrid, Spain, for two weeks of work with graduate students in the European Union’s Euromine Consortium. They will stay with family friends in Paris after their trip to Spain.
“My wife and I speak French and that will help,” Eastmond said. His daughter and granddaughter plan to join them as tourists at the end of the trip, he said. They are still working out the details, but hope to visit St. Malo, Normandy/Brittany Coast and London.
“When I return, I will be retired from the University,” Eastmond said. “After 36.77 years of service. It’s been a great place to work.”
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