Global Health: The Wang Center brings it home

Jessica Ritchie

Mast News Co-Editor

After a year of planning, the Wang Center for International Programs successfully brought numerous NGOs and local health professionals to campus with high student turnout at both the Feb. 21 and 22 symposium events. The symposium was the brainchild of Wang Center executive director Neal Sobania, whose coordination efforts began over a year ago.

The symposium was an obvious success. Director of Study Away Amy Fox said that about 500 people were in attendance at the Greater Tacoma Convention and Trade Center. An extra 100 chairs were brought in to provide accommodations. Only 200-250 of those attending were not PLU students.

The Wang Center coordinates and delivers symposia every other year. The first two symposia discussed China and Norway. While the symposiuma covered issues in those countries, they were also a convenient way to highlight programs the Wang Center offered. Enter Sobania.

“When Neil came along we could have continued going the way we were,” Fox said. “I think part of the change came from a push to be more universal.”

So why global health? Part of the answer did lie in an effort to be “more universal,” — to choose a topic that didn’t pertain to one area of the world, or at least discussed that it wasn’t exclusive to one part. But it was also an effort to be inclusive.

“I came almost three years ago, and one of the first things I noticed about the first two colloquia was that they were very humanities- and social sciences-based,” Sobania said. “And while they were great, I wanted to be sure that we were as inclusive as possible, so that students might see their own disciplinary links.”

By all appearances, that endeavor was a successful one.

“So far as outcomes, I’ve been elated to have students contacting the Wang Center asking how they can become involved in solutions,” Sobania said.

But at a university where students have constant opportunities to become impassioned and involved, is there a downside to switching the topic? T-shirts with a scrawled “Stop Genocide in Sudan,” are commonplace, “Invisible Children” (a non-profit organization that raises awareness of child soldiers and displaced camps in Northern Uganda) solicits the ranks of college students for numbers and support and the ONE campaign claims it can — with help — end world hunger. These are just a few of the campaigns and organizations that thrive on college students’ support. Is it possible that by switching the topic, students are inclined to lose interest?

“When you send people out to another country for a semester, they’re sort of bombarded with new ideas, new perspectives, things going on in the world that they may not have known about,” Fox said. “It’s up to these students to pick and choose between these issues and decide what they’re going to invest their time and passions in.

“Maybe 200 students went and decided that they didn’t necessarily want to dedicate their lives to global health, but if eight students walked away and decided they’re going to go to grad school and go into global health, I think that’s a success. Even if one did.”

The speakers seemed to think that it would be more than one. Multiple speakers spoke of an active and passionate youth. Jacob Schonau-Taylor, temporary administrative assistant at the Wang Center, said he thought this was more than an attempt at flattery.

“People have started to refer to our generation as the “G-Generation,” – the Global Generation,” Schonau-Taylor said. “And I don’t think I can speak for our entire generation, but I do think that we have had the opportunity to see on a global level some of the areas in the world that maybe we can help.”

PLU President Loren Anderson agreed, and had a theory as to why.

“I think that the current generation of students has a sensitivity to, an appetite for, engaging world issues in a way that has not been true for even recent generations. And it’s something that I’ve observed strongly in talking to students and prospective students. And my only theory is that yours is a post-9/11 generation. You have grown up knowing that there aren’t any real borders and that we can’t ignore the things happening out there.”

Photo by Jordan Hartman

A candlelight vigil Friday, Feb. 22 drew the symposium to an end and commemorated the people who have died of AIDS, are currently afflicted with HIV/AIDS and the friends and families who are also affected. To date, more than 25 million men, women and children have died because of the disease