Global Academic
It’s been a month since I landed back in the U.S.A. at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, smack in the midst of one of that city’s famous winter freezes, as temperatures plunged to near 0 degrees Fahrenheit. At the time, the novel coronavirus was plaguing China, and news was starting to report some spread beyond that country’s…
Feeling Good about Our Fulbright Host Engagement Project I write this entry in a meeting room at one of my favorite resort getaways in the Semarang region, Melva Balemong, during what is one of the final writing sessions of this second week of writing camp – what I have come to affectionately call “Writing Camp…
Well, not really, but the surveys have all been entered Just today, the fabulous Master’s student who has been helping us with our research, Anjar, let me know that he’d finished entering all of the survey responses into our data management system. 618 That’s how many survey responses we have! I’m thrilled. Now the sense-making…
A goal of the Fulbright grant is to foster connections, and that’s certainly been a highlight of my 5 months here. And, some of my most memorable Indonesian connections originate back in the U.S. and through the University of Rochester. I’ve written elsewhere about how this grant period included an opportunity for Puji and I…
Here in Indonesia, where the overall population is reportedly about 87% Muslim (according to the CIA World Factbook page on Indonesia, which matches our findings with the secondary students who responded to our survey), I have had the opportunity to see — and hear — Islamic prayer rituals and to learn more about Muslims’ values…
In the last month, Puji and I, with the help of Anjar (a super-helpful student pursuing his Master’s in English Education at UNNES), have collected more than 500 survey responses from secondary students in the area. We’re learning a great deal from them about when and how they access technology, for what purposes, where they…
Through his research to discover what makes people really happy, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has come to understand the impact that finding extreme pleasure and lasting satisfaction in one’s work can have. Being in a state of flow – what he describes as the intensity, or “ecstasy,” and other worldly, out of body state that occurs “when…
Bringing the Warner Writing Camp model to FBS to build community Last week, Puji and I, with logistical help from a committee of her colleagues and with generous financial support from AMINEF/Fulbright host engagement project funds, introduced UNNES Faculty of Languages and Arts (FBS) to the Warner Writing Camp model. Back at the University of…
How’s the food over there? Are you able to get what you need, especially given your diet? What do you miss most from home? What are your favorite Indonesian foods? I get these kinds of questions often, and this entry shares some of my responses. A true joy of travel involves sampling foods from different…
Since coming to Indonesia in September, I’ve been connecting with and learning from university lecturers and students, teachers and young people in elementary, junior high, and senior high school classrooms, fanfiction writers, pre-service teachers, policy academy instructors, concerned parents, literacy researchers and more – and when I tell them that I study young people’s digital…