The pandemic has prevented a lot of things, but it did not kill global education. With no immersion trips or exchange programs, Director of Global Education Rob Chura and the Foreign Language Department has worked diligently to help students escape their cultural bubble this semester, embracing Zoom and other internet tools to provide safe, online cross-cultural experiences.

Beginning this summer, Chura piloted a series of online discussions to see how successful Zoom calls could be to facilitate cross-cultural experiences.  SLUH students participated in smaller Zoom calls with one or two of their partner schools as well as larger group sessions involving students and faculty from Russia, Chile, China, and Spain.

“The summer was a time where we really learned what a virtual exchange experience was,” said Chura. “It was really disappointing to have to cancel all immersion trips this past summer and spring. They are very beneficial to our students and the students from our partner schools. This virtual exchange phenomenon is kind of our supplement to these exchange programs that we would have been running right now but can’t and has been a great solution.”

A group of SLUH students also participated in a three-week long virtual event sponsored by the Global Education Benchmark Group, which involved students from Morocco and SLUH students jointly working on a UN Sustainable Development Goals project.

“This was one of our first experiences with a virtual exchange program, and it was a very cool experience, especially looking along the lines of global collaboration” said Chura.  “It is definitely something that we might try to do later in the school year, too.”

Yet, the largest cross-cultural event was held last Wednesday before school with nine SLUH students participating in a zoom conference with over 100 other students from all around the globe. The conference included students from Russia, China, India, Bhutan, and the United States and was the first of three meetings sponsored by the Global Education Benchmark Group aimed to connect people of different cultures in a time of isolation. The theme of Wednesday's meeting was shared pandemic experiences, and according to senior participant Ben Walsh, the topic offered a chance for rich discussion.

“There are so many different experiences, and we all shared a lot,” Walsh reflected. “Mainly that people lost opportunities. They lost the ability to connect with friends, they may have even lost their jobs.”

While much of the conversation centered on loss, for many, the conversations were a new cultural experience.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had this sort of conversation or experience where in one room there's people from four or five different countries.” said Jack Feise. “Obviously there’s so many downsides to this pandemic but one upside is that, I couldn’t have imagined before the pandemic there would have been an opportunity like this to bring such a diverse, yet similar group of people together.”

Each student was put in a breakout room of about 10 people, allowing for more intimate interaction. Feise’s group alone featured students from India, China, and U.S. cities like Philadelphia and New York. A dizzying mix of languages and cultures, but for Fiese, it was worth it.

“I wasn’t really sure what it would be like. I was in a group with kids from all over the world. It was a pretty diverse group of kids and it was a kind of awkward at the beginning, but it was pretty obvious that these kids, just like me and all the other SLUH guys were really interested in the topics we were discussing, ” said Fiese. 

After the initial awkwardness had passed, students spent the next 90 minutes analyzing the complex social, political, and economic impact of the pandemic on their respective cultures. Despite their different roots, there was a lot of commaniality in the students' experiences. 

“It’s pretty obvious that all the cultures from around the world are very similar, at least in their outlook on the pandemic. All these kids were looking for the same answers, more on a global level than the fragmented mentality that a lot of people have over this,” said Feise. “Everyone in (my) group agreed that this was a world problem not just a country by country problem and that sort of unity was really important to us.”

The conference by no means solved Covid, but it did offer an opportunity that is hard to come by even in non-pandemic times: genuine collaboration.

“I think getting to hear all the different perspectives was very much an interesting experience for me, there was a lot of good stuff to learn,” said Walsh.

“Everyone was extremely motivated, they each brought really interesting perspectives to the table that I wouldn’t have thought of on my own so they’re really bringing together some great minds from all around the world,” said Fiese.

The Global Education department has also integrated these cultural experiences into the classroom, inviting some of SLUH’s partner schools to participate in some of SLUH’s classes. In Spanish, Chinese, Russian, and soon-to-be Arabic classes, foreign students have zoomed into the classroom, communicated using social media platform Flipgrid, and have even written email exchanges to each other. Yesterday, for example, Chura’s Russian 4 class and Gimnaziya #209 Russian students attended an event on integration run by the Missouri History museum.

“It has been really neat to have some of the foreign students be a part of some of our classes this year,” said Chura. “We have been able to have conversations half in English and half in Russian.  I really want to continue to do something like this.”

Still, Chura believes that there are still more creative ways to embrace technology and bring in global education into the halls of SLUH.

“These virtual exchanges offer a lot of exciting opportunities, and you really are only limited to them by your imagination,” said Chura. “I encourage both students and faculty if you have an idea that is worth investigating I would love to hear it and see if we could marry it to one of our other partner schools where we could make something like this happen.”