Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Summary of Thoughts from a Doctoral Student

Day Three

Over the past few days we have visited all eleven parishes on the island, as well as the Sunbury Plantation. Today we visited the Barbados Community College (BCC) and the University of West Indies (UWI) for the first time. Much like the differences between a community college and university in the States, there were stark contrasts between the two. Differences included the type of programs offered, campus layout and subgroups of students served. After our visit to BCC, we had a wonderful lunch at the Hotel Pom Marine (the rock cakes were simply awesome!). This hotel is where the BCC Hospitality Institute students hone their culinary and hosting skills.

Also for the first time, we made face-to-face contact with our point of contact. It was a good day for learning the lay of the land, meeting colleagues from other institutions and starting to fill in the blanks within the visions of our presentations.

The evening was wrapped up nicely with a traditional Bajan dinner at UWI. We were honored along with their 5th annual First Year Experience programme with 80 students and staff from the UWI Mona (Jamaica) campus. This was especially poignant given the recent political issues in Jamaica with the U.S. We were afforded the rare opportunity to sit down with the native Jamaicans and hear their side of the issue. Our table had students from different backgrounds that had opposing viewpoints on the situation. It was encouraging to see such young students articulating their positions on this matter. We were also treated to a native music and dance show from the UWI – Cave Hill students. It was a great day overall, but we have much work to do in the next two days in order to present. As the saying goes, time to do work!

Day Four

Today was spent immersing ourselves at our respective schools: half of our team at UWI and the other at BCC. I met with the Mr. Sydney Arthur, Registrar (next in line to the Principal and the Deputy Principal) and received information regarding the way orientation and the first year experience is conducted at BCC. After gathering my data, I assembled myself in the campus Library to tweak my presentation and to conduct further research. Many assume I am just lying on the beach, but there is too much to do instead of just the “touristy” things. We want to come here and make a difference and offer our collective knowledge to our Bajan brothers and sisters, as well as represent the university and our country well!

Day Five

Mission accomplished! We presented to our groups today and everything went very well! Although our technology has been spotty at times in our hotels and around the island, we were able to Skype Natasha Ramsey in to give her presentation. Our hosts seemed receptive to the ideas we put forth and we look forward to helping them implement them in whatever capacity they choose going forward.

Overall – a great day by both teams and NOW we can start to relax and enjoy the natural resources available here on the island. That is after a group debriefing after dinner. Keen insights were offered by each participant. For me, this is the culmination of an emotional semester, even year, that ended with a project that put me in unchartered waters. I was out of my comfort zone in regards to the information I presented. I believe that our collective team delivered on its goal of representing the university well. Hopefully this becomes an annual exchange of ideas for the three institutions and something that we can be proud of that helped lay the groundwork.

Day Six

Running on the beach, shopping at local markets, scuba diving in a sunken ship….enough said about my fantastic day. Later that evening, we were the dinner guests of Mr. Arthur’s at Oistins, a local destination that provides dining al fresco with music and dancing. The portions were enough for two and the fish cakes were out of this world (think of a spicy hush puppy with fish meat). After dinner, we were able to do some last minute shopping and generally just taking in the local flavor. It is hard to believe this trip is over except for the flying.

I am grateful that I was able to learn about and immerse myself in a new culture; and that we hopefully were able to present innovative ideas to our Barbadian colleagues. I look forward to the opportunity to build upon our initial collective works and hopefully will return next year and possibly host a contingent from Barbados should they wish to visit Louisville.

James Atkinson, Doctoral Student

No comments: