BestSemester News & Updates posted under In the News

Letters from abroad: A plea from a fellow child of empire

Fall 2012 Middle East Studies Program student, Tesica Starkey, recently wrote an article for her campus newspaper at Southern Nazarene University, "The Echo."

Letters from abroad: A plea from a fellow child of empire
By Tesica Starkey
Posted on September 28, 2012
The Echo, Southern Nazarene University

"Dine with the opposition." It's a phrase that frequents the lips of Dr. David Holt, the director of CCCU's Middle East Studies Program (MESP). Initially, under the influence of jet lag and naiveté, I assumed that any opposition I encountered would fit nicely under labels like Israeli, Jew, Arab, Palestinian, or Muslim. This is their conflict, after all, and I was prepared to occasionally interact with them throughout the semester before boarding a plane in December to retreat to my comfortable solace with my neatly packaged ideas regarding the Middle East conflict. Little did I know that dining with the opposition would hit much closer to home.

I've only been studying in Jerusalem for almost a month, and, while my knowledge of the conflict has grown immensely, I'm nowhere near a scholar on the subject. What I have learned, however, is that the situation is impossibly complicated and frustratingly misrepresented by American media. Even if you're more educated on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than I was going into MESP (which is entirely likely), a realistic grasp of the complexity of the situation is impossible without living here, hearing these stories, meeting these people, and understanding that this is real life. [...]

Continue Reading this Article at SNU's The Echo

Gordon Student and ASP Alumna Published in Washington Post

Gordon College student and American Studies Program alumna, Hilary Sherratt wrote an essay on mentorship that was recently published as part of the Washington Post's new series on "Leadership Reimagined." The article provides a powerful reflection from a student's perspective on the role mentoring relationships play in the holistic development of young leaders. When asked to introduce the article to our readers, Hilary writes:

When I think about my experience during college, my learning is linked to the mentoring relationships I have had. In those mentors I have found people who challenge and encourage me as a whole person. I have been privileged to share about my Gordon mentor in the Washington Post article, and what makes it even more special is to realize that the article echoes my relationships with mentors in high school, with my parents, with my supervisor at my internship in DC, and with the ASP faculty. I remember sitting across the table from Elizabeth Hanna my first week in DC and realizing that, like my college mentor, Elizabeth saw me as a whole person. She (and others I met in DC) wanted to ask tough questions that spanned my academic, emotional and spiritual selves and grew me as a whole person.

For the full Washington Post article, please click here.

U.S. students get the feel of India

Well into the inaugural semester of the India Studies Program, the students are having a lovely time. Recently, a local Indian newspaper covered the BestSemester program in the following article: www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamilnadu/article2587327.ece.