Los Angeles Crossroads to the World
Supporting Global Connections at Santa Monica College

	Prany Sananikone, UC Irvine, on Global Diversity: “The beauty of diversity around the world is this: If I have a penny and you have a penny and we exchange pennies, you will have one cent and I will have one cent. But if I have an idea and you have an idea, and we exchange ideas, how many ideas do you have?”
	Andrew C. Meinke, Jr., World Heritage Foundation, on Cultural Preservation: “Just a few short generations ago, most people lived and died within 50 miles of where they were born. Knowledge of other people and other times had no relevance to them. Today all wars and all economies have global impact, as television and the internet have penetrated the most remote villages on earth.”
	Dr. Gregory Treverton, RAND, on Drivers of the Global Future: Globalization is a train without a conductor. Nobody has been there before. In principle, it’s good for people around the world to get rich, they’re less likely to do bad things. Yet we know that the politics of foreign trade is skewed. Nobody lobbies for the jobs that aren’t created yet and people do lobby on jobs that are going away. Globalization is in America’s interest, but it’s not in the interest of every American.

Preparing for a Global World

There’s a global revolution going on, and you don’t need to step off the Santa Monica College campus to get a glimpse of what the world will look like—and prepare for it.

From an ongoing lecture series to stimulate increased awareness and discussion of global issues to hosting a “Nextrend” conference on the booming logistics field to enriching students’ academic experience by emphasizing global literacy, SMC is quickly stepping into the global future.

“In a world where traditional national boundaries are coming down, it is increasingly crucial that our students have global knowledge to make them more employable and better citizens,” said SMC President Dr. Chui L. Tsang.

As part of its major campaign to globalize the curriculum, the college launched the “Global Connections Lecture Series” in March that focuses on the impact of globalization on everything from
communications and economics to how we view ourselves and our environment.

“The real act of discovery today consists not in finding new lands, but by seeing with new eyes,” said lecturer Prany Sananikone, quoting French novelist Marcel Proust. “You need a new set of glasses to see what else is out there for you and how you can participate in the world as well.”

On April 6, SMC showed students what was out there with a conference that focused on the global logistics field, a growing discipline that explores the movement of goods and services. Subtitled “Dynamic Shifts in Global Logistics,” the conference, which was podcast, is part a major effort to make the college one of Southern California’s leading educators and career trainers in the booming field.

And SMC is already on the way. The school is one of four community colleges in Southern California — and six statewide—that have been funded by the State to provide corporate training in logistics careers and to start certificate and degree programs in the field.

But if some career paths are becoming increasing clear, the full effects of globalization are not.

“It’s a train without a conductor,” Dr. Gregory Treverton from the RAND Corporation said in an April 26 lecture “Drivers of the Global Future” that was part of the Global Connections series. “No one has been there before.”

Globalization, Treverton said, is spelling “the death of distance… It allows the movement of goods as well as bads,” he added, referring to the spread of terrorism.

Many jobs in the global economy no longer rely on geography, Treverton said. “Anyone that can do a job at the end of a fiber optic cable can do the job anywhere,” Treverton said. The global market is also eliminating job discrimination, he added. “If you can do the job, it doesn’t matter” if you’re black, a veteran or a lesbian, Treverton said.

But the new market also poses challenges to countries such as the U.S., which is losing jobs to outsourcing. “Globalization is in America’s interest, but not in the interest of every American,” said Treverton, a senior foreign policy analyst for the world-renown Santa Monica-based think tank.

In the new global economy, education is “a premium,” especially the kind of education offered at Santa Monica College, Treverton said. “Continuing education in a place like this is more important, because you may not stay in a job your whole life. You may need to retrain.”

While the global economy has helped pull 400 million Chinese out of poverty in the past two decades, it “seems to be creating more unequal distribution of wealth” elsewhere on the planet. The income distribution by country, including the United States, is getting worse, said Treverton, who has authored several publications on religious conflict, terrorism and intelligence.

If the global economy is reshaping the wealth within nations and widening the gap between the rich and poor, it also is dividing people along religious, ethnic and regional lines, Treverton warned. “There’s an increasing tendency to identify us versus them. We see it in our country, but strikingly abroad.

“It may be the result of globalization… and it’s reinforced by technology, making it easier for people to identify with different groups,” said Treverton, who was the former director of RAND’s International Security and Defense Policy Center.

With societies across most of the globe “growing fast… young men without jobs are looking for things to do,” especially in Arab countries, he said. And “they’re looking to identify,” he added, noting that vthis may be reflected in the growth of terrorist groups.

While the youth population is booming across the planet, China—the focus of much of the discussion of globalization—“will hit a demographic wall in the next 10 to 15 years, and it will start to shrink. . . when it is still quite poor,” Treverton said.

China may have lifted its “one-child policy” to boost its population, but “I can’t imagine there won’t be some bumps in the road,” Treverton said. It will be difficult for China’s Communist government to maintain control during a growing economy, he predicted.

Andrew C. Meinke, Jr., CEO and President of the World Heritage Foundation and World Heritage Development, LLC also focused on China in his Mach 29 lecture titled, World Heritage Foundation: The Conundrum of Preservation vs. Publicity.”

Sporting a bright red tie with Chinese dragons, Meinke highlight the plight of three cities in China — the Wu Yi Mountains, Zhangjiajie and the Old Town of Lijiang — identified by the World Heritage Foundation as areas that include “caretakers of culture.”

“People are concerned about protection of rainforest and the like and are familiar with the term ‘biosphere’ but what about ‘ethnosphere’?” Meinke said, quoting Dr. Wade Davis, a cultural anthropologist.

If the environment has its endangered species, ancient cultures and traditions also are facing extinction, Meinke warned. “Out of the 6,000 languages being spoken, 3,000 are no longer being taught,” he said.

Lijiang — featured in documentary footage that accompanied the lecture — is one bright spot, Meinke said. The old town is clinging to its history and traditions. In areas destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, Ming Dynasty palaces were rebuilt in a year and a half.

The town also is striving to strike a balance between people and nature, boasting a water system that allows the townspeople to change the flow of the stream to wash the pebbles in its market place.

By refusing to fully embrace modernization, the people of Lijiang have managed to “bend and not break,” said Meinke, the former director of international operations for TRW Information Systems & Services.

Established in 1998 to promote world understanding of various cultures across the globe, the California nonprofit foundation uses documentary material, including films, books, artistic photographs, magazine articles and Internet-oriented material. “We want the local inhabitants to tell their story,” Meinke said.

Despite its growing reputation, lining up sponsors for the documentary films the foundation hopes will showcase Lijiang and 33 other World Heritage sites has been an uphill battle, Meinke said.

In a March 20 lecture titled, “Challenges of Diversity in Today’s Global Market,” Prany Sananikone, who is known as “Mr. Ambassador,” used his knowledge, sensitivity, and commitment to multiculturalism to address the future of globalization.

“The beauty of diversity around the world is this,” said Sananikone, and he illustrated his point with the following example: “If I have a penny and you have a penny and we exchange pennies, you will have one cent and I will have one cent. But if I have an idea and you have an idea, and we exchange ideas, how many ideas do you have?”

Communication in a global world will be the key to building a better future, said Sananikone, who as the Director of Diversity Relations and Educational Programs for the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity (OEOD) at the University of California, Irvine designs, develops and implements community outreach plans and programs.

“Professor Albert Mehrabian of UCLA says there are three V’s of communication,” said Sananikone, who also co-directs the Diversity in Medicine course and serves as a mentor to students and interns who work with him on diversity programs.

“The first V is visual, what do you want to convey, visually… the second V stands for vocal, your tone of voice, high, happy, low tone… the last V stands for verbal, the choice of words…. Together the three V’s will convey to the person. Here is who I am.”

“Global competition means education is a premium, especially the kind of education offered at Santa Monica College.”— Dr. Gregory Treverton

AVAILABLE AS PODCASTS: Thanks to a grant from Verizon Communications and support from Apple, Santa Monica College now offers free audio podcasts of College public lectures. Downloads of the Nextrend conference and the Global Connections lectures can be found at http://www.smc.edu/itunes.

Volunteer Tutors SMC’s Unsung Heroes

“SMC has a good reputation and has a high transfer rate to the university system, which means that I’m participating in a successful school program… ”
— Stan Bacon, volunteer English tutor

The Gift of Learning

Most are retired and do it to keep busy and help a new generation get through a demanding schedule. Others are former students or closely involved with the school and want to help in some way and give something back. Many live nearby and walk, bicycle or hop a bus to campus.

But no matter what their background or how they got here, the volunteer tutors at Santa Monica College all agree on one thing—they are learning as much as teaching, taking as much as giving.

“It’s gratifying because they get so much out of this by helping students, by helping to change their lives,” says Joyce Cheney, the coordinator of the English Lab at the college. “It is just helping people improve themselves that is the great thing about this.”

While SMC’s labs—in areas such as English, Language, Science, and Math—also hire current students who teach others to help pay their way through college, they value the assistance of volunteers to meet the demanding challenges.

“Volunteer tutors fill in when full-time students can’t accommodate the schedule we need,” says Peter Sierra, coordinator of SMC’s Language Lab. “It’s important that those hours are covered to help the students prepare for their classes.”

The students are grateful. Years after they graduate, some keep in touch with their tutors—dropping by, placing a call or sending postcards from across the globe—to thank those who helped them get through school in what for many is a foreign country with a strange language.

“These are people who have a high value for education and love working with the youth,” says Sandra Faye Willis, the coordinator of the Science Lab. “They’ve helped many young people achieve their educational goals. Volunteer tutors give very selflessly to others.”

Rex King, who earned a Ph.D. and now works at UCLA, knows what it’s like to be a research scholar. In fact, it was his eagerness as a researcher to get a first-hand look at SMC’s top-ranked transfer process that led him to become a volunteer tutor in the English lab.

“I wanted to work with students at this end of the transfer process and see what their challenges were and dreams were and difficulties were,” says King, who is in his second year of volunteering. “When they get to UCLA, a lot of students are in an elementary or beginning English class when they transfer there regardless of their majors, and I wanted to see what that was like at the beginning as part of their process.”

By tutoring students, King has also been able to brush up on his own English skills. “I’ve learned a tremendous amount,” says King, who enrolled in classes as part of his research. “When you do academic research it’s a different field from elemental writing and communication skills.”

King, who takes the Big Blue Bus to the lab, enjoys watching the impact that tutoring can have on the students. “If you can talk to someone one to one, it really helps the pieces fall into place. You see the light bulb that goes on… It’s magical and important and special…. It’s a gift, and they realize it’s a gift.”

Stan Bacon was looking for something to do after he retired in 1983, when a woman he met told him about the volunteer tutoring opportunities at SMC.

“She invited me to come down and see if I maybe I could fit in. So we did. And I guess I fit in, because I’ve been here 22 years,” says Bacon, who beats the weekly parking crunch by scheduling all his sessions in one day.

An engineer by trade, Bacon had no plans to become an English tutor. “I learned this craft on the job. My professional experience was always in the technical arena. How I got into English was something accidental. This is where they needed help, so this is where I plugged in.”

Like many retirees, Bacon likes to keep busy by volunteering in various programs. “I have lots of volunteer activities besides this, and none of them are repetitive and I don’t want them to be. I’d rather have the satisfaction of doing the job, but somebody else get the money.

“For me, the satisfaction is seeing students feel they have gotten over a hump, accomplished something, maybe learned a little more. I like knowing that I have contributed a little bit to their success. It’s rewarding to know you’ve helped somebody.

“I wish (volunteering) was more common in this country, because a lot of talented people my age who are wasting away doing nothing can be very helpful to society. I’m a great promoter of altruism.”

Charles Goodman, M.D. is a rookie when it comes to being a volunteer tutor. He’s been doing it for less than a year. And while he joined the ranks, “because I want to give something back to Santa Monica College, where I was as a student a long time ago,” he also feels he’s getting plenty in return.

“I get a lot out of this,” says Goodman, who volunteers in the English Lab. “I get more out of it than the students. The students teach me how to express myself better. They enliven my faith in the future, and they enliven my interest in the humanities. Working with young minds that are not jaded but still optimistic is a real pleasure. And it allows me a chance to explore some different kinds of work in addition to the clinical work.”

Goodman, who attended SMC some 25 years ago, enjoys the challenge of teaching an increasing number of foreign students who are struggling with a new language both in and out of the classroom.

“The students that we have now, as opposed to when I was in school here, are often learning English as a second or a third language. So I think that tutoring is a wonderful service that we provide them, because they really need additional time to work through language barriers.

“We can help them to better utilize classroom instruction by offering them clarification of American idioms, clarification of language conventions, something that really will take a whole lifetime for them to master.”

Charles Fox has tutored students from 56 countries in his six years volunteering in the English Lab. “Every half hour I get a new student, usually a new country there and a new challenge, so it’s lots of fun. Getting to know students from all over the world is fascinating.”

Fox, who can walk to the lab from home, decided to become a tutor after retiring. “My niece did some tutoring while she was going (to school) here 15 to 20 years ago, and it was always interesting. Once I retired, I thought it would be fun to do that, so I got into it, and I love it.

“I find that just about everyone that walks in and spends a half an hour (in the lab) is dedicated and is trying really hard. That makes it doubly rewarding for me.”

Mary Ann Danin turned to tutoring 15 years ago to fill a void after retiring as a professor at Cal State Northridge. “There was something really missing,” says Danin, who is a volunteer tutor in the English lab. “What was missing was students. So I looked for a place where I could interact with students.”

Like many other volunteer tutors, Danin chose SMC, because she lives nearby. But there were other attractions that drew her to the campus two miles from her home. “It has a very good reputation, and I knew some of the people who were teaching here,” she says.

Danin offers students years of experience teaching and writing. “Because I have been teaching so many years, I have a fairly relaxed attitude. When I look at their writing, I can pick out what’s probably important for them. And if they are foreign students, I’m somewhat familiar with their cultures. In some cases, I’m more familiar with the literature of their cultures than they are, and it often leads them in another direction.

“English is pretty much a universal language. It is the language of the Web. It is communication worldwide, internationally. Students need to be able to speak to each other and to people across the world, and English is the way to do it at this point in time.

Like her fellow volunteers, Danin gets plenty back from the hours spent helping students succeed. “I go home feeling happy. I use my brain. It is a problem-solving situation. It puts me in contact with young people.”

Silvia Rose, who has been a volunteer in the English Lab for three years, finds tutoring takes her back to her student days. “It reminds me of when I was going to school, and they’re reading a lot of stuff I read a lot of years ago, and it’s a pleasure to revisit it and to get their viewpoints on their reading,” Rose says.

Like all the other tutors, she lives for that “Ah ha” moment when a light bulb goes on in a student’s head. “You discuss something with a student, and, suddenly, you realize he or she is getting it. They are understanding what they are reading, or they say what they want to say in a composition.

“That’s because of the interaction we have that they are able to really understand what they are doing, and they’re able to move forward in their assignments. It’s opening a door, and it’s just an amazing sensation when it happens, and it happens a lot.”

A member of SMC’s Bond Oversight Committee, Rose finds tutoring has its own rewards. “I find it intellectually challenging,” she says. “You get to meet a lot of interesting people. I just have a good time. It’s something I look forward to every week.”

Herb Rose, a volunteer in the Math Lab for some seven years and Silvia’s husband, wants students to stop fearing the four-letter word. “For some reason, just the word ‘math’ makes them nervous,” he says. “I don’t think that many of the students have been served very well by their high schools.… and I find that hard to understand because I’ve always liked math since I was a kid.

Rose decided to become a volunteer tutor after reading an article in the Wall Street Journal that reported that high school students who do well in math, do well when they get to college.

“I think that their future depends on getting through math, because somehow that’s required for four-year schools, and I feel very good that I could help them to get to a four-year school and have a good life.

“I think most of the students I see here at SMC are very bright students,” says Rose, who is a past president of SMC’s General Advisory Board. “They just need some assistance in math, and I look forward to them being successful.”

Ruffo Arellanos has a big collection of postcards from Spanish-speaking countries. They are tokens of appreciation from the students he has tutored in Spanish for more than ten years at the Language Lab.

“I’m proud when they start to bring me and send me postcards from other countries. I have been sent postcards from Spain, from South America. I have a big collection. And this is the reward, not the money. It’s my reward. I like to work with the young people, because this way, I change opinions. I have people from all nationalities, from all countries.”

A retired history teacher, Arellanos likes to turn students on to Spanish language and culture. “We send a lot a people to universities, and Spanish is very useful, mostly in California. A lot of people want to learn Spanish, because they have friends they’d like to visit in some Spanish country or like the literature, the music, the history of the Latin and the Mexican and the Spanish countries.

“I’m doing it because I like it. I’m satisfied, and I like to give something to the new generation, give them something that you have. That’s all. That’s what I am doing. I am not a young man, but I volunteer.”

Bill Jones has taken Spanish, French and German at Santa Monica College. So it’s no surprise that the retired math teacher enjoys being a volunteer tutor in the Language Lab.

“I am a retired teacher, and you’ll never take the teacher out of me,” says Jones, who has been a tutor at the college for seven years. “I am a retired math teacher, but that would be boring. If I was working in the Math Lab, I wouldn’t be learning. I’ve always liked languages… and this is a way of giving something back.

Volunteering at the lab also gives Jones a chance to brush up on his own language skills. “In language, use it or lose it. I had taken two years of German here, and I would have forgotten all of my German if I weren’t doing this.”

Ann Simon, a French geneticist who is a researcher at UCLA, views the Science Lab where she has been tutoring for six months as a place where she can get a first-hand view of education in America.

“Going to college does not exist in France where I’m from and where I had all my studies done and where I taught previously, so I was curious to know more about community colleges in general and Santa Monica is very famous in the community,” Simon says.

“It was very interesting to discover the diversity of the students here. I really liked being able to help them. I loved it. Each time I finished, and I made them understand something, it was very rewarding.”

“I just felt very rewarded each time I helped a student understand something.”
— Ann Simon, volunteer science tutor

Tutoring Services

SMC provides free tutoring services in selected subjects for all students. For more information, visit the Tutoring Services webpage at http://library.smc.edu/tutoring/.

Math Lab
For students in math classes. You may request help on a drop-in basis, one question at a time. For a one-hour tutoring session, schedule an appointment in person one or two days in advance. We also offers special workshops on specific topics. • Math Complex 84 • (310) 434-4735

Science Tutoring Center
For students in science classes. You may request help with specific assignments on a drop-in basis. You may also call or drop by the center to schedule a more extensive tutoring session. • Science 245 • (310) 434-4630

English/Humanities Tutoring Center
For students in English/ESL and liberal arts classes. To schedule a tutoring session, please come in person to discuss your needs. • Drescher Hall 313 • (310) 434-4682

Modern Language Tutoring Center
For students in Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian (Farsi), Russian, and Spanish classes. You may request help on a drop-in basis. • Drescher Hall 219 • (310) 434-4683

ESL Tutoring Center
For students mastering English as a second language. One-on-one tutoring by instructional assistants is by appointment only. You may schedule up to two tutoring appointments each week in person. • ESL 106 • (310) 434-4260

English Skills
Reading lab & English 81 Lab • Drescher Hall 312 & 308
These two labs are for students in Reading and Vocabulary classes (English 23, 48, 80, 83, and 84) and in English 81 classes. For information, please consult with your instructor.

Special Programs
Special tutoring sessions are also offered through the Center for Students with Disabilities (310-434-4265 or TDD 310-434-4273), EOPS/CARE (310-434-4268), TRIO Student Support Services (310-434-4347), the Scholars Program (310-434-4371), and the International Education Center (310-434-4217).

For an Easy, Affordable Move into American Culture…

Fall 2007 Offers International Students
a Great Beginning to Their College Careers!

Santa Monica College is #1 in transfers to UCLA and the University of California. Many international students choose Santa Monica College to begin their college careers because of SMC’s transfer success, high quality teaching, and low cost.

Intensive ESL at Santa Monica College will help you make real progress in college. This program offers a strong plan to help students improve their skills in speaking, reading, listening, and writing English. For admission requirements and more information, you can contact SMC’s International Education Center on the main campus, or call Darryl-Keith Ogata, Director of International Programs, at (310) 434-4159. For information on the web, go to www.smc.edu/international.

SPEAK / READ / LISTEN / WRITE

English — Intensive ESL

20 hours a week of English instruction in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Classes are provided at the beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels. This is the best program to help you improve your TOEFL scores in a short time! Students can begin the academic program at Santa Monica College from any level. Classes begin August 27, 2007. Tuition is $1,500.

“Coming to a new country, it’s better to start small… SMC really helped! Intensive ESL is like a little community—you spend a lot of time with other students and the teachers are right there taking care of you!”
— Galina Inzhakova, now at UCLA in Fine Arts

Community Notes

	The newly-remodeled Madison Music & Performing Arts Campus reopens The new Olympic Shuttle lot opens SMC’s Transit Direct Program with the Big Blue Bus continues
City of Santa Monica Mayor Richard Bloom and SMC President Dr. Chui L. Tsang at SMC’s Eco-Fabulous campus fair