BVU professors travel to Mideast
Posted: Tuesday, June 24, 2008
STORM LAKE, Iowa -- Four Buena Vista University professors are spending the early part of July in Israel and Egypt on a trip that will broaden their field of knowledge in their academic specialties.
They are: Dr. Peter Steinfeld, professor of religion and philosophy; Hollace Drake, assistant professor of speech and English; Dr. Katya Koubek, assistant professor of education/teaching English as a second language, and Dr. Ann Petersen, professor of education.
The group will arrive in Tel Aviv on July 1 and travel in Israel and Egypt, including a visit with Dr. Ahmad Ghabin, who will be a visiting Fulbright specialist this fall at BVU. They will return home on July 11.
This is the third year of McCorkle Fellows program, which was established through the generosity of Dr. Paul McCorkle, a BVU life trustee and his late wife, Vivian, to provide selected faculty members with an opportunity for international travel to enhance their scholarly knowledge and to add international dimensions to the curriculum.
The first group, which also included Steinfeld, traveled to Argentina and Peru in 2006. The second group traveled to India last year.
Steinfeld says his objective for this trip is to learn more about the fragile co-existence of Judaism, Islam and Christianity in the Middle East, in Israel and more specifically in Jerusalem. "As a teacher of religion, Jerusalem is the center of all three monotheistic religions," he said. "My academic focus on the Holocaust is also at the center of my interest in wanting to learn more about Israel.
"BVU students will inherit a world filled with complex and intractable problems. Perhaps no problem has caused, and will continue to cause, so much global turmoil as the Palestinian issue. Until Arabs know that their fellow Palestinians are being treated fairly and justly, there can be no global peace."
Though Petersen believes the experiences from this trip will be valuable in the classroom, she also has a special objective.
"I am writing a book about the liberation of a slave labor camp, Ahlem, at the end of WWII and one of the liberators was Vernon Tott of Sioux City, who was in the 84th Infantry and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. His experiences are the focus of my book,"she said.
Tott, who died in 2005, carried a camera throughout the war and was able to document the liberation of the camp. Fifty year later, after rediscovering his photographs that had been stored in a shoebox following the war, he spent the next 10 years trying to locate the 32 survivors shown in the pictures and was able to locate 28.
Petersen has interviewed several of the camp survivors and has scheduled as part of this trip a meeting with two other survivors in Tel Aviv.
Koubek said that ideally, her objective would have been to witness how Jewish-Arabic bilingual schools work and to learn about their successes, as well as the issues they need to overcome. "Since the schools will not be in session at the time we are there, I hope to interview principals and teachers about their experiences," she said.
In addition to enriching discussions with students in the classrooms, the professors will also share their experiences in a series of meeting with members of the BVU campus community. Petersen will be on sabbatical during the 2008-09 academic year to work on her book, but will take part in these meetings.
They are: Dr. Peter Steinfeld, professor of religion and philosophy; Hollace Drake, assistant professor of speech and English; Dr. Katya Koubek, assistant professor of education/teaching English as a second language, and Dr. Ann Petersen, professor of education.
The group will arrive in Tel Aviv on July 1 and travel in Israel and Egypt, including a visit with Dr. Ahmad Ghabin, who will be a visiting Fulbright specialist this fall at BVU. They will return home on July 11.
This is the third year of McCorkle Fellows program, which was established through the generosity of Dr. Paul McCorkle, a BVU life trustee and his late wife, Vivian, to provide selected faculty members with an opportunity for international travel to enhance their scholarly knowledge and to add international dimensions to the curriculum.
The first group, which also included Steinfeld, traveled to Argentina and Peru in 2006. The second group traveled to India last year.
Steinfeld says his objective for this trip is to learn more about the fragile co-existence of Judaism, Islam and Christianity in the Middle East, in Israel and more specifically in Jerusalem. "As a teacher of religion, Jerusalem is the center of all three monotheistic religions," he said. "My academic focus on the Holocaust is also at the center of my interest in wanting to learn more about Israel.
"BVU students will inherit a world filled with complex and intractable problems. Perhaps no problem has caused, and will continue to cause, so much global turmoil as the Palestinian issue. Until Arabs know that their fellow Palestinians are being treated fairly and justly, there can be no global peace."
Though Petersen believes the experiences from this trip will be valuable in the classroom, she also has a special objective.
"I am writing a book about the liberation of a slave labor camp, Ahlem, at the end of WWII and one of the liberators was Vernon Tott of Sioux City, who was in the 84th Infantry and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. His experiences are the focus of my book,"she said.
Tott, who died in 2005, carried a camera throughout the war and was able to document the liberation of the camp. Fifty year later, after rediscovering his photographs that had been stored in a shoebox following the war, he spent the next 10 years trying to locate the 32 survivors shown in the pictures and was able to locate 28.
Petersen has interviewed several of the camp survivors and has scheduled as part of this trip a meeting with two other survivors in Tel Aviv.
Koubek said that ideally, her objective would have been to witness how Jewish-Arabic bilingual schools work and to learn about their successes, as well as the issues they need to overcome. "Since the schools will not be in session at the time we are there, I hope to interview principals and teachers about their experiences," she said.
In addition to enriching discussions with students in the classrooms, the professors will also share their experiences in a series of meeting with members of the BVU campus community. Petersen will be on sabbatical during the 2008-09 academic year to work on her book, but will take part in these meetings.
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