Dr. Peter Green spent more than 15 minutes trying to get a head shot of this emu. During the wild-emu chase, Dr. Green spent more than 15 minutes trying to get the perfect picture, but in the end Green told the emu, "You win, no picture."

Contributed by Dr. Barb DeSanto, APR, Fellow PRSA, Communication Professor

One of the best summertime experiences I’ve ever had was, in reality, a winter experience.  Yes, part of Summer 2011 I spent with three professors and 21 students in Australia in June – the Southern Hemisphere’s winter with sideways rain and gusty winds sandwiched between days of sunshine and blue skies.

Maryville has a strong summer Study Abroad program, but this was the university’s first study abroad seminar in the Southern Hemisphere.  The Sydney program is the first step in developing more Asian/Pacific Rim destinations, including Peking, China, in Summer 2012. 

Sydney, Australia, is a good place to begin an Asian education, because of its cosmopolitan mix of cultures, including British, Chinese, Indonesian, Korean, Vietnamese, Malay, Thai, and hundreds of other ethnic groups.  The students were a bit surprised at first by the great variety of people, but soon discovered that, more than anything else, it meant exotic cuisine.  Even the garden-variety American Subway sandwich shop offered sweet chili sauce and avocado on every sandwich.  I bought sweet chili sauce just to add to all my sandwiches now.  No more bland American food for me.

Stand on any street corner and listen to the melody of languages that makes up the Sydney streetscape.  Look at the variety of fashion that identifies different ethnic groups, and then compare those differences to similarities among all people in living their lives. 

After a 15-hour flight from the U.S. starting points such as Dallas, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, we arrived in Sydney,

Dr. Leilani Carver attracted many friends with her ice cream cone full of green leaves.

tired and ready for a nap.  The secret to adjusting to “losing”  one complete day and arriving very early in the morning in Sydney is to stay up all day – that means past supper until at least 8 p.m…at night.  No naps. To make the time past quickly, we all hopped on a bus to drop our bags in our apartments, hop on a city bus to Sydney’s Central train station, take an hour-long train ride to another bus station – all just to visit Featherdale Park.  When the students arrived, they agreed the trek was worth it.  They spent the afternoon petting kangaroos and koalas, listening to wild dingos howling, watching peacocks fan their tails, and taking pictures of tiny penguins strutting around their lot.  We all slept very well that first night.

Imagine the next day when you had the opportunity to eat kangaroo pizza at the official welcome lunch.  You had just petted and fed the kangaroos, saw mother kangaroos with joeys in their pouches, and now you get to eat them.  As expected, some students did and others, like me, just couldn’t bring themselves to eat what you petted the day before.  Students who tasted kangaroo compared it to a somewhat beefy meat with bison overtones and a chewy texture.  Pepperoni pizza was my choice; I’ve never petted a pepperoni.

The classes offered in Australia included:

Dr. Peter Green’s Psychology of Conservation, where students visited Sydney parks and nature areas, including the Blue Mountains to some of the rugged coastline parks with multi-colored blue waves crashing on the rocks and glimpses of whales jumping in the distance;

Dr. Chelie Muraski’s Comparative Health Systems, which looked at the differences between Australia’s national health service and America’s individually insured health system.  Activities included visiting a museum of deadly diseases and the Australia Red Cross;

Dr. Leilani Carver’s Working Internationally in Australia, which focused on what Americans need to know to work in a different culture; her students explored what makes an individual a strong internationally competent managers.

My two classes included an undergraduate course in Australian media, including the global influence of Rupert Murdoch and the images that different media create of their own countries for the rest of the world, and a graduate course, the Transplanted Executive, where graduate students interviewed expats working in Australia to learn about how they re-enter their home societies when their overseas assignments are finished.  The graduate students will be writing a paper for a journal from their interviews.

Convicts, the original Sydney settlers, saw this view of St. James Church every day from their dorm room furnished with hammocks to sleep in. Convict is a special word in Australia, only the original settlers transported from England are called "convicts." Today's miscreants are called "prisoners" or "criminals."

Amid the “coursework,” however, were many group activities, as well as time for students to see things on their own.  Planned adventures included a trip to the Sydney Opera House for a performance in the world’s most recognized theatre.  An afternoon visit to the Hyde Park Barracks where the original “convict” immigrants lived upon arrival in Sydney more than 200 years ago, and the students got to rock back and forth in the sleeping hammocks as they listened to the convict story that brought the experience to life.  Shopping ranged to Paddy’s market, a multi-level flea market with prices from pennies to hundreds of dollars to high-street world-famous brands, including Australia’s own Uggs. 

Individual students went swimming with sharks, visited the Sydney aquarium,  chilled out  physically and mentally at the June Jazz Festival, perused art museums, and, I heard, tried out the local club scene.

I’ve lead and taught in Study Abroad programs for four universities in the past 20 years, and no matter the location or the students, students learn far more than just about one location.  Surviving and thriving in a totally new environment, realizing that the “words” may in some form of English, but the meaning is totally different, working outside of one’s “comfort zone,” testing your tolerance level, experiencing delight in something you wouldn’t have tried “at home,” – these are all important things to find out about yourself while you also learn traditional class subjects. 

The realization of what these students and professors learned about themselves, however, comes after they all return to their familiar homes.   Random everyday life incidents will interact with flashbacks to Australia or England or Scotland or Italy as each individual’s new experiences collide with their American life.  This added dimension is the real value of study abroad – understanding that we are all citizens of this globe and being equipped with the experience to bring into their careers. 

This was worth 30 hours of flying from one continent to another and living a year with two winters.