Many K-State Libraries faculty & staff participated in the cultural awareness session conducted on February 20th by Army Captain George Greanais. To supplement the information covered in that session, these PowerPoint slides on afghan cultural practices have been made available through courtesy of the Directorate of Cultural Influence and Counterinsurgency at Ft. Riley.
On Monday and Tuesday, November 19th and 20th, a group of business professors from the University of Lagos, Nigeria will visit Hale Library as part of a three day campus visit hosted by the K-State College of Business Administration. They will be learning about business-related library resources and likely conducting some research of their own.
K-State is becoming increasingly involved in international business programs, and partnerships with both academic and corporate interests are being developed.
Our Library/Ft. Riley partnership generates many opportunities to interact with individuals whose perspectives may be very different from our own. Soldiers who are K-State students, Army officers working with Library faculty on cultural projects, and members of the recently-formed book discussion group all bring fresh ideas and different points of view to the Library. They also enjoy sharing our perspectives.
One individual, a traditional college student, then a soldier, and now a student again, provides a very interesting account of how it feels to cross between the two worlds. How many of us have experienced similar transitions in our lives?
Several Library faculty members joined the military book discussion group as they met in the Hale Library Kruh Room on Thursday evening (November 8). The discussion went far beyond an examination of The Defence of Duffers Drift. Participants enjoyed an intellectually challenging and provocative examination by LTC John Nagl of topics ranging from copyright to cultural anthropology, all of which were related to the current war on terrorism.
The next book to be discussed is Fiasco: the American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas E. Ricks. The date of the next meeting has not been set, but watch this blog for a date, likely in two weeks. Library faculty and staff are welcome to participate, and there is no ongoing obligation.
As noted here previously, the number of K-State on-campus undergraduates from China has quadrupled in the past year. This increase is due to both intensive recruiting efforts and the excellent exposure that K-State has enjoyed because of our partnerships with several universities in China. While visiting here in Fall of 2006 officials from the Chinese Ministry of Higher Education noted that K-State is seen in China as a "premier quality" institution. In this and other, similar, evaluations our Libraries have been a factor contributing to such high rankings.
On Sunday, November 11, a delegation from South China Normal University (SCNU), will be visiting campus to consider a partnering arrangement. A primary focus of this visit will be Family Studies and Human Services, but K-State Libraries has also been asked to interact with the delegation. I'm confident that the SCNU delegation will be pleased with our facility, information resources, our technology and our people.
With a University-wide group pursuing U.S. Department of Education funding, the South Asian Initiative at K-State is off to a strong start. Visits to potential partners in India over the past year indicate a viable role for K-State, not only in the traditional areas of agriculture, but increasingly in business-related programs. E2K is one emergent force that is fueling the economy (no pun intended) in India, one result of which is the increased demand for education from partners such as Kansas State University. Imagine even a small portion of the 300,000 students (on all campuses) of ANGRAU University logging into K-State Libraries resources as K-State Online students!
The number of K-State undergraduate students from China has nearly quadrupled in the past year- and these students make regular use of our library. Focus on China is a one-day (Thursday, November 16th) lecture series that informs about both the history of China and the new directions being taken in that country.
Sponsored by the East Asian Studies Program and the K-State Office of International Programs this lecture series is a chance to learn more about the national and cultural backgrounds of this rapidly growing group of Library patrons.
Organized only recently, the Ft. Riley book discussion group continues to develop. The group will meet next on Thursday, November 8th, at 6:30 PM in Room 123 Hale Library. The book to be discussed will be The Defence of Duffer's Drift by E.D. Swinton. Future meeting dates and book selections will be determined on an ongoing basis. Faculty and staff who would like to be included on the group's email distribution list should contact Daryl Youngman.
K-State faculty from a number of colleges and departments have been working in Afghanistan as part of the K-State partnership with Kabul University. Dr. David Hodgson of the College of Veterinary Medicine is one of them and having finished his project, he has recently returned. A welcome and a presentation about his experience is planned for November 16th at the Practice Management Center, fourth floor, Trotter Hall on the CVM campus.
The welcome will begin at 4:30 and Dr. Hodgson will make his presentation at approximately 5:15. All are welcome.
The Community Engagement grant-funded project that partners K-State Libraries with Ft. Riley is producing results. The goal of this project is to facilitate interaction between the military and academic communities. After visiting Hale Library several times over the past summer, a group of Army officers has convened a book discussion group that meets in Hale Library on designated evenings. Members of the group range from junior officers to Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, counterinsurgency expert, author and contributor to the Army/Marine counterinsurgency field manual.
The group organizers have expressed a sincere interest in having library faculty join the discussion. The inaugural meeting was held in the Kruh Room. Future meetings will be scheduled in Hale Library, with rooms and meeting times to be determined. To learn more, or to be included on the email distribution for this group, please contact Daryl Youngman.
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