Foreign profs find→
Daily Kansan Thursday, May 25, 1967
Well, it's not like home
By EMMANUEL AKUCHU
Opinion about KU, the students and what it is like to teach here differ among foreign faculty members.
Peter Coltman, assistant professor of architecture from South Africa, finds it is a good opportunity.
Last of a series
nity for him to impart knowledge about architecture in America using his African background.
EUT SOME AMERICAN students, he said, do not have the kind of enthusiasm expected of them.
"They seem to think that getting into a university is a routine process like in a high school," Coltman said.
"They do not make use of the opportunities open to them to study in a university and want to be fed by the instructions," he added.
ANTONIO FERRES, visiting professor of Spanish and Portugese from Spain, considers KU students "as good as or better than those at the University of Indiana," which invited him to the U.S.
The department of East Asian Studies, according to Owen, is relatively young and offers "more possibilities of experimenting because the lines along which the department runs are not yet completely formulated."
"But the faculty in my language area is inferior in my opinion," he said.
"I THINK KU has very fine research facilities," Sharp said, "but it is a challenge for me to live in a small university city where the social life is centered on the university."
"I enjoy teaching here very much," Mitsue Shibata, Oriental language and literature instructor from Japan, said, "but honestly speaking, sometimes KU is not alive compared to Tokyo."
CILBERTO FORT, a Cuban who works in the library and is associated with the Center of Latin American Studies, described KU and the students as "really helpful."
Fort said KU is the only institute in Kansas which has a Latin American library collection where he could work.
"WHEN I ARRIVED here, I was without a penny. I had my wife and daughter," Fort said, "but here I have been helped not only financially but spiritually."
Fort said he had to leave everything to Castro when he fled from
Cuba four days before the 1962 blockade.
Culturally comparing American and German students, Schweder said, the students here, and Americans generally, have a "most interesting way of thinking and behaving."
"MOST OF THEM consider American ways the only ways in the world," he said.
Being able to live in a university atmosphere—having freedom of discussion, association and meeting and knowing students from various parts of the world, Schweder said, is a good aspect of life here.
Speaking about the problems that foreign faculty members are liable to encounter at KU, Coan said language is the thing which comes to the mind first, but foreigners are usually screened to minimize such problems.
THESE OF THEM who teach their own language, he said, do not have to have English. As for the researchers, Coan said language is not a thing to worry about.
The interview with Ferres was conducted with the help of an interpreter.
Ferres lectures only graduate students in Spanish and communicates very little in English.
PEACE APPEAL
Because of the language difficulty, Ferres, who is here only for one semester, said he has not had
as much contact with the non- Spanish speaking faculty as he would have liked.
"My stay at KU," Ferres said, "is a vital experience for me and particularly for the novel that I am writing about American atmosoher."
AMERICAN STUDENTS lack the oriental way of thinking and an oriental language structure creates added troubles for them, she said.
Miss Darsen said it was rather difficult for her in the beginning teaching French as a foreign language.
"IF I HAVE problems." Salaty said, "maybe 1 do not know enough English." But he teaches in Russian.
Fort would have taken up law practice in the United States, but he said the legal language has technicalities in it which differ from one language to another.
COLTMAN POINTED OUT another problem which confronts the foreign faculty. It is generally difficult, he said, to fit into the entire faculty framework because of differences in background coming from different educational systems. The faculty does not quite understand the type of training and experience that a foreign faculty member has behind him.
NEW YORK —(UPI)—Church members should make up their own minds about the issues of war and peace and not leave them to "the experts," says the Rev. Dr. Ben Mohr Herbster, New York, president of the United Church of Christ.
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