By Carmen Pease
When Ohio University professor David Mould and his wife, Stephanie Hysmith, decided to take a trip around the world, they took a course foreign to even most travel agents. With an itinerary boasting places that incite alarm or apathy from many vacationers, the journey proved to be as eye opening and unique as they come.
The couple spent the winter months onboard the University of Pittsburgh's Semester at Sea, a program billed as a "life-changing experience" that was popularized by MTV's "Road Rules." With the likes of Ecuador, Thailand and Hungary already stamped in their passports, they were looking to stretch their international experiences.
Mould, director of communication and development studies, was selected to teach communication courses during the 105-day excursion that sailed to countries like Japan, Brazil and Tanzania.
"The really interesting thing about teaching the classes is that you have to adapt them to the voyage," Mould said. "You can't just take your regular class that you might teach on your home campus and just teach it on the ship. It worked very well with what I was teaching because after Cuba we could talk about propaganda in a Communist state or as we approached India we could talk about the Indian movie industry and the explosion of cable channels and MTV."
In traveling to remote, often third world countries, the program strives to provide students with the opportunity to explore and gain insight into many of the people, places and cultures around the world.
While at sea, classes meet daily, but when the ship docks, the students are free to sightsee. During these times at port, Mould had his students pick up media artifacts to show how media was used in the countries, whether through a tee shirt or newspaper leaflet.
"That to me was the really interesting thing about the voyage because we didn't just go to ports, we had to integrate what we were seeing and experiencing with what we were teaching," Mould said.
As for Hysmith, a part-time instructor of English at Ohio University, she boarded the ship as an accompanying spouse with intentions of using the occasion to catch up on some unfinished quilting projects. Although it may seem a modest venture, it did not stay so for long. With the world at her fingertips, Hysmith decided to salvage the trip's sights and sounds through a fabric exchange. While at port, the students involved bought fabrics so that by the end of the voyage, they all had fabric swatches from around the world, which allowed her to piece together a quilt in ode to the voyage called Trip Around the World that she raffled off to raise $5,500 for charity.
While the ship globetrotted, the passengers were given the rare chance to watch the world change before their eyes with the start of the war in Iraq and the onset of the SARS epidemic.
"As a teacher, it was good to see the students get a new view on the world," Mould said. "For me, it was very interesting to see them change and become a little more thoughtful, sensitive and a little less insular. They traveled to places they would not have seen before, and it made an impression so that they can go on and make a bit of a difference in the world. That's probably more important than anything specific they took away from the classes."
The voyage was priceless for the teachers too, as they got to see a three-hour speech by Fidel Castro and catch a running lecture detailing the lands they were visiting. Mould said the experience encourages him to internationalize his courses more and to emphasize cultures across the world.
"Everywhere we arrived, we felt we were not there long enough," Mould said.
Hysmith agreed, "It was remarkable."
Carmen Pease is a student writer with University Communications and Marketing.
