February 11, 2009
Kinesiology students explore sport, culture, Olympic ideals in Malaysia
Week-long academy provides many learning opportunities
Maura McDermott, a senior in kinesiology, participated in Malaysia’s National Olympic Academy last year. Three more students will participate this February. |
By
Steve Adams
Continuing a five-year tradition, three kinesiology and health students will travel to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to represent Iowa State as the only Americans at the National Olympic Academy (NOA) conference on Feb. 14.
Rich Engelhorn, associate professor in kinesiology, serves as the faculty advisor for trips to the Olympic academy. While other trips have traditionally taken just two students, this year ISU is fortunate enough to be able to send three students.
The three students – junior Lacey Johnson, senior Dan Dempsey, and senior Jeni Perkins – were chosen based on their essays about the Olympic Ideals of Pierre De Coubertin and how they relate to the world today, and how the trip would personally benefit them. Beyond interacting with new cultures, the students saw opportunities to gain experience that will help them reach their professional goals.
Johnson aspires to be a traveling physical therapist. She sees many potential benefits to immersing herself in a gathering of representatives from more than 20 countries from Europe and Asia who will discuss Olympic hot-button issues, such as illegal supplement use and ethics.
“My professional goals require that I have the ability to form relationships and adjust to a new community quickly,” Johnson said. “This trip to Malaysia encompasses both of these ideals and will help me prepare for such a nomadic career. I am excited to be completely submersed in their culture and learn what Malaysians value most, what their priorities in life are, their work ethics, and how they view the world.”
Dempsey, who hopes to become a high school coach, is interested in not only seeing the mosques and tasting the foods of Kuala Lumpur, but gaining an understanding of the role sports play in other countries.
“I’d like to see how other countries view sports and how they fit in to their respective cultures,” Dempsey said. “Knowing what impact sports have around the world and what sport participation is like outside of the [United States] could provide some good experience and examples for helping to teach young athletes.”
Perkins says she is excited about the opportunities she will have to observe and learn from her global peers.
“It will be great to learn how other countries view and prepare for the Olympics from the people actually living in those countries,” Perkins said. “It will also be interesting to learn about the differences between countries and how each country views various sporting events.”
The three students will have ample opportunity to learn about other cultures during the week-long academy. While the trip is short, Engelhorn stressed that the experience is very unique – students interact not only with Malaysians, but with people from 20 diverse European and Asian countries. In fact, ISU students will room with a participant from another country during the week.
“When our students arrive there they are distributed within their hotel to maximize the diversity,” Engelhorn said. “All the international representatives stay with a Malaysian or stay with our students. The first year our students roomed with a representative from the Chinese Olympic committee – so you have some very interesting perspectives shared there. During the week of this conference, the people are grouped into five or six subgroups, again mixed up by culture and background and country, and they work together to do various tasks and activities throughout the week. At the end of the week they do a skit on something related to the Olympic movement.”
Engelhorn said that the overarching goal of the program, consistent with that of all Iowa State international experiences, is to open students’ minds to new perspectives.
“Traveling to other countries is probably the very, very best way that you can foster understanding of international relations. Taking a course on international perspectives is not going to provide the same outlook and learning that [a] trip to another country is going to do – especially one like this, where there’s so much interaction,” Engelhorn said.
“Obviously everybody has a different viewpoint and it’s important to understand that – and I think that’s what most students talk about when they come back. I think it has to have an impact on you when you are sitting there talking with representatives from countries like Bahrain, China, or Malaysia”
While these three students clearly expect to broaden their perspectives, Engelhorn hopes that the partnership between Iowa State and Malaysia grows so that more Malaysian students will have the same opportunity to visit ISU.
Five staff members and students from the National University of Malaysia visited Iowa State last summer to learn about culture and youth sports programs in the United States. Engelhorn said that two more students will probably visit Iowa State this fall.
