Resources and Technologyin Developing Nations.-A Semester Study Abroad

Robert W. Jacobel

During the fall and winter terms of 1978-79 I had thefortunate experience of leading the St. Olaf College

Global Semester. This program in structured and experi-entiallearning has been developed to provide students fromvarious liberal arts disciplines with an opportunity to studyand travel in ten nations. Four month-long, formal coursescovering a variety of subjects are prearranged at host institu-tions in Egypt, India, The Republic of China, and Japan.These are taught by local faculty and professionals in each ofthe disciplines covered. A fifth course, given by the accom-panying field supervisor, extends over the entire term and isthe subject of this report. The program also includes travelwithin each of the four major countries, and shorter stays inRome, Athens, Jordan, Israel, Nepal, and Hong Kong. Theprogram has been in existence since 1968 and is open toqualified students from accredited institutions. Generallyabout thirty students are accepted each year.

The courses taught in the host institutions, chosen toutilize the resources of the particular setting, remain thesame each year. For example, in Taiwan a course on art his-tory is taught at Soochow University near the NationalPalace Museum which houses much of the art treasure of

China. In Egypt, the group studies history at the AmericanUniversity of Cairo, and field trips are arranged to Luxor andAlexandria. In Japan, eastern religions are taught by facultyprimarily from Kyoto University. In India, the students arelocated in a village just outside of Bangalore, where theystudy sociology and social change. Because of the diversebackgrounds of the faculty who are chosen to lead the pro-gram, the fifth course varies considerably from year to yearand no attempt is normally made to integrate it with theo'thers. This course is usually developed during the previousyear on a theme consistent with the opportunities presentedby the global travel. Science courses have been offered ontwo prior occasions.

I chose the topic of resources and technology because- itenables students to gain an awareness of the finiteness ofworld resources and the prospects for an improved standardof living. This kind of understanding, together with a first-hand experience of cultural diversity and the problems of

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Top:The ridgetop village of Naudanda near Pokhara, NepaL The terracedhillsides provide food for a population exceeding the carrying capacity ofthe land. Since wood is the only source of energy for cooking and heating,over-harvesting results in many places in devastating erosion of soilneeded for agriculture. Bottom:The author with a group of Indian schoolchildren from a village near Bangalore writing their names in English.

poverty, hunger, disease, and unchecked population growth,is invaluable for those who seem certain to be confronted bythese difficulties in the next decades.

In developing goals for my course I was guided by the no-tion t4at a science course should combine formal academic

learning with related experience and input from the sur-roundings so that the course is informative, challenging, andrelevant. In a course such as this, students should also

acquire a broader perspective of the world and learn to applythe knowledge, tools, and insights gained through the pro-

Robert W.Jacobel is assistant professor of physics, St. Olaf College, North-field, MN 55057.

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gram to other systems in the future. The workload should befairly demanding but commensurate with the stresses andfatigue which invariably result during a period of extendedtravel. In the liberal arts tradition, the assignments shouldrequire reading, writing, speaking, thinking, analysis, andthe exchange of ideas. In the course introduction I likenedour journey to Darwin's voyage aboard the Beagle, with eachof us responsible for being a curious and keen observer ofour surroundings.

Because I am a physicist with an interest in geology andgeophysics, I decided to use these disciplines as a wayto con-sider natural systems-the first step toward an understand-ing of the potential for technological development and itsrole in providing an improved standard of living. The land-scapes one views in any country are a product of a remark-able geologic history which is now understood through theunifying concept of plate tectonics. Anyone with a knowl-edge of geologic history and tectonics who studies the geo-morphology of a region becomes aware of the constraints onagricultural and mineral development. In general, one findsalso that local climate variation and, consequently, naturalvegetation and agricultural practices, ultimately have geo-logic determinants. Thus a study of geology leads to under-standing of the occurrence and development of natural re-sources and ultimately to insights into the lifestyle of thepeople.

These relationships are illustrated by two examples fromIndia. Southern India is a part of the Deccan Shield (anancient plateau area of exposed Archean rock) which wasonce a part of the landmass of southern continents calledGondawandaland. Granite is present in copious amountsand is used for everything from road beds to building stoneto fence posts. As one student wrote in an exam, "Granitegrows on trees around here." The soil derived from theweathered granite takes on the characteristic red color ofbauxite or laterite soil in the tropics and is a preferredmedium for certain crops. Much of the mineral wealth ofIndia is located in ores within this shield, and thus theexistence and location of certain industries can be explainedin terms of geology. Another example is the Indo-GangeticPlain in the north, one of the world's largest, deepest, andmost fertile alluvial areas. It is filled with rich soil washed

down by monsoons from the Himalayas, which have beencreated in relatively recent geologic time by the northwardmotion of India into the Eurasian continent. This plain isthe most extensively cultivated and densely populated re-gion of India and provides much of the food for the coun-try's growing population.

Once the resource base of a country has been charac-terized, one can proceed to study the current technologiesemployed in producing goods and services and how thesedepend on both human and natural resources. A knowledgeof these factors coupled with the experience of living andtraveling in a country enhances one's understanding of thequality of life and the prospects for future improvement.Thus this approach provides a unifying structure for whatmight otherwise appear to the beginning student as an un-

Geophysical globe showing sea floor and Philippine plate in the vicinity ofTaiwan and Japan.

related collection of dry facts on agriculture and tech-nological development.

In order to accomplish the goals stated at the outset in themanner indicated, I designed the course to utilize time dur-ing the summer before the trip for preparatory reading andresearch; once abroad, there were lectures in each country,field trips, and problem discussion groups. The structureand operation of these components is described in thefollowing paragraphs.

Although about one-fourth of the students had majorswithin the natural sciences, no one had a background offormal coursework in geology or geography. In addition, thegroup consisted of more than the usual number of sopho-mores, though nearly three-fourths of the students werejuniors or seniors. To prepare for the trip, they read twopaperbacks during the summer on the role of technology indeveloping nations. The first wasE.F. Schumacher's SmallIsBeautiful, which deals with scaling the level of technology tothe local needs of a developing area. The second was WorldWithout Borders by Lester Brown, a treatment of the grow-ing interdependence of nations for technological know-howand development strategies for the future. I assigned anessay, due on the day of departure, comparing Schumacher'sand Brown's views of technological development, analyzingthem, and suggesting which might be most effective. Thepurpose here was to initiate thinking about the role ofvarious options for development and their costs andbenefits.

The second major assignment for the summer requiredeach student to prepare a research paper on a topicrelatedto

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natural determinants, resources, or technological develop-ment in a country we would visit. The intent here was thateach person develop some expertise which the group coulddraw upon when we arrived in that country. For example,one student wrote a paper on the Aswan Dam and the rea-sons for its less than anticipated success. Three papersfocused on tropical or desert weather systems and the effectsthese have on agriculture and lifestyle. One student chose towrite on the Green Revolution, another high-technology en-deavor which has met with mixed success. Other papersdealt with resources, industries, agriculture, and the effectsof industrializatic~m on the environment.

In each country, I gave lectures on historical geology andgeomorphology which stressed things we had seen or ex-pected to see and the role of geological factors as determi-nants of the habits of living systems. Time was also devotedto methods of investigation in geology and to the formalismand concepts of the emerging view of geological history, viz.,plate tectonics. To supplement the lectures in this area Iused Nigel Calder's The Restless Earth,l a text which wasadapted from his production for BBC television. The bookpresents material on a fundamental level but, unlike mosttexts in this category, includes numerous examples fromplaces around the world and thus was well suited to ourpurposes.

Throughout the term, we used geological maps and localsources and, whenever possible, listened to a lecture by anative geologist. On field trips, students were presented withgeological background material and encouraged to observehow land and water use and the location of particular indus-tries related to natural determinants. Examples from Israeland Taiwan serve to illustrate typical field experiences.

Members of the group at the archaeological site of Petra, ancient city of theNebateans in modern-day Jordan.

1. Nigel Calder, The Restless Earth (New York, Viking Press, 1973).

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In Israel, two field trips were devoted to an exploration ofthe Jordan rift valley and the Dead Sea area. This is thenorthern part of a continuous rift system extending via theRed Sea into southeastern Africa, where it appears that thecontinent is separating. In addition to studying the tectonicfeatures and how the landscape was formed, we learned ofmethods employed by the Israelis to irrigate and farm thesearid lands and to establish industrial Kibbutzim. In Taiwan,we took a five-day field trip from Taipei to the south andacross the incredibly steep mountain range which forms thebackbone of the island. This trip was an exciting study of avery young and rugged landscape. Here we sawthe effects oferosion from hastily conceived agricultural developmentand engineering practices which seemingly ignored aconsideration of geological factors. We found that the grow-ing marble industry on the east coast of Taiwan owesits exis-tence to the presence of highly metamorphosed sedimentsthere which were formed in the collision of the Philippineplate with the Eurasian continent.

In addition to the lectures and readings, we also made useof problem study groups in which an "expert" oJ.;two workedwith two or three others to investigate a particular topic. Theresults of these studies were presented to the class by eachgroup, giving the members an opportunity to speak on whatthey had learned. In this way the background material fromthe summer research was combined with field investigation,observation, and discussion to make the subject come alive.To avoid having each person simply give or read a report, thestudents experimented with different formats in theirpresentations and in most cases produced a program whichcombined significant content with imagination. One suc-cessful format used by several groups wasan "evening news"approach with one person introducing the topic and provid-ing continuity, and the others each making several shortcontributions. One of these presentations in India focusedon an introduction to the new ecological system to which wehad been recently exposed. One person gave a biologicaldescription of the flora and fauna in our vicinity and told ofthe changes we could anticipate in other areas we wouldvisit. Two students in this group discussed tropical weatherpatterns and the influence these have on the distribution offlora and fauna in India. Another related climate and geo-logical features to agricultural practices in various regions,with emphasis on southern India. A fifth group memberspoke on endangered species and attempts by the Indiangovernment to save them. According to the student evalua-tions, preparing and presenting these topics was a highlightof the course. .

For another of the presentations in India and also inTaiwan, groups made site visits to industrial complexes inaddition to their library research. At each site they learnedwhere the raw materials came from, how they were trans-ported, details of the technology employed in the fabrica-tion process, and something about the transportation anddistribution of the finished product into the economy.These studies sometimes touched on labor problems, poli-tics, job satisfaction, employee safety, and other concerns

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relating to the life of the people. In India, the discussionscentered around the theme of appropriate technology, whilein Taiwan the focus shifted to one of understanding thestructure and stimulus for the phenomenal growth of indus-,try in the last decade. One group considered the energy sup-ply problem for Taiwan, its historical development, andvarious scenarios for its future.

In studying the more developed countries like Taiwanand Japan, neither one of which is particularly rich in indi-genous raw materials, Brown's theme of global interde-pendence began to make more sense. In Japan we were ableto study a fully developed economy like our own and to gainsome new perspectives on solutions to problems common todeveloped nations, such as air and water pollution. It soonbecame clear that we as Americans could profit from a recon-sideration of some of our strongly held beliefs on suchthings as individualized transportation, energy usage, andperhaps even our philosophical attitudes toward such thingsas labor-management relationships.

Abenefit from this program which lies outside the area ofscience education but which is certainly relevant to it wasthe awareness we all developed for the role of national andinternational politics in a country's development. Two ofour Egyptian professors noted that only with a sustainedpeace in the Middle East and a substantial effort at economiccooperation could Egypt begin to cope with its tremendousproblems of overpopulation and scarcity of resources. Thesefactors were certainly among those motivating the talkswhich were taking place at Camp David during our stay inCairo. We were told by the Taiwanese that their ability toimport raw materials and to maintain export markets, andthus sustain their economic viability, is crucially dependenton stable political alignments. In India, the point was made

Sunrise over the Nile with some of the group members atop CheopsPyramid outside of Cairo.

by several lecturers that the social structure and itsresistance to change could severely hamper a country in itsattempts to develop, though it might be fortunate enough topossess an abundance and diversity of resources.

It is important that a program which relies on the work ofso many diverse people separated by such large distancesreceive careful evaluation and respond to needed changes.My course and the general aspects of the program wereevaluated by the students at its conclusion. In addition, eachof the other four courses was evaluated by me and the stu-dents prior to our departure from each country. Ratings forthe four courses given in the host institutions varied consid-erably, though I noted a somewhat disturbing but persistenttendency on the part of students to rate individual lecturersprimarily on the basis of their charisma and ability to enter-tain and to ignore the lecture content. Lower course ratingswere generally due to the problems of integrating a largeamount of material from many different speakers. Thestronger students can accomplish this on their own, but itcan be facilitated by the host coordinator or principallecturer if they are made aware that it is needed.

The program as a whole received outstanding marks, somuch so that the number of applications for the next year'sgroup nearly tripled over those we have had in recent years,in spite of increased costs. In the evaluation by the studentsthis course was given highest marks for its relevancy to whatwe saw and experienced, and for the amount learned. Stu-dents commented in particular on how they enjoyed theproblem study group format and the investigations theymade for their presentations. Many recommended that thissomehow be carried over into future courses. A few felt that

the workload and the emphasis on academics was a bit muchin comparison to the loads carried by global students in pre-vious years. In retrospect, it seemed to me that this coursebenefited most from a strong preprogram preparation on thepart of the students, a workable and relevant theme, and theopportunities for the students to combine academic and ex-perientiallearning. Of the goals set for the course, it was thisintegration of the academic and the experiential aspectswhich the students seemed to appreciate most.

There are inherent difficulties in conducting a coursewhile supervising the operation of a program which visits 10countries on a 19-stop itinerary and has the usual amount ofgastroenteritis, other sickness, and miscellaneous mishaps.In spite of this, it is tempting to contemplate repeating thecourse (and the journey) in some future year with this ex-perience as a background. In addition to the obvious im-provements in lectures and the benefits of knowing ahead oftime where to find resources for the students and myself,one could surely avoid some of the sickness and plan aheadfor stressful settings so that the timing and pace of thecourse would improve. One would also be aware in advanceof the potential provided by many different situations forinteresting learning experiences. Just imagining the luxuryof being able to anticipate a few of these things makes meactually bold enough to consider doing it all again. 8

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