No sooner had Dr. Tanya Cochran returned from leading Union’s study tour in the United Kingdom last summer than she started packing for a very different climate. The director of Union’s English Program spent four weeks in Muscat, Oman, teaching future leaders in the country’s quest to diversify its economic future. Despite being half-a-world away from Lincoln, the biggest culture shock was not the differences but the similarities.
Though Cochran has traveled extensively and spent two years teaching English in Prague, Czech Republic, this was her first time in a majority Muslim country. One of her first surprises was how comfortable she felt there. “God is a central part of their existence,” she shared. “It’s very much a lived religion. That devotion resonated deeply with me, and reminded me a lot of my own Adventist culture and how we live our religion at Union.”
One of her Omani students brought her a pamphlet about Ibadi Islam, the moderate non-violent movement that is the dominant sect in Oman. The small book reminded her of students here handing out Steps to Christ and other Adventist literature. “They would come to me and ask, ‘Did you read the book yet?’” Cochran said. “I didn’t feel like they were pushing me to convert. I think it was a genuine desire to be understood and share something so close to their hearts.”
The Takatuf Scholars Program in which Cochran taught is a public-private partnership which identifies talented high school students from every region of Oman for international exchange scholarships. Her students were predominantly 17-year-olds who had not yet begun their senior year of high school. “I was reminded over and over again these students are the cream of the crop,” she said. “They were very respectful, very driven, and very focused. It was basically a classroom full of honors students.” The students spent the mornings studying subjects connected to Oman Vision 2040, a strategic plan initiated by the beloved former Sultan Qaboos bin Said and continued by his nephew and successor Sultan Haitham bin Tariq. Those subjects ranged from economics and sustainable development to health care, education and environmental sciences. In the afternoon, Cochran and her co-teachers led a four-hour block (with prayer breaks) on research methods.
“We were teaching them the basics of research writing,” she said. “Essentials like how to develop a research question, how to use keywords to search for literature, how to judge if those sources are reliable and relevant, and then how to read, paraphrase, summarize and cite academic literature in APA style.” In other words, the classes Cochran taught in Oman were a condensed version of her ENGL 212: Writing for Scholarly Audiences course at Union with a little COMM 105: Public Speaking thrown in to prepare them for oral presentations.“
The culmination of the program was in a gymnasium with students presenting posters of their research lining both sides,” Cochran said. “It felt like a science fair, except instead of just parents and teachers, these students were talking to business leaders and top government officials looking for talent. Even the minister for energy came.” Of the 180 students who began the program last summer, approximately 60 will be selected to receive full-ride scholarships to universities around the world after completing further research during their senior year of high school.
While Cochran was approached for this role because of her academic research and writing, she found herself often reaching back to an earlier experience: summer camp. The 10-year veteran of Nosoca Pines Ranch in South Carolina worked at camp from high school all the way through completing her master’s degree. “Many of the Omani students had never been away from home overnight before,” she said. “So there was definitely some homesickness.” For the students, this first-in-a-lifetime experience meant they formed attachments quickly, much like summer camp.
Another similarity to the camp experience was the awkwardness between boys and girls. The educational system in Oman starts off coed, but separates boys and girls in fifth grade. To succeed in top universities around the world, the students will need to not only overcome homesickness but also learn to work well with the opposite sex and people from a variety of social and economic backgrounds. A goal of the program is to ease students into this process. To that end, students worked on their projects in groups of two male and two female students, and the groups each needed to have two students from private schools and two students from public schools to increase the diversity of perspectives.
When asked what the greatest surprise was about Oman, Cochran laughs that it was not the students or the school. It was the shopping malls. “They are so familiar,” Cochran explained. “Malls and mall culture is something I grew up with in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and they’re the last thing I expected to find thriving on the Arabian Peninsula.”
“These are shopping malls on steroids,” she continued. “They are enormous and luxurious with chandeliers and marble floors. People go every day of the week and make it a family event. It’s not just to shop; it’s a social center where people meet to eat and talk together. It gave me an overwhelming sense of nostalgia.” With temperatures exceeding 105 degrees on most summer days, the social role of an air conditioned public space made complete sense, and Cochran soon found herself pulled to the mall during her free time.
Cochran has been invited back to Oman again this summer, and is still weighing her options. The program gave young students power, which in turn gave them a sense of belonging and pride in their community. Cochran said she left Oman feeling inspired and eager to bring this vision back home. It is possible to sketch out a way forward that simultaneously engages students, brings them together despite disparate backgrounds, and fosters a sense of belonging by empowering them.
by Luke Morris, a junior English major, and Scott Cushman, director of public relations