Our philosophy

The Sharing Cultures project is grounded in the shared recognition that significant numbers of students arrive at both UPE and CCC under-prepared for the intellectual, social, and cultural demands of higher education.  It is built on the further recognition that these students typically do not have direct or easy access to meaningful cross-cultural, international, or global encounters?or even to forms of technology taken for granted by many of their peers, especially in the United States.  Because the educational missions of both the University of Port Elizabeth and Columbia College Chicago make explicit commitments to social justice and equality of opportunity, it has seemed a natural and healthy imperative for Sharing Cultures to focus on engaging disadvantaged or under-prepared students in ways that can deepen their competencies in cultural and technological literacies.

Sharing Cultures also has its origins in a deep recognition of the need to enhance the cultural and global perspectives, literacies, and competencies of faculty at both CCC and UPE by providing sustained and focused opportunities for international exchanges.  Through Sharing Cultures, teachers are challenged to use technology in innovative ways and to adapt instruction to a wide range of student needs.  These technological challenges, in turn, provoke a re-examination of fundamental assumptions about how students best learn to read and write within specific cultural contexts.  In order to lead students, especially under-prepared students, to more profound and complex understandings of themselves and their places in the world, teachers have to risk their own questionings and discoveries about identity, community, and education.

Sharing Cultures works, in its own modest ways, to advance the agenda for education articulated by the African National Congress in their 1993 Draft for a New Constitution for South Africa:  ?Education shall be directed towards the development of human personality and a sense of personal dignity, and shall aim at strengthening respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and promoting human understanding, tolerance, and friendship amongst South Africans and between nations.?  As we move towards encounters between students at UPE and CCC that are actual, and not just virtual, we are heartened by how powerful even virtual encounters can be within a structured educational environment.