are among the most exotic in the world. what do students take away from such a trip? we'll examine what san jose state students learned after trekking to a hidden gem of the middle east... on this edition of equal time. san jose state is encouraging students to study abroad. but why? can't they learn lessons right here on campus? we're going to answer that question by exploring what a group learned as students, when they left the cozy confines of this university

for more than two weeks in oman and the united arab emirates. they helped conduct interviews and shoot this piece led by journalism professor diane guerrazzi. my name is sadeq jawad sulaiman i'm from oman, and i've just entered into my 80th year. i do see this stage of life as very interesting in many ways. i hope one can keep one's health and of course awareness of the world around us. today's world is becoming more aware of the sultanate of oman in the 19th century it ruled over an empire stretching from the arabian peninsula down the east coast of africa. but oman fell into feudalism and isolationism until 1970 when qaboos-bin- said

overthrew his own father to become the sultan. he boosted spending on health, education and welfare. now once again oman is ready for the world stage. i have remembrances from 1940, and i can tell you, it's another country almost one might say in terms of what development has taken place. but in terms, as i say, of the other aspect of it, which is the change and evolution in the social, political aspects of life mostly, it's been rather slow. oman has remained under the world's radar the past few decades.while in the neighboring united arab emirates. dubai has become a mecca for tourists.

now, oman is carefully laying out its welcome mat. this country of untouched beauty is seeking to strike a balance basic to all humanity. there are two things every human being is engaged in all the time. one is to preserve oneself. the other is to enhance your fortunes. a joint concert between universities a world apart. sultan qaboos university in muscat and the college of william and mary in virginia. ♪ some of the americans indistinguishable from omanis ♪

it's the kind of harmonic relationship the country is encouraging. in oman we have this kind of idea that we really want to develop tourism but not to open up so widely that we lose our identity and our core like the traditions the history itself. so. its like, we are kind of open up to the outside world but at the same time we are keeping up our traditions and whatever make us unique. in front of the whole world. oman is meticulously restoring its forts and castles that date back to the 16th and 17th centuries. we lived here 16 years ago and it was just a wreck then. and someone said they nearly finished it so we thought we'd come up and have a look. in the ancient souks tourists are able to buy handcrafted silver made here.

i make many pendant, necklace earing, coffee pot... tourists flock to the goat markets. and the country's showcasing remote villages.. such attractions stand out in today's interconnected countries. there are more interconnected now than they have ever been. the systems are the same.

culture. heritage. ecotourism. thats what oman is promoting in ten marketing offices overseas covering most continents. most of the people who answer the call are from europe and the middle east it was easy coming in to oman from the uae. the road was good, the drive was good. the view was excellent. cutting through the mountains and all. it was nice. sitting down one-on one with the omanis was one of the best ways san jose state students

were able to learn about the culture. now, when we come back what the former ambassador to say about the key to appreciating people wherever you may go. just a five hour drive from muscat... dubai.. shiny and new. shopping malls are the center of activity here. while muscat restricts tall buildings

dubai breaks records for heights. having big landmarks like the burj khalifa, for example the tallest building in the world, and other famous hotels does help in focusing attention on dubai and the uae. however people in the uae have high affinity for tourism and welcome travelers. and i think that's very important in tourism to have the local environment be be very receptive and welcoming. why from japan did you decide to come to dubai? because i always wanted to come and see all the tallest towers and dessert. every year they increase, the size of the fireworks. for us, i think it is, why is because arabs from new york. dubai is a unique case. in some ways i do appreciate it, admire it.

and i admire it in this sense... dubai with its commercial approach let us say... has been able to bring together people of all areas of the world and somehow created a society which revolves around what people do, rather than what people think. so, if you walk in a mall, say in dubai, you will find all kinds of people and there will be people who even cannot talk to one another but they all live the same lifestyle. there are pressing economic reasons for oman to develop its tourist sector. half of the country's citizens are under 20 years old. in the next five years they will need one million jobs. secondly, oil sector and gas are going to exhaust one day. so diversing the

one million jobs. secondly, oil sector and gas are going to exhaust one day. so diversing the economy or even reducing the dependence on oil, i think the tourism sector is going to help a lot. responding to the urgency, in 2001 the government opened the oman tourism college and instituted a bachelors of tourism at sultan qaboos university but in spite of all the efforts little more than two million tourists have discovered oman in even the best year. compared to ten million for dubai. so almost ten years, and we reached just this amount. no, the idea is not the quantity. the idea is the quality of tourists for the type of tourists we are looking for. that's why oman is one of the most expensive tourist destinations around the world. quality . not quantity. key in the omani way of life. you have to have a vision

where you are going. and the vision always connects where you have been before. so the omanis when they chart their vision, they always remember who they are. where they have come from. what this country was about. what oman is about suits these canadian expats. working here more than a year. maybe its something to say about the abali sect which is the islamic religious sect dominant here in oman you'd see that they're much more tolerant than other countries in the region so you're not in saudi where the wahabi movement with their different view or interpretation of islam is taken to be extreme. the abadi sect is so welcoming and open to others and warm and kind. arabic hospitality, everyone talks about it but its over the top. its like you show and interest in something and they welcome

you. like you're one of their own. its really incredible. and thats what we call holma meaning meaning it is forbidden for you to do anything that's harmful to the other person we cannot do that. but, if you would just stand there and say ok i'm not harming anyone, fine, no the other responsibility is to raise that person. ..and they will come back at 4 o'clock. we have thursday markets.. aspects of omani society will inevitably change as more tourists arrive and the governing powers. evolve. sultan qaboos is in his 70s with no heir to the throne. no one person should be allowed to dictate. so in other words, we have to be able to decide things that relate to the public domain, in a democratic way. according to the ambassador

whether change in oman or anywhere is for the better depends on something simple. we can only self fulfill and self realize ourselves by being more human and humane. there is no other way. you see? no matter what we build around us. what matters is how you evolve from inside. welcome back to this edition of equal time. today our focus is on international learning for our students at san jose state university.

let's meet our guests. hi! i am marcella, and i did the study abroad trip to oman and dubai. hi my name is rebecca williams and i have been on the study abroad trip to oman & dubai. i am emily schmidt. i am incharge of global education and initiatives. i am pam richardson. i am the acting associate dean of the college of applied sciences and arts. and i am responsible for our inter- national experience initiative. i want to thank all of you for being here. the audience is aware for many many years that students have studied abroad. but we are doing unique things here at san jose state. and i wanna start with pam, pam you've helped to establish something in the college of applied sciences and arts. and that is a series of departments that are now having it as a requirement. let's talk about that. that's correct bob. we are in the process of rolling out and international experience initiative which will eventually become a requirement for all of the students in casa and as part of that we are establishing a number of international programs. generally short term programs that are faculty led. um that run either in the summer or we will be rolling out regular session programs

that run during the regular academic year. very good now, we'll talk about travel and the casa in just a moment. i wanna get to the students. marcella what was it like? did you enjoy? it was amazing. it was probably the best experience of my life. i think oman & dubai are the two places i wouldn't have chosen on my own. but going there and meeting the people and just sort of understanding what it's like to be there instead of hearing a story about it. it's a really great experience. and rebecca you were there on that trip as well? yes. tell me about the learning part of it. people in the audience want to know why did you have to go way over there when you could have read a book? the book doesn't tell you the same story of visiting another place or going to oman and dubai seeing through your own eyes and seeing it for yourself. so i learned a lot meeting the people that live there. seeing the land for myself. it's more than just seeing through like national geographic. so it's just a book, you are just looking through and flipping the pages. you see and you learn more. and learning to understand the culture. yeah. the traditions that are different from here in this country. emilie i think that's part of the goal

of all of this international learning. it is indeed. um. there are loads of international initiatives that students can do so they can go on short term faculty programs. they can go on longer semester and year long programs. if students are unable to go abroad they can live in the international house. which is a mix of the international students and american students. and many many other initiatives are going on at sjsu right now. now today as we are taping this i will be meeting with a group of new students coming in to the school of journalism and mass communication and i will be talking about this international requirement. i am sure the parents out there are probably wondering wait a minute, what does it involve? what does it cost and how do we make it happen? well as emilie said there are a lot of different options and one of the things that we are trying to make sure of is as we roll this program out is that we have variety of choices for students. students can go on longer term trips for semester abroad, a year abroad if they want. but we understand that for a lot of students that's not possible.

so we want to make sure there are plenty of short term programs similar to the oman trip that the students went on. so they can go abroad for shorter period of time in a guided setting with an instructor who can help them understand it in context of their discipline and their majors. so we have a lot of programs that are gonna be general education requirements and a more cultural learning. but in addition to that we have programs specifically different departments including yours that allow students the opportunity to engage in activities and learn about the profession and the discipline in other countries and in some cases with students from other countries. very good! now as the director of the journalism school i am thrilled that we have our students go do these trips. i always worry about certain concerns so i am going to ask you all about that. when you get off the plane and you get into another country that you have only read about how do you feel? what takes place in your mind? i would say at first i was a little lost cause i don't know

the language, i don't know arabic as much. and just trying to understand and get around you get a hang of it after a while. were people engaging? or were they standoffish? how did it come across? i think people were engaging. if i asked them a question like oh where do i go? they would answer. and oman, how did it look in terms of economics? poor country? rich country? how did it look to you? marcella? it depends because if you go into the capital muscat, everything is beautiful it's new it's really nice but then you go into the villages and we went to nizwan we went into a village that was being built and it does look a little poor but people are very friendly. and when it came time to actually drill down and do what you do, journalism and communications were people engaging enough to want to answer your questions, were they halted by it because they might not be used to the american style of interaction? i do think that people were intrigued by us. we went to the souks which are like

the markets and people wanted to talk to us and i know someone asked to take a picture with me because i was american. you know i think people do wanna know about where we come from and our culture. very good! that's what we are hoping for is that we will open up a dialogue that will be an engagement for the lifetime but are there any challenges that you have encountered emilie as you have done these over time and how we set these things up cause what are the precautions i think people wanna know have you taken into account before they go? um i think we do preorientation which informs students about what they need to be looking for cultural sensitivity and then a lot of practical information about how to pack how to get your passport and things so students pretty much know what they should be doing and then of course the delightful surprises on the ground. like what? what happens? oh! many many things. ha ha! um but i think the important thing for students to be aware of is this is really a transformative

experience and this is one of the reasons i like working with students so much and encouraging them to go abroad is because systematically i hear from students this changed my life, thank you. so maybe you are a doctor and you hear that often but i cannot think of any other profession where you hear constantly this experience changed my life. this is one of the exciting things about higher education it should have that impact. did it change your life? absolutely! and i wanted to throw in that everyone who i have spoken to about the study abroad experience has never said a bad thing. they have always said that they have missed it and they wanted to go back and that was the experience in their lives. so i definitely think it is a great opportunity if you can study abroad. and emilie said something about the surprises that happen, did you guys have any surprises? pleasant surprises. oh the food was really great, i mean we had biryani a lot. haha i can't think of any negative surprises, it was a really good experience. and i would imagine that people

want you to try things because they believe that's why you are there. yeah. and are you, was the group willing to do that? i would say so, a good majority of us were very willing to try out the new food, new anything. an exploration when you went out because we are journalists, we are media people we want to find out, we want to see what's going on, we really don't want someone to be controlling our travels, we really want to have that freedom of choice. did you experience that? absolutely! they gave us freedom there was one day like half of our group broke off and when to one side of dubai and the other went to another side. and it was nice you know, we each had like separate experiences and at night we came home and started to talk about what we did. very good! now journalism and mass communications have four plans for this summer of summer 15. istanbul, paris, madrid and florence um that's very ambitious on our part. are all other departments in casa doing that? ah yeah basically, all the departments either have programs established or they are in the process of developing them and it's really amazing to see the creativity and just really exciting courses that are

being developed in all of the departments and with many different locations many different emphases of the courses many different types of experiences everything from nursing courses to the journalism courses to culturally oriented courses and yeah it's very exciting to see what our faculty are coming up with and how excited the students are getting about these programs. and i really like the fact that our department can work with another department and broaden the learning experience for you, for the faculty and everybody who goes on board. setting these things up, how challenging is that emilie? who do you work with to make all of these things happen? well there are two components one obviously is working with the faculty members and making sure that they have established realistic budgets for the students um the housing insurance is important, security issues are dealt with before the students leave. and then working with the students and make sure that they have looked into the programs, what the academic components are to the programs. whether they can get credit

in their particular major. because students don't just stay in their colleges they go across the board university wide and some of the programs are they get upper ge credits other ones have lesser requirements so there are really things offered across the board university wide and it is exciting to see students go to different departments and different destinations than they might just staying within their different colleges. now, i think its exciting for the faculty beause this is the sort of thing we don't normally plan but now we're going to be making that part of our regular planning in the future? will we have options though will it always be in the summer or how will it work? there are the faculty led programs in the summer but we also are in the process of getting, or have received approval for, to begin offering classes in what are called an embedded study abroad model during regular sessions. so they would be offered during fall or sping as a regular course and at some point the instructor would take the students abroad.

so in spring that would typically occur over spring break. it might also occur right before classes start. so they would actually start the course by going abroad for a couple of weeks and then hande the rest of the academic work of the course during the subsequent semester. and we'll be offering our first course using that model this coming academic year and we'll be building on that in other departments, i think thats gonna offer a lot more possibilities, they're shorter term programs they tend to be a little less expensive so cost wise thats a benefit to studetns and even for faculty because some of our faculty can't travel abroad for long periods of time but it gives them the option of doing a shorter term course thats embedded in the regular session study. and i also wanna say with the cost initiative we are making it a point to develop courses for which students will get credit towards their majors so whether they're general ed requirements, whether they're electives in the major or required courses in the major

the students will progress towards their degree while they're on the study abroad that's most important. yeah. so they're not extra units, or units that they can't use towards their degree that it'll help them in their progression towards their degree. so its not a joyride, its not a vacation. right. its truly purposeful for that degree program. i understand san diego state is doing something like this other csus are doing smething like this. um. san diego state has this requirement in their college of health and human services. to my knowledge thats the only other entity within the california state university system that has it as a requirement. of course, every university has study abroad options for their students. exactly, and for the students you just heard the option where we may broaden it out now and have it during the course of a fall semester or a spring semester how do you see that working for you? well, i'm graduating in may but- well, for students in the future i think its a great idea. personally my minor is global studies and so we do a lot of reading and we do a lot of reading books that are about other countries. and so if you got to be in that country and experience it while you're readng this book about it

i think that could be a valuable experience. and when you talk to your parents about this or the people who are going to help pay for this to make you go how do you explain this to them so they'll understand its not a vacation? well, my family were very adventurous, they love to travel so explaining to them that traveling is for my education, they love it. they think its a very good advantage. do they worry about the cost though, your parents, when they figure out how much this may be? they do, they say "wow" you know, the cost but if its worth it, you see an advantage to it, four your degree, to your life, to how you live your culture, then do it. and is the idea going to filter down someday maybe to high school and community colleges to say that when you get to san jose state this is a requirement this is something that is positive, as opposed to oh we have to do that too? how do you make it a positive when you message that to future students? well, nowadays we interact with everyone from all over the world so i feel like you need to have that experience of traveling abroad and getting to understand a different culture because you're going to be

working with people in the middle east and asia and china, and you know, everywhere you can imagine in your entire life. very good and for the administration it understands that we are situated in silicon valley this makes perfect sense for us to do this but do we have any outreach efforts to fundraise and help support these efforts? emilie? um that's actually something that has been done at the college level right now and there are quite a few scholarships coming out of casa and the business school and there are certainly efforts to do some fundraising to offer studying abroad to a larger rath of students, yes. the other thing that the semester and year long programs traditionally tell students is that even though it seems that it will be quite costly, you pay tuition at sjsu to go away for a semester or a year and another student in a foreign country is

paying their home tuition so the only thing you need to worry about are your living expenses and it comes as no surprise to anyone here, silicon valley is very expensive actually end up cheaper for students to go abroad longer term because they're paying the the living expenses in another country that are maybe less expensive than living in silicon valley. so thank you and than you for being here and we thank you for joining us. we hope you'll come back, for another edition of equal time.

♪ tonight we take "revolutionaries" on the road, to npr studios in washington, d.c., and get the inside story of one of the giant companies of the internet age. we talk with steve case, former chairman of aol,