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Lifestyles of the Spiritually Rich
This is an excerpt from an article featured in the business section of the Jan. 2, 2005, Spokesman Review, titled Lifesyles of the Ridiculously Rich. I felt sad in reading this article -- not because the population of millionaires in the U.S. has soared to more than 2 million, but because this quick wealth may have caught us off guard, leaving us unprepared to manage responsibly the wealth we have obviously learned to create.
The traditional role of education has been to prepare students to be good citizens and stewards of the world. With the new year, I began to reflect on how well the Whitworth Master of International Management Program is helping our students to meet this goal. As a business program, a big part of our mission is to develop the management competencies essential to global economic growth and prosperity. But on a scale of 1- 10, I wondered how well we were doing in preparing global citizens to address the challenges inherent in unrestrained growth and competition. Do MIM students and graduates see themselves as citizens of the world, committed to the betterment of all humankind through economic development and the preservation of the planet, or do they merely see themselves as cogs in the corporate wheel of mass production and personal ambition? Generating wealth is one thing -- using it responsibly is the greater challenge. So, not unlike Scrooge, as he worked his way back through people and places to rediscover the true meaning of Christmas, I reviewed my database of current students and graduates for signs of how Dan Sanford's dream of an international bridge between a small Christian college and the world of multicultural business and education had fared. Dan, I'd say we've done pretty well. As I leafed through the pile of Christmas cards from our academic and business partners in China, Japan, Australia, France, Korea, Ukraine and Thailand, I appreciated how wide our international network of friendship and collaboration had spread. Just the other day, Terry Mayberry, '02 MIM, and his wife, Sue, stopped by to share their joy about moving to Romania to provide project-management support for the River of Life Home for Women and Children. With tears in his voice, Mayberry presented slides of abused and abandoned women and children who were finding new hope through the efforts of this organization. He credited his faith, and what he had learned in the MIM program and through his engineering background, for preparing him to take on this new responsibility so far from home. No sooner had the Mayberrys left my office than one of my colleagues dropped a local publication on my desk. Featured on the front page was Jennifer VanVleet, '03 MIM, a remarkable young woman who serves as the vice president of corporate marketing for Coffman Engineers. VanVleet was featured for bringing the products of Freeset Bags, a business located in the heart of the red-light district in Calcutta, India, to the United States. As part of a Whitworth overseas-study program, VanVleet traveled to Thailand to research the economic culture of Southeast Asia. She was especially disturbed by the plight of women prostitutes in Thailand. Emboldened by this experience, Jennifer traveled alone to Calcutta to complete her final project: studying Freeset Bags, which employs approximately 30 girls and women, all formerly enslaved in prostitution. To learn more about Freeset Bags, visit www.freesetbags.com or contact VanVleet at vanvleet@coffman.com. As I continued to scan old emails and records, it became clear to me that many of our MIM students and graduates are committing their skills and talents to endeavors that generate both economic and social value. Larry Gallegos, '03 MIM, and his family spend exhausting hours setting up ceramic factory cooperatives for villages in Mexico and Morocco. Current international students Tobias Mayer and Suman Polepaka are working with Palestinian political refugee and artist Bassam Al Hayak to create a business plan to market his stunning wood sculptures throughout the Pacific Northwest. Roberta Brooke, '98 MIM, continues her gallant effort, as executive director of the International Trade Alliance, to expand international business for the Spokane region. The final project of David O'Neil, '05 MIM, will be to develop a marketing plan to raise the necessary funds to buy a permanent home for the House of Love, in Chang Mai, Thailand, a place to die with dignity for prostitutes and their children with AIDS. For two years now, the MIM Program has been privileged to send a student to Geneva, Switzerland, to participate in the United Nations Graduate Study Program, a student think-tank created to find solutions to some of the world's most pressing problems related to poverty and the environment. Tina Xiao Tian, '05 MIM, volunteers her limited free time to make the 2005 International Sister Cities Conference a success, while Daniel Valle, '05 MIM, provides much-needed assistance to Ben Cabildo and AHANA, the region's only organization solely committed to the development of minority businesses. Eric Ericksen, '96 MIM, continues to use his entrepreneurial spirit to support the efforts of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, while Joe Grable has been forced to put his MIM studies on hold since being called to the Pentagon for "temporary" duty in the Intelligence Division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Sindy Hseuh Tung, '02 MIM, the international business manager for Therapeutic Dimensions, Inc., works with me on occasion to share her intercultural expertise with local corporations needing preparation for overseas assignments. Laura Reber, '02 MIM, has expanded her involvement with the Spokane Chapter of the United Nations; she regularly represents the group at conferences around the country. These students and graduates (and many more whom I can't even begin to mention due to space constraints) are using their international management skills, their sense of justice, and their entrepreneurial excitement to engage meaningfully in the world. Far from being cogs in an indifferent commercial grind, they've entered into their own "arms race" of making the world a better place. Many of our newly rich could take a lesson here. Instead of bigger and better boats, MIM students and graduates are investing in bigger and better lives. Back to School of Global Commerce & Management >> Spring 2005 Newsletter >> |
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