Cameras simultaneously will roll Thursday afternoons this spring at Case Western Reserve and Fisk universities as students begin discussions through cyberspace for the collaborative course, "Multicultural Diversity, Social Inequality and the Pursuit of Health in Global Perspective."

As students in the classes of Thomas Csordas, chair of the department of anthropology at Case, and Irma McClaurin from Fisk's department of sociology sit around seminar tables in Cleveland and Nashville, Tenn., respectively, they will examine a broad range of critical issues important to the physical and mental health of today's global community.

Case students will view and talk in real time to their Fisk counterparts seen on a 30-inch screen, positioned at the end of the table in 201 Mather Memorial. A camera also will be pointed at the Case class.

"We are bringing multiple perspectives to bear across universities, regions, disciplines and cultural backgrounds," Csordas said. "What we are trying to do here is not just to make diversity a topic that we are studying but making diversity a feature of the way we are studying."

The seminar was developed through a Walter Nord Grant that Csordas received from Case's University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education and through assistance from the Case Office of Instructional Technology and Academic Computing.

According to Csordas, this class is "a stepping stone" for Case and Fisk to form an international collaboration with two universities in Brazil through the United States-Brazil Higher Education Consortium Project, a program of the U.S. Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education.

Case and Fisk expect to submit a proposal in the United States in March, while the Federal University of Bahia in Salvador (the most highly Africanized part of Brazil) and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre (a region of strong European ethnic influence) will submit a similar one to their government.

The class in College of Arts and Sciences to begin this spring is one of the first collaborations for Case and Fisk, which formalized a five-year agreement in 2002 to partner in a variety of academic pursuits. Case also is working with Fisk as part of a component of a National Science Foundation Advance Career Award to change the cultural climate in the sciences.

Return to the online edition of the 12-18-03 Campus News.