The Global Classroom Experience

By: Tori Chapman, EC Scholar and Honors College Junior

Last semester, I enrolled in my second Honors College seminar called Culture, Health and Healing. It was perfect for me as Nutrition Science and International Studies Global Health double major! The class focused on health and healing practices of many different cultures and how to learn and respect cultural differences.

A major component of the course was the “global classroom experience.” We were able to video chat with a group of university students from Mexico to ask questions about their lives and culture, especially surrounding medical treatment. Questions we asked included: What do you do for fun? How do you view Americans? When you get sick, how do you seek treatment? This was a fun, educational interaction that really gave them and us an insight into the differences and similarities between our cultures. Interacting with people our own age from a different culture was a wonderful way to end our medical anthropology class!