The campus is celebrating International Education Week through Friday. International Education Week, hosted on campus by University Outreach and International Programs (UOIP) is a national event organized by the Department of State and Department of Education to celebrate the benefits of international education and exchange worldwide.

This year, UOIP is promoting how international experience has impacted members of the campus community and will be sharing profiles each day of the week.

Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi

One of the most defining experiences of my life was having the opportunity as a young woman to travel to another country.

I was 22 years old the first time I left Greece. It was 1976; I was a junior at the National Technical University of Athens and I traveled to Germany to present a research paper at an academic conference. I had never been to a conference before or even flown on an airplane. I arrived in Munich for the conference and I found myself in what seemed like a huge place, surrounded by what felt like the rest of the world. I was captivated by everything I saw, from my first experience in a large department store, to the huge train station where the trains departed within one minute of the posted times.

Most of all, I was amazed to be in an environment where people came together to talk about research. I wanted to learn so much more. This experience spurred my curiosity about other places and, ultimately, it influenced my decision to come to the United States to study at UCLA.

That same year, I met a faculty member while I was looking for a summer job. He would later become my mentor in Greece, when he was on sabbatical leave from UCLA. I had the opportunity to work with him the whole summer and, before he left, he told me that if I ever considered graduate studies, that I should go to the U.S. At the time, I did not even know what that meant. I saw some of my colleagues applying for graduate school, but I had no interest as an undergrad and so I politely dismissed the idea. I was focused on graduating and getting a job.

After graduation, I worked for two years as a lab technician in a research laboratory. I was surrounded by many people who had master’s degrees, and I came to realize that they were doing work much more advanced than what I knew. Many of them had studied in the U.S., and they talked about graduate school — this was the moment I realized the value of attending graduate school.

In May of 1979, I asked my husband if he wanted to go to the U.S. for graduate studies and he said yes. I contacted my mentor at UCLA and asked him, “Do you still have space for a graduate student?” He said absolutely and sent me the applications, and so I applied. By September of that year, I was a graduate student at UCLA. It felt like a dream. I couldn’t believe that it could be so nice.

Looking back on these experiences that shaped my future, I was fortunate to have had the opportunities to explore new places. It is my hope that our students at UC Davis take full advantage of every opportunity to open their eyes and their minds to the ever-expanding global community of new people and new worlds, and to make the most of their undergraduate experience at UC Davis.

L. Carolina Tavárez

Alo, komon ou ye?* Starting more than a decade ago, I was exposed to an experience that not many children have: missionary work.

Traveling with my parents as a child to some of the poorest sectors of Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Haiti gave me a wider vision of the world, humanity and poverty. After the massive earthquake in Haiti in January 2010, I was encouraged to return to my homeland of Haiti. I became very interested in Haiti’s history, but struggled to understand how a country with such rich history and natural beauty was among the world’s poorest countries.

I went to Haiti during the summer of 2012 for three weeks, thanks to the support of the UC Davis Blum Center Grant Poverty Alleviation Through Action (PATA) program. I stayed in the small village of Anse-à-Pitres, Haiti, which is one of the four cities that shares a border with the Dominican Republic, located on the southeast side of the island.

There, I volunteered at two primary schools and taught Spanish and English, trained foreign language teachers and worked on the school’s curriculum development. Thanks to the support of many UC Davis students, I founded Ann Prepare Lavni (APL), the first Haitian club on campus. The name of the club is Haitian Creole and translates to “Let us prepare the future.” Through the club we were able to assist over 200 Haitian students attain school supplies, hygiene products and textbooks. Upon my return to the U.S., the Haitian government and the town of Anse-à-Pitres donated two acres of land to APL, where we are building the first and only library in the town. Furthermore, APL now has three free Spanish and English classes in Haiti and the Dominican Republic and is currently working toward our budget goal of raising $42,000 for building materials.

As Nelson Mandela said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” If you would like to know more about APL, please visit annpreparelavni.webs.com or email us at annpreparelavni@gmail.com.

*Hello, how are you? (Haitian Creole)

For a full list of International Education Week events, visit uoip.ucdavis.edu/iew.

In celebration of the start of construction for a new classroom and recital hall that is to be built on campus, the music department will be hosting an event  tomorrow at 11 a.m.

The ceremony, located at the project site on First and A streets, will consist of a tractor rolling through the area while drums are playing to mark the beginning of the clearing of the site before construction. After the initial ceremony, a piano concert and reception will be held at the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.

The ceremony is being held in honor of the donors who have contributed a large sum to the project’s budget.

The new classroom and recital hall has been long underway, according to Clayton Halliday, assistant vice chancellor and campus architect.

“It’s been identified for a long time as a need for the music program to have a quality recital hall environment,” he explained.

The total cost of the project is $15 million.

Halliday explained that, due to limited state funding, much of the funding for the project has come from private donations.

“Right now, $10 million of that is [from] campus funds that had been set aside, and $5 million is from private donations,” said Halliday.

Of that $5 million, $1 million was donated by Davis residents Grace and Grant Noda in 2008. In addition, the Nodas have recently donated another $500,000 to the project.

The new building will consist of a large recital hall and several classrooms. The recital hall portion of the building will contain an audience chamber that seats 375 people at the center of the building and a performance platform, as well as spaces for ticket and coat check and a concessions area. Though the building will contain classrooms for student usage, Halliday points out that most of the larger classroom practices will be held in the recital hall.

Henry Spiller, professor of ethnomusicology and chair of the music department, and Phil Daley, Concert and Publicity Manager and assistant to Spiller, both agree that there is a great need for the new recital hall on campus.

“The music department has been enriching the cultural life of campus with concerts … and for the most part, these have been taking place in makeshift quarters. Our largest ensembles perform in the Mondavi Center … but the campus needs a place where smaller musical performances can take place that’s not a chalk-covered classroom,” Spiller explained.

Daley also emphasized the importance of what the recital hall will offer in terms of practice and performance space, which he says is difficult to come by in the music building, located west of the project site.

“It’s a space that is going to be vital to learning music,” Daley agreed. “You cannot learn as an individual performer unless put in an environment that incubates your learning.”

This Thursday’s event marks the beginning of the project. The project is expected to be completed by December 2014.

JESSICA GRILLIS can be reached at campus@theaggie.org. 

In the aftermath of the Nov. 18 pepper spray incident, UC Davis community members began considering the possibility of developing a civilian oversight committee to oversee campus police action.

Currently, plans are underway to begin proposing models that would best fit UC Davis and the greater community.

“Oversight in its many forms provides accountability and transparency for police issues that are otherwise inaccessible to the larger community,” said Barbara Attard, private oversight and accountability consultant and former president of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE). “Community members work to ensure that police practices reflect the values of the community— and that there is a balance between maintaining public safety and respecting constitutional rights.”

There are several basic models of civilian oversight, including the commission model, the investigative model, the auditor/monitor model or a hybrid of the three.

“We’ll be looking at identifying concerns with the current police situation, how we can better student-police relations and how we can have a level of transparency and accountability in police actions,” said Rahim Reed, associate executive vice chancellor of campus community relations at UC Davis. “Once we’ve identified those issues and concerns, we’ll look at which model best helps us reach those goals. After that, it’s going about the process of training, orienting the people who are involved … about the process and making sure there is the proper communication plan to inform the campus community at large. As a whole, civilian oversight would improve student and police relationships.”

In an Oct. 16 seminar, Attard addressed the positive and negative aspects of civilian oversight.

According to Attard, civilian oversight adds credibility and transparency to police disciplinary systems, works to improve thoroughness and fairness of complaint investigations and helps to sensitize police to community needs. However, civilian oversight can polarize the police and segments of the community, requires public funding and does not completely eliminate police misconduct.

For oversight to be successful, a number of necessary features must be met, she said. The board must remain independent from special interest groups and the police must receive adequate funding and authority and must make findings accessible to the public.

UC Davis Police Department Police Chief Matthew Carmichael is optimistic that oversight will be effective.

“I feel oversight will have a positive impact on the department but more importantly within the community,” said UC Davis Police Department (UCPD) Police Chief Matthew Carmichael. “Oversight provides the community with another avenue as it relates to the complaint process. I will continue to meet with community representatives to seek input on policy and the needs of our community.”

Currently, UC Berkeley is the only university campus in California to employ a civilian oversight agency.

STEPHANIE B. NGUYEN can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.