Issue date: 11/14/08 Section: News

James Ochwa-Echel is the African-American Studies coordinator. He created the Interdisciplinary Center for Global Diversity on campus. (Submitted Photo)

When James Ochwa-Echel came to Eastern earlier this year, he was given a daunting task: design an on-campus program to promote global diversity. The program, already dubbed the Interdisciplinary Center for Global Diversity, would bring together representatives of Asian studies, African-American studies, women's studies and Latino studies.

The new center debuted this semester.

"This is about promoting global diversity," Ochwa-Echel said. "Because of limited resources, all these organizations need to pull together… you need to pool resources."

Women's studies coordinator Jeannie Ludlow said the center is intended to improve exiting resources, not create new ones.

"We don't necessarily want to bring new resources," Ludlow said. "We want to add to what's going on…in terms of cultural diversity.'

Ochwa-Echel said the center will push for cross-listing of courses.

This is a change he said will allow students in diversity-related programs to find related classes in other departments.

He said courses like African history would be listed as both history and African-American studies courses. Cross listing would also help promote interdisciplinary teaching, in which diversity-related topics are viewed by various academic disciplines, he said.

"Looking at interdisciplinary teaching means looking at things from various perspectives, so you don't have a student who is…narrow-minded," Ochwa-Echel said.

"It opens your mind to a lot of ways of looking at the same thing."

Ochwa-Echel said he wants the center to highlight Eastern's diversity through on-campus events, including an international culture festival.

"We are trying to envision organizing an international festival that draws even the Charleston community and the high schools," he said. "That way you expose the community to the various cultures we have on campus."

Ochwa-Echel said he also wants to use the center to promote exchange programs like the National Student Exchange and study abroad.

Ludlow said those programs already promote diversity at Eastern.

"I'm very impressed by the things that are already (happening at) this campus in terms of cultural diversity… like study abroad," Ludlow said. "We want to add another layer on top of that."

That new layer could come in the form of on-campus speakers and workshops, which Ochwa-Echel said he plans to support.

"(We plan to have) speakers, seminars, symposia here on campus, so that we can invite authorities on … global issues to come here as guest speakers," he said. "We could have workshops on various major issues, which could cut across, again, many disciplines."

Joe Astrouski can be reached at 581-7942 or at jmastrouski@eiu.edu.

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