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MSID has placed student interns in Kenya for 20 years. This group is from 2000. Photograph courtesy of the Learning Abroad Center.

Staff at the University of Minnesota’s LearningAbroad Center (LAC) watched the harrowing images of violence coming out of Kenya with more than passing interest. Hundreds of Kenyans were killed and thousands were injured and displaced when the East Africa nation erupted in the wake of its disputed presidential election December 30.

Among those affected by the violence: seven student interns with the LAC-sponsored Minnesota Studies in International Development (MSID) who were spending the year in western Kenya, where the violence occurred.

The program places students from a variety of degree programs with host families. They spend about six weeks in the classroom and then work on development projects, such as organizing seminars on sustainable agriculture, teaching youth about reproductive health issues, or working for a nonprofit’s micro-credit program. In addition to the seven students already in the country, 28 more were scheduled to travel to Kenya for the spring semester beginning January 21.

“The violence is tragic for Kenya because it was such a shining star in Africa in terms of stability and unification among tribes,” says Al Balckum, director of LAC. The tribal violence forced the University to consider canceling the spring program and bringing the other students home. Ultimately, after receiving assurances from MSID staff in Kenya and consulting with the State Department, the LAC relocated six of the seven students already in Kenya into the central and eastern regions (one student returned to the United States) and delayed the start of spring semester 10 days, until a semblance of calm returned to the countryside.

“[The students] were not happy about being moved and were adamant that they wanted to stay,” says Balckum, adding that the students’ determination to continue their internships despite the violence underscores the uniqueness of the program. “The whole idea of MSID is that it’s in developing countries, and so diffi cult situations sometimes do come up. This is service learning at its ultimate, and the students are very dedicated.”

“I would not trade this experience for anything. I am in Kenya during one of the most crucial moments in its history,” says Kate Kessenich, a political science major from Appleton, Wisconsin, currently on internship in Kenya. “I know this experience will change me drastically and will open my eyes up to a world far beyond my own.” Balckum says his staff continues to monitor the situation in Kenya, and has a plan in place in case circumstances warrant the evacuation of students.—Cynthia Scott

Decomposition 101

Memo to people who eat on campus: Stop treating your trash like garbage. Thanks to the Organic Composting Initiative by University Dining Services (UDS), some of the leftover food scraps, napkins, cardboard packaging, and other food waste accumulated at campus dining venues can now be tossed in bins marked “Organics Recycling” instead of the garbage can. The eco-friendly waste is then taken to the St. Paul campus, where it joins leaves, weeds, manure, and other organic matter in the University’s compost heaps.

Seventy-eight tons of compostable material were collected at campus kitchen and dining facilities during fall 2007, the first semester of the initiative. That’s a hefty amount of wouldbe trash, but UDS officials think they can do better. So, to help raise awareness of and participation in the program, UDS created the Green Team—University students stationed in dining halls during the lunch hour (identifiable by the unbleached, organic cotton T-shirts they’re wearing, naturally) to help enlighten diners on what goes in the trash and what’s compostable.

Straws, plates, parfait cups, and salad and beverage containers actually qualify for the compost bin because they’re made of polylactic acid, a polymer derived entirely from corn resin. Called GreenWare, these items take about 45 days to break down in compost piles.

UDS plans to implement additional biodegradable packaging as it becomes available. According to the Green Team, the notion that fast food can’t be made more environmentally friendly is just plain rubbish. —C.S.

Reports of the demise of reading are greatly exaggerated, says University of Minnesota professor Deborah Dillon, one of the nation’s foremost reading education scholars who was recently awarded the Guy Bond Endowed Chair in Reading in the College of Education and Human Development.

The proliferation of technology, Dillon says, doesn’t mean people read less—just that they read in new ways. In other words, Dick and Jane aren’t dead; they’re just busy updating their Wikipedia entry.

With distractions like computers, video games, and iPods, is it tough to get kids to sit down with a good book? If you look at reading in a broader framework, kids are reading many different kinds of texts. We might find that they are reading more than ever, but it’s not the traditional kind of reading where they go to the library and check out a book. They’re reading Web sites and electronic books. They’re listening to books on tape. If you broaden the notion of reading beyond just books that you carry around under your arm, you see a very different picture.

But reading a book is different from reading a Web site, right? It is different, but one isn’t necessarily better or worse than the other. A book requires perseverance, and it allows readers to get engaged with characters and see ideas carried through a plot. Reading through Web sites is what we would refer to as critical reading. It’s about sifting through things, analyzing and evaluating information, and putting different pieces together.

Are kids smart enough to figure out these critical reading skills on their own? In general, we don’t teach critical reading skills with the same emphasis as we do other reading skills, and we’re finding that the kids are not as savvy as we might think. For example, they do not necessarily know the credibility of certain sources; they tend to click the first link that pops up. Oftentimes, they’ll just go to one site instead of going to several to do comparing and contrasting. We need to help them navigate.

What does that mean for teachers who are trying to engage a new generation of readers? For many kids, reading is about sharing ideas through social sites like MySpace and YouTube. Reading is a social activity. Educators have to think about what kids are doing outside of school and what could we do in school that helps them learn how to be critical consumers of all of the electronic text that they read.

So, is it goodbye, Hamlet, hello, ToBeOrNotToBe.com? Not exactly. We shouldn’t abandon traditional materials, but the days of experiencing information only through a book are gone. It is too appealing, too available, and too interesting to use different media to understand and connect with ideas. That enriches what kids learn, and we should embrace that. —Erin Peterson