{"id":3453,"date":"2015-01-28T15:35:57","date_gmt":"2015-01-28T20:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2016\/10\/04\/students-represent-the-u-s-at-apec-conference\/"},"modified":"2022-11-07T17:35:24","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T22:35:24","slug":"students-represent-the-u-s-at-apec-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/students-represent-the-u-s-at-apec-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"Students represent the U.S. at APEC conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"20141110_093913333_iOS\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Meeting international students, political, and corporate leaders and learning about a rapidly globalizing world are just some of the benefits four Furman University seniors\u00a0received from their trip to the APEC conference in Beijing, China, this fall.<\/p>\n

Kelly Dickson, A.J. Calhoun, Blake Baldwin, and Sarah Katherine DeVenny attended the Riley Institute\u2019s Voices of the Future Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) program along with Furman political science professor, Cleve Fraser, Ph.D., and economics professor\u00a0Jessica Hennessey, Ph.D. Furman\u2019s participation in the program, created by Noel Gould, chief executive and president of The Virtual Trade Mission Foundation, began in 2002.<\/p>\n

The APEC\/Voices program, now in its 12th<\/sup> year as a program of The Riley Institute at Furman, has allowed more than 50 Furman students to represent the United States in Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation countries including Vietnam, Chile, South Korea, Indonesia, Mexico, Japan, and China.<\/p>\n

\u201cI honestly hadn\u2019t heard of the program\u201d until an economics professor mentioned it, said Dickson, an economics and political science major. \u201cI really wanted to widen my perspective. I\u2019ve never traveled to Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, she hadn\u2019t traveled far from her home in South Carolina until she studied abroad in Belgium and interned at the European Parliament during her junior year at Furman. That time \u201cmade me interested in policy, specifically economic policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baldwin, an economics and Asian\u00a0studies major learned about the APEC program through the Asian Studies Department. Prior to the APEC traveling and Furman\u2019s Fall in China study away\u00a0program from which he just returned, \u201cI had done no international traveling.\u201d\"20141105_020703997_iOS\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Dickson said \u201cthe interaction with all the delegates,\u201d was the most important part of the trip, citing Furman economics professor Nathan Cook, Ph.D., who has said that \u201cAPEC happens on the bus\u201d while all the students are traveling together to events.<\/p>\n

Calhoun, an\u00a0urban studies and political science major, agreed saying that their bus trips were \u201ca class in comparative politics\u201d as students from different cultures shared their views on\u00a0issues. He also studied abroad in Brussels, Belgium, where he became interested in the European Union while participating in an internship\u00a0with the U.S. Trade Representative. He said he wanted to augment the skills he learned in Europe because he knew little about the Asian-Pacific Rim area.<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned to graft some of that European trade knowledge to a different area,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe single most important thing that I learned was the value of thinking differently and being able to make connections between subjects and between people,\u201d Baldwin said. \u201cThere is value to seeing things differently than those around you, to see potential where others do not, and then being able to communicate this to others.\u201d<\/p>\n

The students said they learned to frame their own ideas by being pressed by other delegates to avoid seeing everything through the viewpoint of the Western world.<\/p>\n

Baldwin said that generally all the students were well-informed but somewhat biased to their countries. Still, \u201ceveryone I met was willing to entertain the thought that they could be wrong about what they think and that takes a lot of maturity and education.\u201d<\/p>\n

Learning to accept the differences in how people think is one of the goals of The Voices of the Future program. Another is to have students from the various economies meet political and corporate leaders and learn about the issues facing the 21 Asia-Pacific countries, Hennessey said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s this big, grand conference. You\u2019re seeing Obama. You\u2019re seeing Putin,\u201d she said. But \u201cit\u2019s also meeting these other students who are going to be leaders in their countries. It\u2019s a wonderful perspective to see through the lens of someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Voices of the Future APEC \u201cexposes students to a particular part of the world that is going to be increasingly important,\u201d Fraser said. The students they meet will become leaders who will \u201chave an impact on our lives.\u201d Also, \u201cit gets students to reflect on what it is to be American.\u201d\"20141108_235017531_iOS\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Furman became involved in the program through former S.C. Gov. Dick Riley, who served as the Secretary of Education under President Bill Clinton and was a friend of Noel Gould\u2019s. Riley introduced Gould and Don Gordon, Ph.D., executive director of the Riley Institute. Gould created the Voices of the Future in 1997 in an effort to connect college and high school students from the 21 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation countries with each other, allowing them to exchange ideas and learn a little about participating in global negotiations.<\/p>\n

Under the direction of Gordon, the APEC\/Voices program is co-directed by Fraser and Ken Peterson, Ph.D., chair of Furman\u2019s economics department, and is administered by Carol Asalon of the Riley Institute.<\/p>\n

The first year several U.S. colleges participated, but \u201cwe have become the only game in town in the United States,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Students are recommended by professors and a team is selected. The Riley Institute and Furman\u2019s Department of Economics fund the trip for the students.<\/p>\n

Dickson said one of the surprises of the trip was the pollution, or the lack of it. Students had been told about the extreme pollution problems in China and specifically Beijing. But the Chinese government shut down some factories and instituted a program that kept about half the vehicles off the road on any one day.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think I realized what a big difference that could make,\u201d she said, adding that the skies during their trip were \u201cAPEC blue\u201d because they were so clear.<\/p>\n

Calhoun agreed, saying it showed \u201cthe extent to which a command economy can take action and have results immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baldwin sees hope in the biggest surprise of the conference to him. That surprise \u201cwas the aura of cooperation surrounding the student delegations. There was little tension between students even if there was tension between students\u2019 governments\u2014and that is promising,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Both the conference and his study abroad have broadened his perspectives, he said. \u201cDuring the study abroad I am with 14 other Furman students and constantly surrounded by another culture and language. I have been able to see how other people live their day-to-day lives and experienced everything from great food and friendly people to Internet restrictions and pollution.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring APEC, I was with over 100 students selected to represent their economies from all over the Asia Pacific region,\u201d engaging in dialogue and sharing idea and concerns with students from the Philippines, China, Taiwan, Russia, Australia, Japan, and elsewhere, he said.<\/p>\n

Dickson said she knows that the APEC conference \u00a0“will shape me. It has. I have felt the tension of coming back and dropping back into Furman.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Voices of the Future and Furman University alumna, Rachael Parrish Vitkun \u201909, now serves in the U.S. Foreign Service in Manila, the location of the 2015 APEC conference, Fraser said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Learn more about the Riley Institute at Furman<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meeting international students, political, and corporate leaders and learning about a rapidly globalizing world are just some of the benefits four Furman University seniors\u00a0received from their trip to the APEC […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":14282,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,26,56,17,46,58,32,29,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-administrative","category-asian-studies","category-centers-and-institutes","category-economics","category-internships","category-politics-and-international-affairs","category-riley-institute","category-study-away-and-international-education"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}