Sweet Home Thailand

Not much new news to report on with respect to partnerships between JSU and Thai universities.  I am still waiting for my first meeting with the dean of the undergraduate school of business at ABAC.  Our first meeting was scheduled for Friday two weeks ago at 10:00am, unfortunately I had to request the meeting be rescheduled I was given less than 24 hours notice and I had already made plans to travel to visit my wife and family in Phitsanulok (5 hour drive by bus) after my class finished on Thursday night at 10:00pm.  I am still waiting to hear back when the meeting will be rescheduled but I am hopeful that it will happen this week as I have a clear schedule.  I am also in the tentative scheduling process for my next visit to MFLU as I have (finally) heard back from the dean of the school of information technology in just the past few days.  The exchanges by e-mail and by phone have been to notify the dean when I would be available to visit, which I indicated as any day from Friday, August 1 through Tuesday, August 5 as it would not interfere with my Thursday evening teaching responsibilities at ABAC.  I actually need to get this trip in by August 5 as my 90-day visa in Thailand expires then.  I was planning on taking the 35-40 minute drive to the Myanmar (Burma) border while in Chiang Rai so that I could get my visa extended at the immigration office there for at least another 30 days, which is all that I need as I will be returning back to the US on August 25.

With respect to teaching, in my process of adjusting to the teaching environment here in Thailand, I made a rather substantial decision last week – to cancel class.  It was a substantial decision as I never cancel class even though the practice is common here in Thailand and ‘make-up’ class scheduling is the norm.  I was asked two weeks ago if I would cancel my class last week by the department secretary, to which I scoffed, “Why would I cancel class?”  She simply explained that since it was a Thai holiday (Thursday and Friday) that it was not unusual for instructors to cancel class and give their students a long weekend.  There are a whole bunch of Thai holidays that are recognized throughout the year, so I didn’t think much of it and still insisted not to cancel class.  At my Thursday class two weeks ago, I informed them of this decision and the students appeared to take the news in stride, as if that was just fine with them.  In the days after making this decision, however, I had heard from many different sources, from Thai faculty and students to my wife that suggested that I really should have canceled class as it is an important Thai holiday - to what my wife described as being like a “Thai Thanksgiving” holiday.  All of this feedback finally knocked some sense into me and I cancelled class (informed the department secretary and e-mailed all students) first thing on Monday morning.  Instead of scheduling a make-up class and struggling through whatever that might have entailed, I simply decided to skip the chapter that we were to cover in the class that day and not include that material on the final exam.  All in all, I really should have known better and had my intuition been stronger, I should have pursued more information about the Thai holiday upfront from the department secretary and been more aware of possible cultural insensitivities.  Needless to say, I did not get any complaints from students over canceling class.

With all of the extra time on my hand with no class last week, I decided to stay an additional few days in Phitsanulok (my wife’s hometown) and pursue some advice that Dr. John Ketterer (Executive Director of the International Endowment Foundation, International House, International Programs) mentioned to me before my trip to Thailand.  That advice, namely was that I should “think outside the box” and “look for creative relationships” for student scholarships and funding through sources like Rotary clubs.  During the past week, consequently, I linked up with a couple of the Rotary clubs in Phitsanulok.  I first attended a Rotary meeting on Monday night that had about 40 people present.  While I had to leave early before I could talk to the entire group as my son getting a bit testy (18 months old and past his bedtime), I did get to speak with several individuals in-depth about the projects that their Rotary club has recently been involved in (e.g., donations of computers to several schools serving disadvantaged children) and did promise to come back to another meeting (without my son) before I leave back home to the US.  I also had the chance to speak with a group of 4 teenagers that had an interest in being AFS exchange students(all currently in high school).  In addition to this, the barber that I have cut my hair every few weeks in Phitsanulok is also a Rotary member of a club that meets on Tuesday nights.  He doesn’t speak any English, so I had my wife stay and bridge the language barrier between us.  It turns out that he spends a great deal of his spare time helping disadvantaged children.  In fact, this coming Wednesday he invited my wife to come with him (which I believe she will) as he cuts hair for free for a group of over 100 disadvantaged Thai children.  I think that will be a good experience for her and my only regret is that I won’t be able to get involved as well.

One thing that I have not spoken much about is the research I have done while over here in Thailand.  That has primarily been because the first few months have been more about building the literature reviews and refining the research models before I did any data collection.  I also could not collect any data without having first established any connections to collect data from.  So with everything else going on, I am finally making some noteworthy progress on the research front.  In particular, I have been able to link back up with one of my former colleagues from Milwaukee who is Thai and is teaching in Thailand not far from ABAC and we have two papers that are almost ready to be submitted for conferences.  For each of these papers we have done interviews and collected data from his Thai students and the Thai companies that they work for.  That research is related to logistics and supply chain management.  In other research, Dr. Sonny Francia and I have a book chapter underway that is comparing and examining US and Thai information security requirements.  For this research, one of my current students at ABAC has connections with some financial intuitions that I have leveraged and we are now starting to analyze some of the results of this data.  Busy times indeed that will only get busier as deadlines for each of these submissions occur before I return back to the US.

On one additional note, my wife’s cousin (he is 24 and his Thai nickname is “Bolly”) and his parents had expressed interest in him studying in the US, in particular, taking English classes first and then pursing a MBA.  After a short sales pitch, accompanied by the video available on JSU’s English Language Institute’s website and an invitation for “Bolly” to stay with us in our guest room, I was able to convince them that JSU was the place for him.  In fact, we are rushing through all of the details as I write this post to see if he can travel back with us to the US and start classes next month.  Wish us luck as I have no experience with the paperwork and processes involved with this.