News & Events

Tuesday, December 2, 2008
by: Linda Karten and Holly Wojick

Last month, students from New Jersey and their counterparts in Ukraine, got to talk via video conference, about a range of current topics from politics to economics, from soccer to fashion. The conference was the first of three meetings planned for the current school year as part of the Deliberating in Democracy program. The DID program, facilitated through Seton Hall's Center for Global Education, explores controversial issues facing the world's democracies. The program allows American high school students to share views and consider issues with students from emerging democracies in Eastern Europe and in other regions around the world.
 
The video conference began with a discussion about recycling and corporate responsibility before moving into a lively question and answer session. Teens in Kiev, linked via the U.S. Embassy, were curious about how American families are dealing with the current global economic crisis and whether the American students wear school uniforms and play soccer. Students from New Jersey asked about Ukraine's complex political structure and connections to Russia. Impressed by the Ukrainian students' language skills -- translators were on hand, but were not always needed -- the American teens discovered that students spend an average of 7 hours a week studying English and typically speak as many as four languages.
 
In addition to organizing the video conferences, staff from the Seton Hall's College of Education and Human Services are providing DID training to high school teachers, and conducting program follow-up and evaluation. The project is funded by the Constitutional Rights Foundation and Street Law. Students and teachers from high schools in South Carolina, Maryland , California, and Illinois are also taking part in the DID program at other universities around the country.

For more information please contact:
Maribel Roman
973-275-2977
romanmar@shu.edu