2023 Student-Faculty Fellows: Berea College

Sacred Geography & Environmental Change

Mentor: Jarrod W. Brown, Philosophy

Students: Noah Vargas, Kira Munson, Kelli Thomas, and Joseph Seo

Project AbstractOur team of five researchers (four undergraduate students and one faculty member) engaged with responses to climate change and understanding cultural conceptions and understandings of climate change.  We did this by investigating areas of land loss and subsidence in Dong Thap province, Vietnam, and conducting interviews with nearby residences while at the same time engaging with literature about the issue and southern Vietnam.  In conducting this research, we were first hosted and briefed by faculty at the Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities.  We were joined by a translator and support personal, Ms. Nguyen Thi Hong Loan, who helped coordinate our transportation and accommodations (homestays) in the provinces and provided translation services throughout our work.  Because of research was primarily interview-based coupled with observations and photo documentation, students deeply engaged with locals. For most of the stay, students were housed in a homestay in a small local village, Long Khanh A, and about half there time were hosted by different members of the community for their supper.  They had the opportunity to join a death anniversary celebration, to accompany a local crab fisherman during his work, and to spent time informally with members of community.  Additionally, Ms. Nguyen took the students on several informal outings—to local markets, to the nearby city of Hong Ngu, and elsewhere—many evenings when we were not doing fieldwork.  These informal opportunities afforded students with the opportunity to strength cross-cultural communication skills, navigate unfamiliar environments, and form lasting friendships. During this time, students were collecting and analyzing data, including keeping a research notebook, gather photographic documentation, and using tools like ArcGIS to record geodata while developing their skills in using the qualitative data analysis software Atlas.ti, and learning to connect their observations with scholarly literature. After a pause after returning, students began participating in a Directed Reading course which is entering just its third week. Although I am on sabbatical and in Southeast Asia, students and I are meeting online each week, individually and in groups, so that I may both support their work on their individual project (three students) and our co-authored paper, which all students, including our graduated former student, are contributing to.  Students are working on discipline-specific projects, we are collaborating on a co-written project, and all but the departing student will be formally presenting their work—two at the 2023-2024 Berea College Asian Studies Colloquium, and at least one will present at the AsiaNetwork conference (at least a poster presentation).  Students are learning to use a number of collaborative and project management softwares and techniques, including using Zotero to create a shared resource library, messaging services to communicate as a group, Google Drive to share research, Google Documents to provide a summary of the articles that they contribute and to develop a co-written paper.  They are learning to bring their own disciplinary expertise to an interdisciplinary project and to work collaboratively from the conception to execution.  Therefore, we are continuing to develop key professional and academic competencies.

Noah Vargas
This project and opportunity will help me develop further skills that I intend to use beyond this project. After Undergrad, I plan to graduate school to study climate change and environmental science. Having the opportunity to visit Vietnam and research the climate impact, there is not something I would be able to understand if I hadn’t witnessed it for myself entirely. This experience helps to understand why it is vital for the type of work I intend on doing in the future is essential. Furthermore, it highlights this impotence on a global scale and that the issues studied on the Mekong are not just an isolated case. Still, similar situations can be observed elsewhere, including in the United States. This project will allow me to further my connections to other academics in the field and the ones we met in Vietnam. Looking beyond this experience and the project, I can apply what I have learned about climate change, the Delta, and overall experience to future endeavors. I relied on past experiences like studying agriculture in Greece and Costa Rica and applying what I learned there to what I observed and researched in Southern Vietnam. The skills I continue to develop during this research project will help lay a foundation I can build upon in graduate school and beyond. I hope to inspire others to learn about the impacts I observed on the Mekong and help be a part of the solution.

Kira Munson
In experiencing the Long Khan community and our interactions with the people willing to host us, I learned unique methods of intercultural interactions. These skills of cross-cultural communication are vital in being able to understand and work well with differences in culture in any setting. However, these applicable communicative soft skills are most effectively earned in person and through first-hand experience. The opportunity to do so in Vietnam has been advantageous to me in gaining the ability to communicate across language barriers, maintain respectful norms, and engage wholeheartedly with people who have different backgrounds from my own. These skills will undoubtedly be beneficial to me in any future endeavor but will most immediately be used in my upcoming community outreach position. I am going into a job where I will be engaging with people in the community I live in, many of whom I may have things in common with, but others come from different backgrounds. Having the ability to navigate cultural differences while remaining conscious and respectful is a challenging task. It is, however, made easier by my experience working with the community in Vietnam who welcomed us and with whom we worked to connect. This immediate application of intercultural communicative skills is a necessary experience I gained through this project.

Kelli Thomas
This experience was valuable to my professional skill development as I gained experience in skills that would typically not be accessible to someone of my field or experience level. These skills include but are not limited to field-style research, using field mapping applications to collect time-stamped images with research information tagged, and constructing research questions on the spot. I was also able to experience collaborative, interdisciplinary research as an undergraduate student. Previously, I had always been interested in pursuing research as part of my career. Now, research is something that I would definitely be interested in during my future graduate and post-graduate studies. These skills will also be helpful to my career and professional pursuits. I intend to pursue a graduate degree in diplomacy to work with Asian countries. So, being able to experience an Asian country firsthand and in such depth has been an incredible opportunity for my personal and career growth. This experience has been invaluable to me and my future.

Joseph Seo
Through running into challenges during the research process, I have a better understanding of what are my limits and strengths. This deepened self-insight will further enable me to work on my weaknesses and have confidence in my strengths. They will help me to know what kinds of opportunities to pursue and how to work through them as well. My individual project has helped me practice economic concepts as I applied the concepts to real-world issues. Through this growth, in the future, I can try to answer more complex and difficult questions that will help us solve bigger ongoing problems in the world. The teamwork we engaged in has allowed me to grow as an individual who can be professional and friendly as I contribute to the group not only academically but also socially. The most important lesson, personally, for my future career was trying to deconstruct the motivations and desires of the villagers. When I saw these desires and could relate to them, I could develop them. I believe these desires will motivate me to become a more sociable and friendly individual which will help me in any professional setting in the future.