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Spring 2020 #6 March 2, 2020
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When Opportunity KnocksLuxmbourg is full of unique opportunities for Miami students. This week, the 10th annual Luxembourg Film Festival kicks off and three MUDEC students will be volunteering at the festival. You will read about their experiences in a future addition of the MUDEC Méinden.
Speaking of the future, and of opportunities, students participating in the Luxembourg Intensive Summer Program this summer will participate in the Transatlantic Dialogue Conference (TAD). This conference has been organized by the University of Luxembourg together with Miami University every third year since 2008. Below you can read more about this in an interview with François Carbon, Chair of the 2020 Conference.
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-Study:
- MUDEC Faculty Profile-Charles Khoury
- MUDEC Profs in Action
- Student Faculty Council Profile-Alex Wieland-Ducher
- Lecture Recap-Jacques Klein
-Engage:
- SFC Event-Soccer Game Preview
- Internship Profile-Kendall Swanson
- TAD Profile-François Carbon
-Travel:
- The Travel Times
- Travel Misadventures
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MUDEC Faculty Profile:Meet Charles Khoury
1. Tell us a bit about yourself. Where did you go to college and what did you study? Did you study abroad and if so where (or where is your favorite place to go?)
I'm Charles Khoury. I grew up in Lebanon, a small and beautiful Mediterranean country. Despite a long and ugly war, I had a happy childhood, surrounded by the love of my family. I learned to love life and to treat everybody as I would like to be treated. I learned not to be afraid of differences and to accept that those who disagree with me may turn out to be right. I earned a PhD in law following studies in Lebanon, France and the United States. I travel a lot, mainly between the Middle East, Europe and the United States, working and teaching, enjoying life and meeting new people.
My favorite place to go? Every place I've never been to before is my favorite place to go.
2. How did you end up working for Miami?
When I moved Luxembourg, I heard of MUDEC and decided I should go and take a look. I pleasantly discovered a uniquely beautiful campus with uniquely fantastic people taking care of it. I think Miami University could not have chosen better ambassadors. I decided if the opportunity ever arises to teach there, I would definitely go for it. I am happy it did, and here I am a proud member of this wonderful community, teaching international relations.
3. What are you looking forward to the most while teaching at MUDEC?
Sharing my knowledge, experience and passion with my students. I want to learn from them as much as I want them to learn from me.
4. What inspires you?
Beauty, simplicity and life with all its mysteries.
5. What is the funniest thing that has happened to you recently?
Getting stuck in the snow storm which hit Luxembourg this week. The bus in front of my car, with its wheels spinning in snow, unable to move forward, was a funny sight.
6. What do you want to be when you grow up?
I want to continue doing what I am doing, with the same passion and energy and the hope of encountering new and beautiful things every single day.
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| MUDEC Profs in ActionMUDEC professors are also engaged outside of MUDEC, and we highlight their activities here.
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MGT 291 PodcastManagement professors Anthony Smith-Meyer and Michael Schweiger are continuing their podcast series this semester. The next episode is out now:
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Student Faculty Council ProfileMeet Alex Wieland-Ducher
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MUDEC first-year Alex Wieland-Ducher majors in University Studies. Wieland-Ducher was born in Tampa, Florida but moved to Ohio when he was nine years old. Wieland-Ducher attended Talawanda High before coming to Miami University.
1. Tell us a little bit about your position on the SFC.
I'm the Student Service Chair, which basically means I get to come up with the ideas of what we can do for service in MUDEC and outside of it for the community. So one of my ideas is to do a book donation at the end of the semester where many of the books that people are going to be having for courses are just going to be either left here or thrown away because they're bulky and no one's going to be able to pack it in their luggage. No one's going to take a book about their Management course from MUDEC, so it's one of those things, it would just go to waste, and what can happen is we can have it where it's either a first-come first-serve to get the book or it can be on needs-basis if you are flagged as needing financial aid, you can just get those books. Things to help out the community and stuff like that is basically what my job is.
2. Why did you want to be Service Chair?Basically, I wanted to do the job no one else was picking. Everyone else wanted different jobs and I was like all right, I'll take what no one else is jumping at so yeah, it's my job.
3. What are you most looking forward to in your position?
I do definitely want to do things that make life better for this semester's students.
4. Why did you choose to study abroad with MUDEC, especially for a whole year because you were here last semester as well?
My mom. The call of duty chose me and I didn't choose it. I got shipped over. That's it. Mainly since my mom is faculty, she really wanted me to and she applied for this program-- and she loves Europe, it's a place where she wants to keep up her French, she wants to experience Europe again, and so she applied here and I wanted to go with her because parents-- have a good time.
5. What is a fun fact about you that no one knows?
People mispronounce my name as Doo-sher. It's Ducher, but I mean Doo-sher is actually quite funny sometimes. It's quite fun. My first time in honor roll was in middle school, eighth grade, it was my first time, I was all happy. I was a happy little kid getting straight As. But of course since I'm dead-last in the alphabetical order, I wait, I'm anticipating it. I'm anticipating it, all of a sudden I get called "Alexandra Whyland-Doo-sher." Nothing of my name was correct. I am Alexander Wieland- Ducher. It became "Alexandra Whyland-Doo-sher" in front of the entire school. It's hilarious. I laughed about it at the time, it was amazing.
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Lecture Series Recap: Cupcakes and PoliceOn Tuesday Feb. 25, after students finished their classes for the day, they listened to a lecture given by Jacques Klein. Recently retired after a long career working with the Luxembourgish police force, Klein discussed whether the world needs a police force as well as his experiences during 9/11 and the border-limits for police in the Schengen zone. Although it was previously published as Klein enjoying cupcakes and beer, it was actually Kachkéis and beer. Kachkéis is a typically Luxembourgish cheese that Klein actually enjoys having with a beer (Cancoillotte in French) After the lecture, attendees enjoyed hot dogs as well as veggie dogs with a traditional Luxembourg topping, sauerkraut.
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Jacques Klein enjoying a hot dog with the SFC and MUDEC Students
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SFC Event-FC Differdange Soccer Game: Preview
On Wednesday March 4, the Student Faculty Council will be hosting an outing to the FC Differdange soccer game. SFC Ombudsman and Environment Chair, Connor Manley, gives insight into this week's event.
"FC Déifferdeng 03 and FC Una Strassen meet in a league match in the Luxembourgish Top Division. It's a clash between the 4th and 6th place teams, separated by just 6 points in the league, as they enter the season's final stretch.The match is a home affair for FC Déifferdeng as they host the visitors at the Stade Municipal here in Differdange with kickoff at 8 p.m. this Wednesday March 4.
A large part of what we want to do here at MUDEC is engage with the local community and experience Luxembourgish life. As Europe's most popular sport, and one that often carries the spirit of their home cities, we thought soccer to be a great way to engage with one aspect of local life. Conveniently, FC Déifferdeng and Miami share a color scheme -- so red black and white should be out in full force Wednesday night.
Fun fact: Diff is the most successful club in Luxembourgish soccer history, with 16 cup titles and progressing as far as Qualification playoffs against Paris Saint-Germain in the UEFA Europa League in 2013!"
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MUDEC Internship Profile-Spoticle RecommendatonsMeet Kendall Swanson
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MUDEC junior Kendall Swanson majors in Psychology. Swanson was born in Atlanta, Georgia and is in a Social Psychology research lab at Miami.
1.Tell us a little bit about your position as Spoticle Intern.I work with Andy to help manage and create travel guides for MUDEC students. If people have been somewhere that is very unique or would be a great place for students to stay, eat at or explore that should be recommended. Anyone can come find me and tell me their recommendation or go find a slip in Andy’s office and then bring it to me! And each recommendation that makes it into a guide is worth 1 LUX 335 point.
2. Why did you want to be the Spoticle Intern for MUDEC?I have traveled internationally with my family ever since I was little, and I love finding places to go and things to do. I also love that everyone in MUDEC can get involved by contributing to the guides. When you get recommendations from other students your age, they usually end up aligning with peoples similar interests, and it can make planning easier too. I also love the sense of community it can make when multiple people have been to the same place.
3. What are your daily and weekly responsibilities as Spoticle Intern?I put in recommendations and spots that I receive from students at MUDEC into pre- existing guides, but I also add new guides if we do not have one for a certain city already. For example, we are trying to add guides for Madrid, Rome and Munich! I am also working with the teachers and Andy to help make the study tour guides for each class this semester.
4. What are you most excited for in your role? I am excited to hear where everyone is traveling, and I want to help other students find amazing “outside the box” places wherever they go. I also want to try some of the recommendations myself!
5. How do you see Spoticle helping current and future MUDEC students?As the quantity and quality of the guides grow, more and more students will benefit from them! Many students know to hit the tourist spots, but it can be hard to search through all the other places you need to go, food, and places to stay in every city. Hopefully these guides will make planning easier, and it will encourage MUDEC students to branch out and find new places on their own as well!
6. What is your favorite memory so far at MUDEC? What are you looking forward to this semester?My favorite memory so far has been my weekend in Interlaken, Switzerland. It was the first time I really felt the "abroad" experience, and everyone who went all had once in a lifetime experiences while we were there. I am looking forward to meeting more people and exploring new cities while I’m here!
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Transatlantic Dialogue PreviewMeet François Carbon
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With its inception in 2006, the University of Luxembourg's Transatlantic Dialogue (TAD) has aimed in bringing about debate and the importance of culture in education as well as students and teachers. TAD seeks students from across the globe to join its program-- from Europe to the United States. Students participating in the Luxembourg Intensive Summer Program will be attending the TAD as part of their academic program.
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your career path and what you do today for the University of Luxembourg.
I am a pedagogue and a cultural entrepreneur at the University of Luxembourg who seeks to add a creative dimension to the main tasks of the University, namely learning and research. With this in mind, I run and coordinate cultural and intercultural events that contribute to life on campus so as to promote and improve the quality of life at the UL, broaden horizons amongst UL community members (students, doctorates, administration, professors, researchers, …), boost cross-cultural dialogue, and contribute to an exchange of ideas aimed at developing culture in Europe and, since the initiation of the Transatlantic Dialogue forum in 2008, the concept of a Global Citizenship. In addition, I am a member of the European Cultural Parliament (ECP), a board member of the University Network of the European Capitals of Culture (UNeECC), Vice-President of the movingLAB - European Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Culture and Education and a core team member of the University Network of the Capitals of Europe (UNICA) WG ‘University, Culture and the City’.
2. You have been heavily involved in organizing the Transatlantic Dialogue Conference this May. Please tell us more about the conference and how you got involved.
The Transatlantic Dialogue conference series on global citizens, held in Luxembourg since 2008 as a collaborative effort between the University and Miami University, explores the significance of culture and liberal education for fostering global citizenship from both US and European perspectives:
-articulating why intercultural competence and dialogue matters in their own institutional and societal context
-considering a philosophy of practice that incorporates arts-based approaches for developing students’ and peers’ capacity for cultural diplomacy, peace and global citizenship
-advocating for the principles of cultural diplomacy as a critical component of a university education - in the co-curriculum as well as in the formal curriculum.
‘In the 2014 edition of Transatlantic Dialogue Dr. Elizabeth Minnich, Senior Scholar for the Association of American Colleges and Universities, assessed the contribution of culture to our development as social beings on a global scale. She noted how contexts into which we are born may be both endowed with meaning, as well as deciphered, through our practice of culture.’
The challenges our world presents today can seem unprecedented. Profound differences over the complex issues confronting us, manifest themselves in loud and often discouraging public debates over everything from how we best foster human prosperity to how we address each other on an equal foot in its many forms, protect our fundamental freedoms, and care for the most vulnerable and marginalized among us. Bridging differences begins with approaching others with the will to acknowledge and understand their and our own identity and cultural ‘otherness’. Furthermore, the ‘more astute awareness we achieve concerning our own and others’ cultures, the more sophisticated we can be as thinkers and actors on a world stage.’Therefore, our engagement with diverse forms of cultural expression may enable us to relate to different codes of humanity with confidence, sympathy and growing curiosity towards each other.’ Universities have a key role to play in this regard and this interdisciplinary forum explores multiple perspectives on how this can be achieved.
3. Students on the MUDEC Luxembourg Intensive Summer Program will be attending the conference. Why is this such a unique opportunity for them and what can they expect?
The conference is not a purely academic forum to meet with people from all over but a creative space exploring the topic and context via non-verbal artistic experiences stimulating all our human senses.
4. The Conference is also offering an internship to a MUDEC student as a reporter at the conference. Can you tell us more about what this will entail, and what post-conference reports and activities will be happening?
The editorial team is producing the souvenir brochure including abstracts and reports of all the important moments of the conference.
5. Since you have been partnering with MUDEC for a long time on projects such as the Feed Your Brain debate, what is one MUDEC memory that sticks out?
So thankful to have had the opportunity collaborating with Ekkie Stiller, Raymond Manes, Judy Rogers, Thierry Leterre, Ricardo Averbach, … and experience their friendship over the last decades.
6. What is a fun fact about you that most people don’t know?Being a passionate choir singer, I love rehearsing my parts under the shower …
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Travel TimesWelcome to the Travel Times, a new section in the MUDEC Méinden that features students independent travel throughout the semester. This week, we will be traveling to Austria, France and England!
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MUDEC student in a rustic street in Metz, France
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MUDEC gals in Salzburg, Austria
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MUDEC lady in red in London, England
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Lux lady in Paris, France
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Travel MisadventuresAfter students' first few weekends of independent travel, a few epic blunders are bound to happen. Although never expected and never wanted, we welcome them here. Second up, and continuing the tradition, is a group of MUDEC ladies who embarked to Salzburg, Austria for the first time after arriving in Europe and encountered a surprising bus or lack thereof.
Rolling hills and Julie Andrews and... missing buses?
These MUDEC girls headed to Austria after classes ended on Thursday evening and were excited to see this country for the first time. All was well until a little transportation predicament arose.
Meet Paige and Maddie and join them for this week's episode of:
Long story short: overnight buses are unreliable
This past weekend we planned to to go to Munich and Salzburg. We had bought tickets for an overnight bus leaving Thursday night. We arrived at the bus stop at 8:20pm, an hour early just to be safe. By this time it was dark and snowing, we were already regretting our decision of getting there early. Out of chance we saw three other MUDEC students who directed us to where the international buses depart (thanks friends!!). Their bus was 20 minutes late, but that seemed reasonable. So we watched them go and sat outside in the freezing weather for our bus.
While waiting we met a nice German man who chatted with us about politics and traveling. We waited, and waited, and waited some more. Looking back now we can’t believe we sat out in the cold for that long! It was the coldest we’ve been in our entire lives. Our German bus stop friend called the bus company multiple times and got no information.
Eventually, he talked to another bus driver who informed us that there was a crash involving a travel bus that might’ve been ours. He said that our driver was supposed to notify us if he’d be late, which obviously didn’t happen. At this point we were absolutely frozen, so we decided to bail and head home. We caught the last train back to Esch, and bought a new pricy ticket to Salzburg for the next day. We sadly missed out on a morning in Munich and spent the whole of Friday on the train. But in the end we still enjoyed this memorable weekend and now have another story to tell our parents!
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After waiting two hours outside in the cold, the bus still did not show up. Paige Hassett (pictured left) and Maddie Weitz (pictured right)
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Birthdays This Week
Have a Schengen-tastic birthday! Wishing both of you a wonderful year ahead!
Hailey Kingsbury (Friday March 6)Hunter Friel (Sunday March 8)
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Monday: Classes
Tuesday: Classes
Wednesday: Classes20:00 SFC Event-FC Differdange Soccer Game
Thursday: Classes
Friday: No Classes
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| Château HoursMonday-Thursday: 8:00-22:00
Friday: 8:00-17:00Saturday-Sunday: Closed
Administrative Hours
Monday-Friday: 8:00-12:00 and 13:00-17:00
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