Most of our students are from the Micronesian islands (about 80% on our Guam campus), an area of the world largely unknown to most of the rest of the world until a few years ago. 100 years ago most Micronesians could live all their lives without knowing anyone from outside of Micronesia and many of them never saw a non-Micronesian. This began slowly changing in the 20th century, but in the last few years the "multi-culturalizing" has accelerated. Throughout the islands one can meet Filipino and Bangladeshi workers, Japanese, Chinese, American and European tourists and other unexpected people. Did you know that one of the best Indian restaurants I have ever experienced is in Palau - the Taj? And I haven't even mentioned yet that Guam is one of the most multi-cultural gatherings of people anywhere in the world. In addition, many Micronesians live, work and minister in multi-cultural communities in Hawaii and on the mainland. And, with the proliferation of cable TV, internet and other media, global culture is sweeping into Micronesia.
Therefore to help our students prepare for this, one of the new objectives added to our PIBC goals is....
Cross Cultural Skills: As the world grows smaller and as a globalized culture emerges, it is not enough for students to simply be aware of or appreciate other cultures. They need to become culturally fluid so that they can relate to, learn from, and serve in several cultures. We seek to foster a culturally fluid environment by recruiting students and faculty from a wide variety of backgrounds, challenging students to develop relationships with people from other cultures, integrating cross-cultural emphases in all our classes, encouraging students to be a part of a mission team in a different culture, by teaching classes that are particularly focused on cross cultural communication, through our community English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) classes, and our teaching English for speakers of other languages (TESOL) training program --
- that the student will be exposed to staff, faculty and fellow-students from a wide variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds and understand and appreciate the many worldviews that they represent.
- that the student will grasp the urgency of and participate in the biblical mandate to make disciples of all nations.
- that the student will learn to appreciate art, music, literature, science, and other cultural expressions from around the world.
TO accomplish this we will need to have a wider variety of students, staff and faculty. We are actively recruiting students that will reflect the wide variety of cultures on Guam - Chammoros, Koreans, Japanese, Americans, Europeans and of course Micronesians (from their home islands, Hawaii and the US mainland) along with people from the other Pacific Islands. We believe that PIBC/PIU would be an excellent place for anyone interested in doing cross-cultural missions whether they are from the East, West or Islands.
Of course another main focus is to send our graduates into the unreached areas of the world as missionaries. Thus, we are looking for students from a wide variety of cultures and are working hard to diversify our staff and faculty even more than it is now. I would appreciate your prayers as we work toward this and would invite people from all over the world to join us. A multi-cultural campus is better for our Micronesian students and it enables to reach out to the world.
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