after the World Trade Center fell, Anderson was flying to California to see Wang, now a successful investor with a keen interest in eliminating world poverty through education. Both were eager to find a way to pre- vent another 9/11. Wang donated $4 million to start a center to coordinate all of PLU’s global efforts. It was up and running the next year. A foun- dation to support it soon followed. Their timing was right. “The generation of students who were in high school, middle school and grade school in 2001 grew up with an incredible sensitivity to mat- ters global,” Anderson said. “The students coming at us as the first generation of the 21st century were ready and interested.”
Curious about a Zodiac raft filled with PLU students and faculty in Paradise Bay, Antarctica, a minke whale rises up to take a closer look. “We are part of a much larger and exceptionally beauti- ful creation,” says Charles Bergman, a PLU English professor. “We often felt humbled in Antarctica but not dimin- ished—bigger in the bigness of the whole.”
from Namibia to its campus, fund their educations and return them home. Today the “PLU Eight” are among the first generation of busi- ness, political and journalistic lead- ers in a free Namibia. Instructors like Ann Kelleher,
K.T. Tang and Barbara Temple- Thurston were among the univer- sity’s first global-education leaders. Within a decade after Loren Ander- son’s arrival as president in 1992, the university had embedded its natural leaning toward global education into its long-range strategic planning. Then 9/11 occurred. Within days
Like Stephen Strom, 22, who spent four months in his junior year visiting Ugandan schools, assess- ing what it would take to make that country’s war-torn education sys- tem whole again. Today he hopes to go back and incorporate all he learned into his passion for creative writing.
“It more than just opened my eyes to see how difficult it is for these countries,” said Strom, who presented his thesis on the subject at the University of Notre Dame’s 2012 Human Development Con- ference. “It’s just important that everyone understand everyone else’s cultures.”
Then there’s Mary Beth Leeper, 34, whose PLU studies in Spain and Ecuador fueled an after-graduation stint in Bolivia working to keep street children with their families longer. Today she’s an attorney in Kent, Wash., fighting for the rights of immigrants. Her global education at PLU gave her the ability to appre- ciate subtle nuances with her clients, like sharing jokes from their culture and not hers. “It’s so important for me to see
my clients as individuals and human beings,” Leeper said.
Thinking ‘bigger’ Anderson, who retired this year, said an education that incorporates global experience makes students think bigger about poverty, race and dis- crimination. “It inevitably asks you to walk in the shoes of the other,” he said. “We begin to see the world in more complex and nuanced ways, and we come to understand that our way is not the only way.” Students reaffirm their faith, examining it while being exposed to other faiths.
And then there are the albatross moments that change them forever. “They want to be driven to their knees,” Bergman said. Tamara Williams, Wang Center acting executive director, said PLU undergraduates who have studied away find jobs twice as fast as their contemporaries. In those jobs they earn $7,000 more a year. “It’s value- added for that candidate,” she said. PLU’s new president, Thomas Krise, vows to build on what Ander- son so fully developed as the uni- versity’s identity and mission. In the face of increasing competition from other schools, Krise seeks to keep the PLU study-away experi- ence “richer and deeper.” He aims to expand PLU’s longstanding and unique connections with Norway and Namibia, as well as strong ties in Trinidad and Tobago, in Oaxaca, Mexico, and in Chengdu, China. Krise also hopes to couple PLU’s programs with the ELCA’s compan- ion synod relationships. For exam- ple, the Southwestern Washington Synod, in which PLU is located, has an active relationship with the Evan- gelical Lutheran Church in Namibia. PLU regularly sends and receives students from that country. By combining efforts, the experiences
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