Mamta Accapadi, her daugher Saaya and husband Jos will be spending a Semester at Sea this fall. (drawing by Nidhi Chanani)

As a college student, Mamta Accapadi always imagined traveling around the world with the Semester at Sea program, but timing and finances never worked in her favor.

When she became the Dean of Students at OSU, it seemed like the dream would never be a reality, but Accapadi wanted to find ways to give OSU students the opportunity to join the Semester at Sea program. So when she met a representative at a conference, she was eager to find out more. But what the representative said surprised her.

“She said, ‘Why don’t you apply?’” Accapadi recalled. In addition to students, staff and faculty members are recruited for each voyage. For Accapadi, the possibility of achieving her dream seemed remote, but without really believing she’d succeed, she sent in her application, figuring she’d be weeded out during the highly competitive process.

Instead, she got a phone call the following summer, was interviewed for the position of Dean of Students for the Fall 2011 trip, and was accepted. That unexpected turn of events had Accapadi scrambling to figure out exactly how to work this adventure into her life.

Luckily, her husband Jos, associate web director for Central Web Services at OSU, and their 3-year-old daughter Saaya were able to join her, and Vice Provost for Student Affairs Larry Roper worked with Accapadi to free her up from her duties at the university.

Starting Aug. 20, Accapadi will board ship in Boston with her fellow faculty and staff, and prepare for the arrival of around 500 undergraduate and graduate students. The ship will spend 110 days circumnavigating the globe as they stop in 10 different countries, spending time at each location in putting their education to use. The broad-based curriculum is interdisciplinary, and all has practical applications to their world travel, from political science to social studies.

Although the program does not provide the immersion of an in-country study abroad, it instead offers the students a chance to have a global comparative experience, for instance, learning about post-colonial feminism in class and then comparing women’s experiences on the ground in Ghana and Hawaii.

In addition to their course work, the students are also engaged in fieldwork throughout their journey. The program, which is based out of the University of Virginia, describes turning the world into an academic laboratory.

Accapadi is thrilled to experience the adventure alongside her students, and looks forward to docking in places around the world and introducing her daughter to a unique travel experience. In South Africa, the group will be joined by a very special visitor, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. They’ll also travel to Cuba, Morocco, India, Vietnam, China, Costa Rica and several other countries, a total of 10.

“It’s something I could have never imagined,” she said.

Accapadi will be chronicling her journey on a blog called “Accapadis at Sea”, available at: http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/accapadisatsea/

~ Theresa Hogue

OSU Dean of Students Mamta Accapdi is helping lead OSU's new interfaith and community service initiatve as part of a campus challenge from the White House. (photo: Theresa Hogue)

President Obama’s “Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge” is drawing participation from leading campuses around the United States, and Oregon State University is among them. OSU will send three delegates to the White House in early August for the initiative’s national kick-off event.

The challenge is an initiative inviting institutions of higher education to commit to a year of interfaith and community service programming on campus. Since his inauguration, President Obama has emphasized interfaith cooperation and community service – “interfaith service” for short – as an important way to build understanding between different communities and contribute to the common good.

The White House is encouraging institutions of higher education to make the vision for interfaith cooperation a reality on campuses across the country through this program, which was launched this spring. The White House will recognize those colleges and universities who create and implement the best plans in summer 2012.

OSU Dean of Students Mamta Accapadi, who will be taking graduate student Nicolas Martin and coordinator of the Human Services Resource Center Clare Cady with her to Washington D.C. for the kick-off ceremony, said she was excited to apply for the campus challenge because it coincided perfectly with her determination to creative a more supportive environment for students exploring their spirituality. She said that too often, universities focus on academic and social support, but may not nurture and encourage students who come from various faith traditions, or who are exploring a spiritual path.

“Students are coming to campus seeking a sense of purpose, and for some students, that sense of purpose comes from their faith.  If we are not encouraging students to examine the foundations that shape their sense of purpose, then we may not be fully serving our students,” she said.

Accapadi is careful to explain that the interfaith and service initiative does not simply support students who practice organized religion, but all types of spiritual development, even that which does not come from belief in a deity or external source of goodness. Agnostics, atheists, secular humanists and others are included in that definition.

Ali Godil, president of the Muslim Students’ Association, is a member of the student leadership team helping to implement the program. He said he hopes to build strong communal ties among different religious groups, and stand up for justice regardless of background.

“I believe that creating interfaith dialogue makes the community stronger,” he said, “and builds a bridge of cooperation between religious organizations and groups in the area. It’s a better way for us to all understand each other, no matter what religious doctrine we adhere to.”

Before learning about the President’s challenge, Accapadi had already started working closely with the campus religious advisors association and was examining ways to encourage students of different faith to begin communicating with others. The challenge gave Accapadi a chance to focus her ideas into a clear plan of action with the help of a team of students and staff who worked together to apply for the challenge.

Each campus must select a thematic priority for the challenge, and OSU has selected domestic poverty as the ‘service’ element of the challenge, which Accapadi says aligns closely with the university’s land grant mission. The Human Services Resource Center, which offers housing and food support for students in need, will be a strong component of the project.

Accapadi hopes that the large scale service project that will take place this year on campus to address local poverty will be student created and driven, and as part of the project has assembled a team of students of different faiths and backgrounds to work together on creating and implementing the project.

Additionally, there will be an interfaith conference this winter, and a fall speaker’s series addressing different faith communities, and many other opportunities for students, faculty and staff to discuss and learn about other faiths and traditions, and how each spiritual practice brings with it a sense of purpose in service.

“We all ponder why we are here, and what we are doing,” Accapadi said.

Godil said as a student, working on the project has opened his eyes to new possibilities on campus.

“I’ve learned the beauty and gracefulness of many of the leaders in this campus, how many are so willing to work together and promote diversity through peacefulness, that it turns OSU into a safe environment of understanding where any human being feels at home,” he said.

For students to function well once they graduate, Accapadi said it’s crucial for them to understand and navigate a world of diverse communities, and one element of that includes understanding faith traditions.

“We don’t have to agree or embrace other spiritual traditions, but that knowledge helps us to live in the world. I want students to be able to understand other people. We owe them that.”

~Theresa Hogue

Harry Potter fans will enjoy taking Mamta Accapadi's freshman course on Finding Your Patronus.

– Harry Potter’s first day at Hogwarts was exciting, confusing and a little bit scary – emotions that are not all that different than those experienced by many new college students nationwide.

At Oregon State University, however, freshmen have an opportunity to take special courses designed to help them get oriented to campus – using themes that include pop culture and social media. These “U-Engage” courses fill up fast. They are taught by a variety of administrators and faculty members, and include such themes as “Is Facebook a Noun or a Verb?” and “Exploring the Biology of Pandora.”

While the courses may have a catchy slant, they include important information, including practicing critical analysis, identifying campus resources, developing a sense of belonging and contributing to a diverse community – skills that will help them deal with future college courses and life on campus.

OSU Dean of Students Mamta Accapadi, a fervent Harry Potter fan, identifies strongly with the plucky, fiercely intellectual yet socially ostracized Hermione Granger. Accapadi is stepping into a teaching role this fall when she leads a special freshmen-only course called “Finding Your Patronus.” For Accapadi, the medium of Harry Potter is perfect for teaching students how to deal with a range of professorial personalities.

“You may even encounter a (Severus) Snape on campus,” she said – a reference to a classroom tyrant in the Harry Potter films.

“I’m hoping that I have a lot of Harry Potter fans in the room, so that everyone will start out having something in common,” Accapadi said. “I feel like that will minimize barriers and the class will gel way more quickly.”

Kris Winter, director of New Student Programs and Family Outreach at OSU, said they’ve asked the faculty and administrators teaching the courses to come up with themes that are in their area of interest.
“They focus on something they love and want to explore further,” Winter said. “It’s not every term you’re asked ‘What do you want to teach?’”

The classes may range in topic, but they all include a capstone assignment, reflecting writing and a fireside chat with various administrators to lessen the distance between incoming students and top level administrators.

Not all of the instructors are professors. Many, like Accapadi, have some teaching experience but have a different professional focus. U-Engage instructors have plenty of support as they prepare for their fall courses, including syllabus workshops and brown bag training sessions.

Laurie Bridges, for example, is the business and economics librarian with OSU libraries. She is taking part in the U-Engage program because it allows her to teach a subject she’s passionate about, social media. Bridges’ course, “A Life Lived Online: Social Media” will look at how communities are being created online, and how students interact with the digital world.

“As a librarian I know that the information landscape is drastically changing,” Bridges said. She’s going to be looking at how social media tools like Twitter and Facebook are altering how society is functioning, and how it might shape the future of careers and family.

No matter if students are exploring the complexities of Facebook or deciding that their leadership style is more Hufflepuff than Slytherin, they’ll hopefully emerge from fall term with a better sense of what it means to be a college student, and maybe, how to face those Snapes of the world with a little more courage.

For a full list of U-Engage courses, see http://oregonstate.edu/newstudents/u-engage/index.php.

~ Theresa Hogue

Mamta Accapadi is the new dean of student life at OSU. She moved here from Austin, Texas with her family recently, and is settling into her new life in Corvallis, and her work as an administrator on campus. (photo: Theresa Hogue)

Accapadi is the new dean of student life at OSU, and began working here in March. The Texas native’s most recent job was as assistant director of the Multicultural Information Center at the University of Texas, Austin, where she was in charge of student programming and funding and worked collaboratively with other departments to support students.

In 2007, after years juggling administration with teaching appointments in two different academic departments at UT Austin, Accapadi had the opportunity to do a year of post-doc work at the University of Houston in women’s studies.

“Many of us in the student affairs profession compromise our work-life balance as we work to support our students,” she said. During her work at University of Houston, she learned what it was like to focus solely on teaching. Not only did it give her a better appreciation for the challenges faculty face, but it also allowed her to start learning how to balance her work and home life.

Accapadi also learned balance when she trained to become a certified yoga instructor. She signed up for certification classes without having a background as regular yoga practitioner, but she felt like learning yoga from a teaching standpoint would give her a more complete picture. However, it meant long hours of learning, piled on top of her busy work schedule, so she had to learn how to prioritize her life.

“It was a first step on my path to wellness,” she said.

When she started looking for a new position, she was determined to find a campus that was truly committed to student success, not just on paper, but demonstrated by active initiatives.

“I wanted a campus that valued student affairs as a profession,” she said, and she also wanted a supervisor who would serve as a mentor. She knew Vice Provost for Student Affairs Larry Roper by reputation, but when she began investigating OSU as a potential workplace, she learned just how respected Roper was in the student affairs community.

“It was consistent across upper level colleagues. They all said ‘You’d get to work with Larry Roper?’” Accapadi said.

The family-oriented appeal of Corvallis also appealed to Accapadi and her husband, Jos, and with the arrival of their first child, that became a priority.

Two months after moving here, Accapadi is now adjusting to the pace, and the climate, of Corvallis. She loves the fact that she can walk to work, that she can meet her husband on campus for lunch, and that she is working with other enthusiastic administrators focused on student wellbeing.

A big question Accapadi thinks universities need to answer is “Are we preparing students for a global society?” She said other countries are producing university students who are multi-lingual and focused on their place in a bigger picture, and that American students need to start identifying themselves as citizens of a global community.

She also recognizes the economic challenges facing higher education in general, and the Oregon University System in particular. She said the face of the university will be changing, and she will be learning and growing along with those changes.

“It will be tough and it will be exciting,” she said, but in the long run, she believes the university will emerge as an even better place.

Several of her administrative partners are also relatively new arrivals to the scene, bringing enthusiasm as well as a respect for the work already done in the area of student affairs.

“We bring a new perspective,” she said. “What’s nice is that we can remind folks of the greatness that is here.”

~ Theresa Hogue