One student was honored at the Conference in Santa Fe with the CIEE 2003-2004 Student Recognition Award, Hideyuki Hiruma from the CIEE Study Center in Guanajuato, Mexico. Thoughout his semester, Hide demonstrated outstanding academic achievement, exceptional cultural sensitivity, and a motivation to learn that was inspiring.
Guanajuato, Mexico
Karen Rodriguez, Resident Directer of the CIEE Study Center in Guanajuato, Mexico wrote the following about Hide:
A Japanese national studying at a U.S. university with a significant Japanese population, this experience was a double immersion of sorts for Hide, who was the sole Japanese student among 10 American peers, and a foreigner in his Mexican homestay as well. He was able to use his learning about Mexican culture to help him understand more about both American and Japanese culture, observing his own reactions in comparison with his classmates’ and finding unexpected parallels sometimes between Japanese and Mexican society.
Hide wrote weekly essays in English (his second language) in the Core Course in which he analyzed different aspects of everyday life in Mexico, submitting beautiful and thoughtful analyses of the people, customs, and places he interacted with. Never shy to challenge his own previous ideas, his writing was exemplary of the sorts of transformations one hopes to see in students’ thought processes abroad. For the final three weeks of the program, he undertook independent research with a local reserve park dedicated to ecological conservation and environmental education. Hide earned the respect and affection of the staff at the park, wrote a probing paper about local conceptions about the environment in which he re-thought a good many ideas, and taught a group of local children using games and activities he designed himself.
Throughout the entire semester, Hide was engaged, respectful, dedicated to his homestay family and his learning process. In sum, Hide was the sort of superior student and “success story” that inspires everyone who is involved in on-site international education – host-families, teachers, program staff, and peers.