"So, what are we doing in Jordan anyway?"

Sunday, Nov. 17--From Tom:

So far we have written about crazy driving and wild dogs, visits with doctors, tender mercies by quiet angels, lifestyle changes and trips to interesting historic places, lunches on roasted goat, and crazy party goers next door shooting machine guns. But what are we doing here?

Ronna and I came here because AUM ( American University of Madaba) was starting an architectural program. So it was anticipated that I would be the one with the heavy load and Ronna might, perhaps, maybe, possibly teach a little English or maybe just translate a little. Not so!!

Tom's Original Class: When we arrived in September, I was originally asked to teach only one class. Because Architecture is just starting, it didn't make sense to have me teach a "Practice of Architecture" course to Freshmen so the Dean asked me to teach a Professional Practice course to second year Graphic Arts students. Yes, Graphic Arts!! First of all, I've never been a college professor and secondly, I am not a Graphic Artist. Third, there was no teaching plan or syllabus and fourth, no textbooks were ordered or available. I had a big learning curve. I even had to learn what a syllabus was.

Ra'Ed, the Dean, is a very cool, bright, outspoken Jordanian architect who got his architectural training in Milwaukee of all places and got his PhD in Scotland. He is very passionate about the arts but also about politics. He served in the Jordanian Parliament and is now starting a new political party. He and I have gotten along very well, increasingly so.

Ra'Ed also wanted  me to give a lecture to the Jordanian architectural community on the State of American Architecture, which I am still working on. He also wants me to work on accreditation, recruiting and internships. We're figuring it out as we go. There are two other professional architects on the faculty, Yasser, a PhD who is very competent, technically. He was Dean of Architecture at the University of Jordan. Dr. Waleed Al Sayyed is a Jordanian, also a PhD, who practiced in London and published a quarterly international journal of architecture. Both are wonderful.

My class turned out to be about 6 students although only 3 showed up the first two weeks and one or two hardly speak any English.

Ronna's Classes: Ronna, on the other hand, was given a boatload; she has four classes totaling about 90 students. The worst part for Ronna is that they are not four classes at the same level ( so you could prepare one lesson and teach it four times). She has four different levels of students, thus having to prepare and plan four lessons for four different ability levels. The bottom two ( remedial) hardly speak English and frankly don't want to be there. Many have rich parents who are forcing them to go to college. Anyway, try to explain or teach words like" envy, concern, thoughtful or meaningful" to people who don't know the words for "cat, dog or ball". Try to do charades for those words. So Ronna is going nuts, and stays up till the wee hours planning out lessons for this wide range of students. She'll give more description in a later blog.

Ronna in her office

Surprise!!: One Tuesday morning, in the third week, I had no classes and was making some copies for Ronna. I got a call from my Dean's secretary, who asked, " Professor Tom, where are you?" I told her and she replied, "Your students are waiting for you". I told her I didn't have a class on Tuesday. She said that I actually did and they were waiting for me on the second floor. I went to the class and about 8-9 students were sitting and smiling at me. I just asked them, "Could you tell me what class this is?." They said it was a 3rd year Graphic Arts class called "Design Concepts and Systems". So I made up an extemporaneous lecture on solving design "Problems". The class has now grown up to about 12 students and is actually pretty fun. We need to invent as we go. I just finished the syllabus this morning and it's going to be very interesting; creating quick concepts to a variety of design problems.

Most of the students are very nice, kind, have some English skills but they didn't arrive on time, didn't  show up regularly and didn't know anything about a notebook. Duh! I was shocked. I opened MY notebook and showed them a year's worth of daily notes. I said that if I was the professor and I took notes morning and night, at church, at all meetings, while eating breakfast and while contemplating my navel, that they could and would start a habit of recording and planning their life with a notebook.

My lectures generally have a lot of sketches and diagrams. It has evolved, ( genius idea ) into making a list of the students on the left and then having a column indicating attendance, being on time, if they had a notebook and if they asked questions in the lecture. Guess what? They are now all on-time, have notebooks and participate eagerly. What gets measured gets improved!

Troublemaker: The most interesting part of my life here is what has naturally evolved as a result of being an 'activist' or troublemaker. I started noticing that, while the university is new (in only it's third year), that a lot of things just didn't make sense. Mostly it was the buildings and pathways but then I noticed that there were operational issues as well. Pathways didn't make sense, a lot of money was spent on the entrances to the campus and general appearance but there were no funds for projectors, there were many unfinished areas, doorways in main passageways were always locked, the library was hidden and hard to get to, there were long lines at a single cashier in a poorly stocked snack bar, there were poor acoustics, toilets without the necessary paper or baskets, and patio furniture that fell apart in 3 weeks, etc. I started making a list and when I got to over 50 items I knew this was bigger than just a few missed items.

So I started asking questions of different people. This led me to some very interesting discoveries. I could get in trouble sharing these, but I decided to write a report to my Dean. It got to be seven pages long. This got me assigned to the Culture Committee, which is designated to make the University fit into an American Culture. I made the point that in the American culture 'things work!!'  At AUM, so far, they don't and nobody seems to care.

Patio furniture from outside Snack Bar--3 weeks old.

My report got forwarded to the various Vice-Presidents and eventually to the President. They discussed my report in the Strategic Planning Committee and all got invited to our next meeting on Tuesday. So either this will have a positive effect on the university or I may be wrapped and put on the next boat for America. We'll see. So far I've had very positive responses.

New Role: The Dean has shared with me a lot of his frustrations, many of them in confidence. Last week he asked me to take over connecting to the President of the New Hampshire Institute of Art for an exchange and internship program. He said I could use the title of Assistant Dean. That's not official but gives some support for what we're trying to accomplish.

Community Involvement: It's hard not to get involved when I see problems. Our little town of Madaba is safe, kind, friendly but it is filthy. There is trash everywhere. It's hard to believe that people can be sitting on a chair in front of their shop all day and have litter laying all around. The open lots and fields in many cases are strewn with bags of trash, piles of old construction debris, etc. There are a few street cleaners but it hardly makes a dent and we often see people throw litter out of their vehicle or just toss a bottle while they are walking. Ronna and I have come from a culture where you never litter and usually pick up debris if you see it.

So this has gotten under my skin, so to speak. I've started asking various people why? why? My students have said that people are lazy, no one tells them to do differently and there are no penalties. But the most telling answer was when one student exclaimed to me, "Do you think you can change a 3rd world country?" I asked them if they really thought they were 3rd world, like Somalia, the Congo or Bangladesh?" Most said yes. So that's the reason. They don't think much of their country and certainly they believe no one can change it. That's not the American spirit. We believe we can change things if we put our hearts into it.

So I've started to form a working group. I know it's a long process to change a culture, but it can start here. Madaba is a center for tourism because of historic sites. There would be an economic benefit to having a clean, inviting environment for tourists. I do believe that much of the problem is that many believe that it's beneath them to clean up trash or that it's caused by someone else.

I now have some students and a few faculty involved and will be meeting with the Mayor and Director of Tourism. We probably will need to get the heads of the churches and mosques involved, if they will. It's been suggested that we form a Center for Community Affairs at the university and work to get corporate support as well. This could be interesting but it's not what I expected to be doing.