Month: June 2019

CLEMSON – The efforts of Clemson University to increase opportunities for students and faculty to engage globally continue to move forward with the creation of a $250,000 endowment and a $250,000 fund thanks to a donation from the Michael W. Schwehr family of The Woodlands, Texas.

The gift will create the Schwehr Family Global Service Learning Annual and Schwehr Family Global Service Learning Endowment, both of which will support service-learning, research and engagement in under-resourced communities.

“The generous gift will not only make a lasting impact on the Clemson community but will allow faculty to expand the use of service learning models and open opportunities outside of the traditional study abroad locations,” said Sharon Nagy, associate provost of Global Engagement at Clemson. “Faculty and students will positively impact communities while addressing many of the challenges faced by societies today. Students will be able to do their part to change the world while being changed themselves by the experience.”

The Schwehr Family Global Service Learning Annual will be used immediately to support student and faculty opportunities in developing countries. It will provide annual competitive seed-funding grants to faculty for the development of new Global Service Learning programs. The first call for proposals will be announced in August 2019 and will be reviewed and awarded by the Council for Global Engagement for the 2019-2020 academic year.

Once fully funded, The Schwehr Family Global Service Learning Endowment will provide financial support to programs designed for students from any of the colleges.

Submitted proposals will be reviewed by the Office of Global Engagement and funding will be awarded to selected proposals for service-learning projects and international program development for students in under-resourced communities worldwide.

“We’re blessed to be able to help others in the Clemson family participate in missions at locations of need around the world,” said Schwehr. “Hopefully, with this early contribution, others will join me and my family in this great opportunity to help others”

Global service learning is not new at Clemson. Whether through courses, Creative Inquiryand student organizations, Clemson students, faculty and staff are solving problems and serving communities in Tanzania, India, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Peru, Guatemala and Dominica. These initiatives include bioengineering students working with low-resourced communities to find affordable solutions to health care challenges; agriculture faculty engaging around the world to develop drought-resistant crops and technologies to improve food security; engineers addressing water quality; and the School of Nursing’s Global Health Certificate, for which students address health-delivery systems in Peru.

“It is an honor to receive this gift from the Schwehr family. Having spent time in his career working and raising his family abroad, Mike recognizes the importance of preparing students for meaningful lives and careers in our globalized world,” said Nagy. “The Schwehr family’s commitment and altruism are evident in the careful thought they put into the ideas of global service learning. Their gift will give in ways we can hardly imagine today.

The $500,000 gift was made by Schwehr family members Michael William ’81, Linda Pogue, Laurel Michelle and Victoria Leigh ’16.

Michael W. Schwehr graduated from Clemson with a degree in mechanical engineering. After Clemson, he went to ExxonMobil, where his career spanned more than 35 years. During his time there he served in various assignments, including refining, products supply, retail marketing, environmental remediation and real estate. He traveled and lived abroad on numerous occasions and his work led him to Europe, Asia, South America and Africa.

Schwehr’s daughter, Victoria Leigh, graduated from Clemson with a degree in language and international trade. As an undergraduate she studied and worked abroad in Paris, France. After graduation she joined Amazon in Louisville, Kentucky, and later progressed to AeroTek, a prominent national staffing and placement firm.

CLEMSON – Professor of French Eric Touya came to Clemson 11 years ago from the “south-west of the south-west of France,” somewhere between Dax and Bayonne, near the birthplace of Vincent de Paul and Maurice Ravel, and not very far from illustrious authors and thinkers like Montaigne and Montesquieu. It’s about as far away from South Carolina, geographically and culturally, as one can get—but Touya has made it his life’s work to bring those two worlds together and show his students the Earth is much smaller than we imagine.

“Eric Touya brings to Clemson the best of the philological and enlightened European traditions of thought. It is a tradition of research and teaching rooted in the evolution of ideas and the inalienable concept of citizenship,” said Salvador Oropesa, chair of Clemson’s Department of Languages. “The idea is that we, students and professors, are citizens of the world, with rights and duties; we learn from the past to make a better future. Dr. Touya has been a champion of the Language & International Trade program because it puts together the humanities and the ethical creation of wealth to make a better world.”

Touya researches and teaches the French language and 19^th-21^st century Francophone culture (cultures shared by groups of French-speaking people from different areas) and literature courses. He emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches to literature, art, theory, ethics and society in his extensive list of classes. Some of the courses he offers include studies in French literature and theater that introduce students to authors like Proust, Sartre, Camus and Simone de Beauvoir. His “Contemporary French Civilization” class invites students to approach the social, cultural and political issues that define France in the 21^st century. He also teaches a “Francophone Women Authors” class that examines the works of women authors, characters, themes, genres and movements in Francophone literature, and “French Feminism and Theory” in which he explores the works of major figures of French feminism such as Monique Wittig, Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray.

“I enjoy the interaction with the students who are curious learners, and eager to examine through literature major philosophical and political questions but also explore cultures and modes of thoughts different from their own,” said Touya. “I am particularly interested in the progress each student can make and I like to impart to them a certain rigor and a sense of enjoyment.”

While he loves bringing French language and culture to his students in the classroom, his favorite thing is bringing the classroom across the ocean to France.

“A defining moment for me was when I began to co-lead in 2010 with Col. Lance S. Young the ‘Paris-Normandy program’ through which Clemson students revisit the journey of American soldiers during WWII in Normandy, Paris and Northern France,” he said. “I felt a bond with the students as an American, even though I am originally from France, as we reflected on the past and paid homage to Clemson students who now rest in Normandy and gave their lives for the liberation of my native country and the world.”

Touya continues to lead groups of American students to France every summer, offering them the opportunity to learn about their country’s and world history “but also about themselves.”

In his free time Touya enjoys the beauty of Clemson’s campus, and of nearby wilderness areas like Table Rock Park. He received his D.E.A. in Comparative Literature at the Université de Paris IV, Sorbonne, and his Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago. He received the John B. & Thelma A. Gentry Award for Teaching Excellence in the Humanities in 2012 and the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Service in 2017. His most recent book is Simone de Beauvoir: le combat au féminin (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France/Humensis, 2019).