Dr. Richard Cahill, Director of the Francis and Louise Hutchins Center for International Education (CIE) and Associate Professor of History, has poured his passion for international education into the College through various programs sponsored by the CIE.

Dr. Richard Cahill

“Life in a different cultural setting,” Cahill said, “can be a really transformative experience.”

Cahill earned his bachelor’s degree at Westmont College, his master’s degree at the University of California, his Ph.D. at the University of California and has also studied at the American University in Cairo.

Interest leading to a deep passion for the Middle East began with Cahill’s first visit at the age of eighteen. After Cahill’s first year of college, he peddled his heart out biking around Europe. His plan was to explore, observe and discover new cultures and viewpoints. After four months of biking in Europe he decided to hitch-hike in Africa. “I discovered the genuine hospitality of Egyptian people and fell in love with their way of life,” Cahill said. Cahill remembers feeling, even then, that all students should have opportunities for study abroad.

The life of academia had always influenced Cahill. Throughout high school and college, teachers and professors encouraged him to become an educator himself.  He followed their advice. At Berea College Cahill teaches “Pre-modern Middle East,” “Introduction to Islam,” “History of the Arabic-Israeli Conflict,” and “Contemporary Global Issues.” His academic background is in Islamic and European history.

The first part of Cahill’s academic career was focused on both Middle Eastern and European history; however, in 1996 he switched over to only Middle Eastern history. That same year Cahill was appointed the Director of the Middle East Studies Program (MESP) in Cairo, Egypt. He lived in Egypt for six years. In 2002 he returned to California and taught for three years — until a friend from Cairo, who was living in Washington, DC, contacted Cahill about a position as CIE director at Berea College. “He knew that I was into the kinds of things that Berea cares about,” Cahill said. “Primarily social justice, inclusive world views and interesting students.” After researching the college and discovering its ideals and history, he applied for the directorship of CIE and a position on the faculty. Cahill has been working at Berea College since 2005.

As Director of the Center for International Education, Cahill oversees education abroad, international student and scholar services, campus programing for internationalization and faculty and curriculum development. The campus programming entails events every Friday, known as the “Think Globally Its Friday,” or TGIF, and the first Monday of the month, which has a global focus on cultural events. Faculty and curriculum development encourages teaching abroad, researching international and global issues and bringing international and global issues into the classroom.

International events on campus arouse curiosity and desire to study abroad. Cahill said, “Students often say that traveling abroad is a life changing experience. Sometimes the students experience hard transitions into the culture. It isn’t always an easy experience, and it takes time to reflect on how monumental the experience actually was. It’s nice when students return to Berea years after graduating and reflect on their experiences studying abroad.”

Cahill notes that it is also a transformative experience for the international students who come to Berea College. When domestic students become friends with international students, their view of life becomes multi-cultured and diverse. Many domestic students have a different view of life because they had a roommate from someplace far away. Currently there are over sixty countries represented on campus.

What better way is there to expand your knowledge than to take a class abroad? Dr. Cahill shrugged. To ensure this remains the case, the CIE is always looking for new and improved international education opportunities. “We are always trying to raise awareness and encourage students to take advantage of opportunities to study abroad,” Cahill said. He was between his freshmen and sophomore years when he first biked and hitch-hiked abroad, and now he’s realizing a notion that came to him at that time — that students should have opportunities to study abroad. “It seems to be going very well,” Dr. Cahill said with a grin that won’t be restrained. And behind his bright blue eyes you just know there’s a part of him that wishes he could go with each and every one of them.

Dr. Richard Cahill on Berea College campus

Berea College’s Entrepreneurship for the Public Good (EPG) program has, for the past several years, been involved in exploring ways social media engagement could be good for Appalachian communities. EPG Director Peter Hackbert is an advocate for smartphone access to social media. “If you are a motel or restaurant owner in Wolfe County, you want to be easily found in TripAdvisor or Yelp. Next you want to have a 5-star rating. And you’ll want satisfied clients to write positive reviews. This is how social media adds to your bottom line,” Hackbert said. “On the other side, the tourist side, more-and-more people are using mobile media to help them make decisions. A town with lots of businesses and attractions described, rated and reviewed in these websites is a more compelling place to visit than one with little or no web presence.”

Over the summer 2012, EPG’s student project was dubbed “Appalachian Mobile” and 26 students focused on Wolfe County and the city of Berea in Madison County. Participating students were trained to be social media strategists. They held workshops for community businesses and non-profit organizations and they ‘practiced what they preached’ by helping locals become familiar with a variety of social media platforms, create accounts, and drive engagement for their business and their community at large. They located and coordinated with other social media consultants, advocates and bloggers to build partnerships and joint initiatives.

Ali Djire ’15

Berea College student Ali Djire ’15, double majoring in Business and Agriculture, minoring in Sustainability, explained:  “Since we were bringing new ideas and concepts into the Eastern Region, we had to make sure we met and explained our program to community leaders to make our project viable. Therefore, we spent a lot of time talking to and mobilizing civic leaders, business owners and citizens in general.”

While they were on scene in their target communities, the students helped various businesses experience social media engagement by writing their own reviews as “tourists to the community” and posting them in fledgling social media accounts.

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Related links:

• Berea College’s Entrepreneurship for the Public Good program
• TripAdvisor
• Yelp

Janice Blythe, Ph.D., Chair, Academic Division III

Blythe earned her bachelor’s degree in dietetics from Eastern Kentucky University, her master’s degree in clinical nutrition at the University of Kentucky — she is a registered dietitian in Kentucky (R.D.) — and her Ph.D. in animal science with an emphasis in animal and human nutrition from the College of Agriculture at the University of Kentucky. Although Blythe is a phenomenal educator, she was not intending to be a professor at the beginning of her career.

Blythe came to Berea College in 1986. She has taught courses in nutrition, dietetics, food studies and courses in general studies.  As Chair of Division III, she works with program coordinators, faculty and staff in Child and Family Studies, Physical Education and Health, Psychology, and Sociology. Her work as Division Chair involves serving on the Divisional Council, course scheduling, faculty evaluation, and facilitating professional development opportunities. She says the divisional work is all geared to “create more effective teaching and learning.”

The courses Blythe teaches focus on individuals and families and the decisions they have to make. Food security, hunger, health, preventive health through diet, lifestyle and exercise and healthful living are areas about which she is highly passionate.  People within communities combining the dynamics of physical, spiritual, social, mental and psychological health is a concept she strives to promote in her teaching. Blythe initially saw herself as a patient educator; someone who explains self-care, and living a healthy lifestyle. But after her first year of teaching in a classroom, she realized this formal method of educating was more empowering than the patient education approach. She saw the classroom bring about greater awareness and ultimately better decision making by students who would go on to influence countless others.

In 2009, Blythe was awarded the Seabury Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest award given to a Berea College faculty member.

Dr. Janice Blythe, Dr. Libby Jones, Dr. Katrina Rivers Thompson; 2009 Commencement

In Blythe’s 36 years in higher education, she has had the opportunity to publish a variety of work including:

• A Study Guide to Accompany Nutrition and Health, a student learning book about nutrition

• two papers regarding an examination of the influence of alcohol and vitamin A in rats

• co-author of a chapter in the text Fostering Student Success in the Campus Community

• a contributor to a publication about Garrard and Madison Counties researched by the Kentucky Archaeological Survey in 2011
• Blythe has also published work with service learning, emphasizing food security

At this writing, Blythe is doing research on African American Families and their Heritage in Garrard County — the Kentucky county in which she grew up.

When asked what her favorite aspect about teaching at Berea College is, she said she learns “with, from and about students all the time.” She explained that Berea offers a unique opportunity to interact with students formally in a classroom, informally outside the classroom, and through advising. “Advising is more than academic at Berea. Advising also occurs through the labor program and through activities that involve faculty, staff and students as a community.”

Blythe says that being able to share with students as much as she can about how she came to appreciate higher education — as well as helping students appreciate becoming professionals — motivates her to be a better person, not just a better teacher. She concluded, “Being able to see students enter Berea as freshmen, move through all the different learning experiences within the community, and then walk across the stage as graduates are among the most gratifying moments in my life.”

Related Links

• Dr. Janice Blythe contact information
• Child and Family Studies

by Jessica Roberge ’13

“All students have to live somewhere, so they need to know how to be energy efficient in whatever way they can,” said Berea College teacher Jason Coomes. Coomes has been a teacher at Berea College since 2008. He started out in Ecological Design in the Sustainability and Environmental Studies (SENS) program but in fall 2011 he switched to the Technology Industrial Arts program. This semester Coomes is teaching a course called Building Renovation Practicum. The course consists of focusing on renovating existing buildings to radically lower energy costs and energy usage for the building. Coomes had become familiar with the local organization Home Energy Partners and had his class attend one of their workshops to reinforce the material they had been learning in class.

Harrison’s kitchen after HEP replaced the ceiling, floor and windows

Home Energy Partners (HEP) is a nonprofit organization that is just a little over three years old. HEP’s mission is to help residents of Madison County and Rockcastle County lower their energy cost. Their goal is to educate people on how to make their homes more energy efficient. They do this in a variety of ways, one being workshops. These give people the opportunity to become aware of their energy usage and how to conserve it, which in the long run saves money. HEP hosts two-hour workshops twice a month. At Berea’s most recent workshop, Gina Chamberlain, one of the workshop leaders, stated “This has been an amazing turn out! We have a full house.” Coomes took his class to the workshop because the content was directly related to class material. The students need hands on material and a workshop is perfect because it demonstrates how the information is applied to real life. In the course, the students will be assessing a building provided by Coomes and learning how to do things such as blowing insulation, installing storm windows, caulking, looking at heating and air conditioning systems, improving lighting, looking at landscaping options and conserving energy. The workshop covered similar points.

Berea College student Andrew Wiley is taking Coomes’ Building and Renovation Practicum course. Wiley said, “I was hoping to learn how to do some small improvements and renovations that would apply to my living situation right now.” Wiley is interested in becoming more aware of energy efficiency by taking steps such as attending Coomes’ course and the workshop. He was intrigued by the infrared camera that was passed around. “It was really useful to actually see where heat in the room was going and finding the leaks,” Wiley said. The presenters also showed charts with the majority of the home’s energy-consuming devices, like heating units and lights. From the free samples offered, Wiley was able to start weather stripping his own windows to prevent air and heat leakage.

Harrison’s kitchen after HEP replaced the ceiling, floor and windows HEP provides custom energy assessments, too. An example of what they do can be taken from Nancy Harrison. She has lived in her home since it was first built in 1966. After her husband passed away she had no way to maintain her house. Her fixed income and $250 per month electricity bills left no funds for routine maintenance. After seeing an ad in the news this past October, Harrison applied and got accepted to have her house assessed. She was hoping to get all her broken windows replaced and floor fixed where it caved in, but what she got was a whole lot more than she expected. The kitchen, bathroom and washroom floors were falling through and they got repaired. The roof was leaking and it got fixed. Some windows were broken and they got replaced. The walls didn’t have much insulation in them so the walls were insulated properly. The gutters also got cleaned out and fixed. HEP repaired Harrison’s home and showed her how to conserve energy. She learned how to look for air leaks and how to seal them. She uses energy saver light bulbs now. Harrison said, “I just hope that HEP can keep on doing what they are doing because they really are helping people! They do a good job on their projects.”

Students, faculty and town members can learn simple and easy ways to conserve energy in their homes and apartments by attending a free workshop such as HEP. Students can see a prime example of class content. Faculty can gain another perspective and learn new tips on energy efficiency. Town members can learn how to contribute their part to their homes in conserving energy. One of the workshop leaders, Kelly Asher, said, “Renters and home owners really need these workshops because they are the only energy efficiency awareness workshops in the area.”

Related Links

• Home Energy Partners, Berea, Kentucky
• Sustainability at Berea College