Higher Education #55

Campbell Belisle Haley:

That's one of the real problems that a lot of the parents have less education than the kids do. So if you're not getting that from home, then what reason do you really have to continue studying and to continue pursuing that higher level of education?

Spencer Jones:

On one hand, it has everything to do with study abroad and learning how to speak a foreign language. But on the other hand, it's really about learning how to live with a different family, a family other than your own.

Dave Oshana:

So for me, becoming enlightened is about washing away all of the stuff which obscures a person. It's a bit like when a sculpture comes across a piece of raw stone and starts to chisel it away because they can see inside a beautiful statue.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast Show Number 55, Higher Education, airing for the first time on September 30, 2012 on WLOB and WPEI Radio Portland, Maine. On today's show we feature long term Safe Passage volunteer Campbell Belisle, Haley Spencer Jones from ciee and spiritual teacher Dave o'. Shana. When we think of higher education, we often think about colleges and universities, campuses of great thoughts and books and knowledge being shared. But really, when you seek to learn, you can learn it from many different places and most of all, you can learn it from yourself. One of the reasons that we had my son Campbell Belisle Haley, come in and talk to us today about his time spent in Guatemala is that he received quite an education after leaving Yarmouth High School and spending time with the children whose families really earn a living at the Guatemala City dump. Not only did he learn about the bounty that we have here in the United States, but he learned about the bounty that the children and their families have in Guatemala City. He learned how to speak Spanish. He learned how to manage his money. He learned how to do his own laundry. He learned what it was like to be in a different culture, and all of these were learned outside the walls of an institution. We had Spencer Jones coming on to talk to us today about ciee because this is just such an organization that promotes learning outside traditional walls. Spencer happens to be my neighbor and also a fellow Yarmouth High School graduate, and as a special treat, we'll be speaking with spiritual teacher Dave o', Shana, who joined us via Skype from Finland. Dave is actually going to be offering Enlightenment Demystified program coming up here in Portland on October 4th, so we hope you'll get some higher education from Dave as well. I'd also like to mention an upcoming event that's been part of the community and a place where I've been myself. This is the Maine Cancer Foundation's Cure Cancer for Maine Luncheon, which is taking place this Wednesday, October 3, 2012 at 11:30 at Holiday Inn by the Bay. For longtime listeners, you will recognize the Maine Cancer foundation as being involved with Maine's Try for a Cure and October being Breast Cancer Awareness Month. We thought this would be a very appropriate time to mention this upcoming event and in fact, Meredith Strang Burgess will be talking on our Breast Health show later in October. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour has been an interesting experience for me as a physician. It's been extremely interesting to sit across the microphone from not only my sister, Dr. Amy Belisle, who happened to be in our Children's Health show, but also from my son Campbell Belisle Haley, and it continues to teach me about the importance of family and community and learning from the people who are around you. I thought it might be nice to share a quote from the book Our Daily Tread, which was created for Safe Passage and is still available for sale through Islandport Press Books. This quote is from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful which we must carry it with us or we find it not. And that is what I've learned over the past year with the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour is that much of what we need to know is already within us. We just need to recognize it as being beautiful. Thank you for joining us today. We hope you enjoy our show with my son Campbell Belisle Haley Spencer Jones and Dave o'. Shana. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hourum Podcast is pleased to be sponsored by the University of New Eng. As part of our collaboration with the University of New England, we offer a segment we call Wellness Innovations. This wellness Innovation is about spiritual assessment. 80% of patients and family Physicians perceive religion to be important and supporting spiritual beliefs is a key component of holistic patient centered care. The spiritual assessment allows physicians to support patients by stressing empathetic listening, documenting spiritual preferences for future visits, incorporating the precepts of patients faith traditions into treatment plans, and encouraging patients to use the resources of their spiritual traditions and communities for overall wellness. Conducting the spiritual assessment also may help strengthen the physician patient relationship and offer physicians opportunities for personal renewal, resiliency and growth. For more information about this Wellness Innovation, visit drlisabelisle.com for more information about the University of New England, please visit une. Edu.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

On today's show, I'm privileged to have in the studio with me someone who is objectively, I think a very fine individual. Subjectively, he's my son, so I think he's pretty fine from that standpoint. I've watched the child grow up. He's the child of my heart. This is Campbell Belisle Haley and I think he has something really important to tell us about how higher education, which is what our show is about today. Higher education. Campbell was educated at Yarmouth High School and graduated last year. Yarmouth was my alma mater. We both received a fine education there. But then he went on and did something a little bit different and he's getting ready to go to the University of Maine to major in biochemistry. But I think he received an education in a way perhaps that he hadn't thought he might in the last year. So thanks for coming in and talking to us today.

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Well, thank you for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Kimball. Tell me, what did you do last year? What is where did you go?

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Well, over the past year I've been living in Guatemala and volunteering at Safe Passage or Camino Seguro, which is a non profit organization that works in the Guatemala City dump community.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Why did you become interested in that organization?

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Well, this is a question that has been that I've been asked many times and it's always sort of a different answer because there's many different connections, there's many different things that led to me volunteering at Safe Passage, one of which being that obviously you knew Hanley Denning and you wrote or helped write our Daily Tread but book for Safe Passage. And of course we live in Yarmouth, which is the home of Safe Passage in the United States And I just had heard from many people that it was a good opportunity to sort of expand your boundaries and to learn in a different way.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And there were other students that you knew from Yarmouth High School and other area high schools who had also volunteered at Safe Passage, which is also called Kamino Suguru.

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Right. Well, there, there were a bunch of groups that came down from my high school just for a week to volunteer at Safe Passage. And there were also a fair amount of long term volunteers that I knew of or knew personally. And I was able to talk to them and learn more about the experience, learn more about Safe Passage. And it helped me make, it helped make my decision that much easier to go volunteer down there for a year.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You could have gone to, you could have stayed home and worked, you could have gone to other places. Instead you chose to go to a third world country where the standards of living are very different from here. What types of things did you learn from that and describe the situation down there?

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Well, it's an interesting situation where they don't have the same comforts that we have here. Obviously it's a different, it's a whole different feel. The people are, most of the people are living in very different places than we're used to. But I just say the biggest difference is that they just, they take everything that they have, they take everything that they, that they don't have and they just turn it into happiness. There's very, very happy people in Guatemala

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

and they're very happy. Despite some of the conditions that you observed.

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Right. I mean, we sort of have, I have the perspective of seeing both the conditions that they live in and the conditions that we live in. So I have an interest, I can see it from both sides. But for them, they don't really know anything different. They've been living like that, their parents have been living like that, their grandparents have been living in that way. And they don't really, they don't really have the perspective that we have coming from a much wealthier nation, a much wealthier area.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So can you paint a little bit of a picture for the people who are listening, who may not be familiar with Safe Passage or the organization's work in Guatemala City, what types of conditions are we talking about?

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Well, the Safe Passage Services 550 children who live around the Guatemala City dump. And the way the Guatemala City dump is set up is that there are a number of workers that pick garbage from the dump or try to find resources that they can sell from the city dump. And then they obviously go and collect Them and come out of the dump and sell them. So we work primarily with the children and the families of the people living in that area. So whether they work in the dump or whether they work in another area that's not directly connected to the dump or whether they just are completely disconnected from the dump, we work with primarily the families that live in Zone 7 and Zone 3 around that area.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And so these are families that don't have a lot of money.

Campbell Belisle Haley:

No, they make, the people who work in the city dump make around $10 a day. A single working person collecting garbage, collecting plastic, collecting metal will make about $10 in any given day.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And these aren't, this is not a pretty dump. Like it's not a landfill or a transfer station. I mean, this is a dump with open garbage and big trucks that come and dump trash on the ground and wild dogs and vultures and smells a

Campbell Belisle Haley:

lot less developed than what we have in the United States as far as lengths. But I don't know if I've ever seen a pretty dump. But in terms of the dumps that I've seen, it's on the lower echelon

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

and it's also, it's large. I mean it runs right through the center of the city and it's big, it's gigantic.

Campbell Belisle Haley:

You can see it from three different, four different zones in Guatemala City. It encompasses a whole area. And so that's how we're able to, that's how we're able to connect to that many people because it's just so massive in itself.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you talked about the happiness of these children and I know you saw this at different ages because you started out there as a volunteer with the four year old classroom.

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So tell me about that experience and tell me what types of things you notice about the children at that age.

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Well, they just, the children at that age just need, they just need more love, I've noticed than the people who are around that age that live in America. They're very happy, they're very happy living in the situation that they live in. They just need, they need more like personal connection. They need more hugs than people that I've worked than kids that I've worked with in America.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you've, you've actually coached kids in soccer and other sports in that age range.

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Roughly here right before I went to Guatemala, I was a soccer coach and a summer camp coach for three or four years from, for kids that live in Yarmouth from ages around probably, probably closer to six or seven, probably closer to first grade up until like Eighth grade, freshman year.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you were able to contrast that with these children that even though they were a little bit younger, what they seemed to need was the contact and the attachment and the affection and the relationship.

Campbell Belisle Haley:

We have a very, we have a nice family system in America where we, or a very, very developed like sense of family in that we expect to have a mother and a father in the picture. We expect to be a, like a,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

just kind of the nuclear family idea.

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Right, right. That.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And they don't have that in Guatemala City. Is that what you're suggesting?

Campbell Belisle Haley:

I'm suggesting that there are a lot of factors that play into them not necessarily having that same level of development of their family system.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So maybe a little bit less stable in some cases.

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Yes. There's, there's very few of the families that I worked with, there's very few fathers that are in the picture and generally the mom's in the picture, although sometimes she's not. But it's just there are very few nuclear families among the people that live around the Guatemala City dump.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Now the first part of the year, you were with the four year olds.

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And then you moved up to being a tutor and tutoring older children.

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Well, there was another transitional step in between there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Okay, so what did you do in the transitional step?

Campbell Belisle Haley:

I went down in October, November. I worked with the four year olds and I was a classroom assistant. I basically helped them brush their teeth and play with puzzles and help to implement the planting seeds methodology that's used in the guard area. And then in January I moved to the main building, which is where the older kids go, the kids older than six and there I was also a classroom volunteer. But the help was a little bit different in that I helped them with their homework, I helped them, I taught them a little bit of English and I gave them more academic help. And then in April I became a full time tutor. And that was where I was giving individual attention to about 25 kids on a weekly basis to help them with any math or reading concerns that they were having.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you had to take your high school level Spanish and bring it to a whole new level as a teacher down in Guatemala City with Safe Passage.

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Spanish was a little bit, it was a little bit tricky for me. I'd never been a language learner and I've always struggled with that. I've always been a math and science guy, as you said. I'm majoring in biochemistry, so Spanish took a little while for me. Going down in October. I really couldn't have worked with anybody besides the 4 year olds because I had no, I couldn't really communicate with older kids. I couldn't really communicate at a conversational level. And I really had to work hard to develop that to the point where I could teach math and I could teach, well, reading in Spanish.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you did that from April until August. Did you find that you yourself continue to learn Spanish and skills and teaching?

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Absolutely. It's a fun learning process. Learning a new language while you're in a country that speaks that language is a much more intriguing, much more interesting process than it is learning in a classroom. And I just, I soaked up every word, every phrase. I just love speaking Guatemalan Spanish and I just really enjoy learning the language.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As you know, the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is focused on the mind, body and soul. Sometimes our bodies are giving us a little indication that maybe things aren't quite right. Here to talk to us about some particular things that we can listen to when our bodies are acting up is Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists in Falmouth, Maine. Today's diagnosis is rotator cuff tear.

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you went from Yarmouth High School, which is pretty suburban Maine. Pretty suburban. Many places actually, although possibly a little bit more privileged than many places to this very stark contrasted place geographically and otherwise. Did you experience culture shock

Campbell Belisle Haley:

a little bit? I heard a lot more about culture shock than I feel like I actually experienced. I don't. It's hard. I definitely experienced some difficult transitions from living here to living in Guatemala. And then when I came back I experienced those same strands, the same transitions, but I don't really Know, if I would. I don't really know what I would label as culture shock. I don't really know if I've really. I've never really had an experience where I was just like, wow, this is so different. I can't. I can't deal with this right now. I sort of. You sort of take it in stride and you just adjust as you go.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What about living on your own? You had parents and sisters and a house and things kind of taken care of for you for the first 18 years. What happened when you were all by yourself in a foreign country with so much money and having to get yourself back and forth?

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Right? That was probably the most difficult transition. I think that learning Spanish and being able to connect with my kids was really difficult. But that, in addition to the fact that I went home and you weren't there, and my dad wasn't there, and neither of my sisters, none of my friends from home were there, was, I think, the most difficult part of living in Guatemala and being down there for a year.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you developed friendships with people that kind of, I don't know, substituted a family, perhaps.

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Well, I consider most of my really close guy friends down there to be my brothers. And my friends who are girls that also worked in Camino Seguro have just been like my older sisters for the past six months. It's been incredible. I've developed some incredible relationships with all the people who work down there and live down there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you think that the children and the families that are involved with Safe Passage, which has been going on a little bit more than a decade, I think. Yep. So it was founded in 99, and they've had. They have 500 children now. Do you think that these children perhaps value education more or maybe don't take it for granted as much as we might in this country?

Campbell Belisle Haley:

They're put in a situation where they're much. Where it's much easier for them to value education because them, contrasting with maybe another set of Guatemalan children who aren't in Safe Passage, don't really have the same, or they have more of the opportunity to feel like learning is important. And that's one of the two. I think the two most important things that Safe Passage does is making the students feel like their education is worthwhile, that their education is a really important part of their lives. And I think that Safe Passage is able to do that. It's not a school other than La Guardaria, but we're a reinforcement center, and we're just there so that the kids are passing Their classes, they're getting help with their homework, and of course, from the social worker.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So what happens is the students who are older, so the younger students, they are educated at Safe Passage. The older students, they go to school somewhere else and then come to Safe Passage for school assistance and tutoring. Like the tutoring you offer?

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Exactly.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And then there's also a program for women who have children in the Safe Passage program to actually get, I think, the equivalent of a ged.

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Yes. Well, we have two different programs for the adult literacy program. We have the. The moms that come in usually during the day. They usually spend a significant amount of their day studying at Safe Passage. And they're working to either get a primaria education, which is up to sixth grade, or a basico education, which is up through freshman year in high school. And then the really high overachievers are working to get a diversificado, which is like in high school, at a GED equivalent. And then we also have the program that the dads complete. We have a group of dads that usually come in at night because they're working during the day and they're trying to make money for their family, but they come in during the night and they're also working towards those goals because a lot of the parents. That's one of the real problems, that a lot of the parents don't have less education than the kids do. So if you're not getting that from home, then what reason do you really have to continue studying and to continue pursuing that higher level of education?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you're trying to create a culture within the household so that what you are doing at Safe Passage and at the children's schools gets reinforced at home.

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Right. And there are actually a few just model families at Safe Passage. These are the ones where three of the kids go to Safe Passage. Maybe there's one in the Guarderia or the preschool, and there's two in the main building. And then there's the dads working, but also trying to be in the adult literacy program. The moms in the adult literacy program, and they just grasp every. They take advantage of everything that Safe Passage has to offer. And that's really. That's really the culture that we're trying to create where education is important, education is worthwhile.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I picked you up at the airport, I don't know, a week ago, something like that. You're going to go. You're starting college as we're taping this. You're starting. You're going back to college, going to college for the first time tomorrow? Yeah. So that's not much time in this country. But you did spend some time with your friends. How do you think your experience over the last year contrasted with the experience of your friends who went to college last year?

Campbell Belisle Haley:

I just think that we both, that me and my friends both received an education, but both received a very, very different education. Whereas a lot of my friends have been talking to me about their introductory bio classes or their calculus classes. And I don't really have anything to add from that perspective, but I can talk to them all day about just teaching math and teaching Spanish and giving love to little ninos.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Little ninos. And how do you think this will impact your future plans?

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Well, I think that it's just given me a stronger perspective. I mean, I keep in, keep in mind that I'm not 19 yet. I'm not 19 years old yet, so I can't, I don't really want to make any, like, big plans right now. There's no pressure without even being in college. But like, I definitely, I definitely will take in, take this whole experience into consideration. When I'm deciding what I want to do, what career path I want to go down, what, what decisions I want to make with my life, and more importantly, the thing that, the thing that Guatemala, I think has given me most of all is just a perspective about family. And I think that's what it's. I think more than anything. I mean, I, I've learned a lot of Spanish, I've learned how to teach, I've learned how to live by myself. But just the, just the, the idea that families is the most important thing is probably the greatest thing that I've taken from Guatemala.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think that's an appropriate way to end my conversation with you, my son, Campbell Belisle Haley, who has been a long term volunteer with the organization Safe Passage or Camino Seguro in Guatemala City. Thank you for being here with me today, Campbell.

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Thank you for having me, Mom.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

When we think about higher education, we do think about colleges, we think about universities, we think about advanced degrees. But there is the type of education that you get from just living out in the world. So today we have with us Spencer Jones, who is the general manager of Gateway Programs with the Council on International Educational Exchange, which is also known as ciee. And he happens to be our neighbor right down the street, fourth street, here in Portland. Thank you for coming in today.

Spencer Jones:

Well, it's great to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you happen to be my neighbor in Yarmouth also, so it's kind of interesting.

Spencer Jones:

That is true. And we went to the same high

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

school and we did. So talk about higher education. You graduated a few years before I did, but obviously a fellow Clipper and somebody who's gone out into the world to do bigger things.

Spencer Jones:

Well, I've gone out into the world like so many of us do and had a lot of interesting experiences. And I'm glad to report that I've moved back to Maine and live in Yarmouth, Maine again.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, and that is an interesting thing to note that you lived abroad, I think in South America.

Spencer Jones:

Is that what I remember that's right. In Chile and in Miami for eight years, which I think counts as Latin America in many ways.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you came, but you decided to come back?

Spencer Jones:

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think that for anybody, when they start to have children, the pull of having your parents, grandchildren, closer together is. Is a strong pull. And that was certainly part of our thinking for you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The brain drain, then, that is said to exist here in Maine isn't quite as real?

Spencer Jones:

Well, I don't know if I would say it isn't real because there was a long period of time, certainly over 20 years, where I moved away from Maine and then didn't come back very often. So there was certainly a period of time where I was away and a significant one.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But you're back and you've brought CIEE here to Portland.

Spencer Jones:

Well, I wouldn't want to take credit for that personally. CIE used to be in New York City and in Boston. It has two fairly large divisions that were each located in those two cities. And in 2003, which was before I started working with the organization, the decision was made to bring the entire company together and bring its worldwide headquarters here, here to Portland. So that happened in two phases. In 2003, the Division of the organization that deals with undergraduate study abroad moved to Portland and rented space on Commercial Street. And then in 2007, the other division, which came up from Boston, and that division deals with the foreign students that come to the United States to work and study here on J1 visas, they moved in 2007 to the newly constructed building at 304th Street.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Why Maine? Why did CIEE, which has a lot of people working for it, why did they come to Maine?

Spencer Jones:

Well, it does have a lot of people. It's got over 500 employees in nearly 50 cities around the world. So it's a fairly significant organization. I think at the end of the day, the decision that was made in 2002 was one of a lifestyle decision where the senior staff involved in the organization realized that they couldn't continue to provide a good quality of life for the people working in New York. And they looked for different cities that they could move the organization to. And they looked at, I think, five that included Raleigh, Durham, Portsmouth, Portland, and a variety of cities like that. And Portland won out in the end. So it was really a decision about how to give staff a good life and provide a base for running an international business.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What does CIEE do? I mean, it sounds like you have a lot of people working in various parts of the world to offer different experiences to People, can you give me a sort of snapshot?

Spencer Jones:

Sure. I'm not sure. You'll always get the breadth of what we do from our website. It's difficult to get it all onto a website. But CIEE is a not for profit organization that's been around since 1947. It is the leading provider of study abroad and international cultural exchange programs in the United States. And it has a couple major areas of operation. We are the largest provider of undergraduate study abroad, particularly of the semester and year long variety. And that's an operation that's been in existence for probably 50 years. And we do that in conjunction with a consortium of over 300 colleges and universities around the country that actually approve and guide our academic programming. So those are four credit programs that are offered through colleges and universities around the United States. So that's one large area of operation. The next largest is that we are the same single largest provider of J visas, sponsors of J visas in the United States. And we provide those visas to a whole variety of foreign students who are looking for educational and cultural exchange experiences in the United States. And that can range everywhere from a high school student who wants to spend a year at Yarmouth High School studying and living with a host family, to senior research scholars who are looking for a chance to do research in the United States because in their home university in their home country, they don't have the correct kind of nuclear imaging equipment. So it really ranges the whole gamut. And then we have a third area of operation which I call the everything else bucket, which is a very large area of operation that covers smaller programs that in their aggregate constitute a large part of what we do. So we operate private foundations on behalf of certain organizations. We run a large number of scholarship programs. We operate insurance companies to make sure that the program participants that we have are correctly insured within regulations and are safe when they're in their respective countries. We have teach abroad programs where we find recent college graduates from the United States, a paid teaching job in a foreign country. So there's just a whole range of programs that we're involved with.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

With a broad range of programs being offered by cie, I'm sure that different people at different stages in their lives have different motivations. What are some of the common motivations that bring people through your doors?

Spencer Jones:

Well, it's interesting, there are a few common themes and the motivations that we see. And incidentally, it's not just the motivations of the people who go on our programs, but it's the motivations of other people close to those people. And the one that we always joke about is the young woman who wants to study abroad and her mother. Do they have the same motivations? Sure, maybe they both want the daughter to go study abroad, but that doesn't mean that their motivations are always the same. The daughter can be very interested in being independent and being away from what she might see as an overbearing mother. And the mother is very interested in having the daughter learn how to speak a foreign language. And maybe the daughter feels that way, maybe she doesn't. But they both agree that going to study abroad would be a good thing for the daughter to do. So they're all over the place like that. But the big themes are all around ones of personal transformation. They're ones of perspective. They're ones of independence and confidence. And particularly for high school students, you'll see that all the time that a student will go study abroad for a year. And really what's happening is they're living with a family other than their own for an entire year. And just think of the kind of change that that might bring in a student. So on one hand, it has everything to do with study abroad and learning how to speak a foreign language. But on the other hand, it's really about learning how to live with a different family, a family other than your own. And almost always when you see students, high school students, come back from that kind of experience, you'll find them to be different, to be transformed, to be more confident, to be more able to plan what they'd like to do with their life. So there are all those kinds of things. And then we also always joke that what we really are selling is romance. And I mean that in the highest sense of the word. There's the romance of going abroad. There's the romance of learning how to speak a new language, how to communicate with others. There's the romance of independence. And then there's the romance of finding a boyfriend. There are all those different kinds of romance. And study abroad provides a vehicle for that that's really quite exciting.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How about your Family. You have some boys I happen to know who actually have gone to school with my children.

Dave Oshana:

Right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And I also happen to know that you've kind of sent them out in the world.

Spencer Jones:

We have. And in fact, my own life has followed that trajectory. I grew up in little old Yarmouth, Maine, and I studied abroad in high school. I lived in Santiago, Chile, for about half a year, and then as I continued to grow older, I continued to study abroad. I spent my junior year abroad. I left Williams College and went to Madrid, Spain, and lived there for a year and studied there. And you would see that reflected when I left the United States, I think in 1992, my wife and I, with a one year old child, moved to school, Santiago, Chile, and lived there for over six years, and we had three more children while we were there. So it really did have quite an impact on my life. And so then moving back slowly to the United States. My own children have followed a similar trajectory, one that I guess isn't surprising. But two of my boys have studied abroad, one in Argentina, one in Spain. We've hosted a foreign student from Spain who still comes back and lives with us every year, it seems like. So it's been a big part of my life and a big part of my family's life, and I think it's made a big difference.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What types of changes have you seen in your own boys as they've come back to your family after studying abroad?

Spencer Jones:

Well, it's funny because I look at them as a father and I see all these wonderful changes. And then if I looked at them objectively as somebody who works in the business of study abroad, they're pretty mundane because they happen to everybody. But it's really wonderful to see them as a father. They come back more confident, more able to talk to people that they don't know, more willing to try new foods. I would say generally happier with being in Yarmouth because they understand, they have a perspective on what's good about a small town, what it lacks, but what it offers as well. And. And it's that perspective on things that probably makes it easier for them and easier for everybody.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What advice would you offer to parents of high school students who maybe aren't quite ready for college? And this whole idea of the gap year, is that something that you deal with or.

Spencer Jones:

We absolutely do. We help students go on gap years all the time. And it's what I would say about the gap gap year is it's something that has not existed broadly in the United States. It's something that's becoming more prevalent. It has existed in other countries, such as Britain, for a long time. But it's rooted in this concept that not all students are ready, once they graduate from high school, to make the most of their college experience. And perhaps trying something different could help them better prepare for being able to take advantage of the college experience. And for me, that can range anywhere from pumping gas at a gas station for a year, because maybe at the end of that, you realize that you don't want to do that for the rest of your life to going and crushing grapes in Tuscany to whitewater rafting or studying French in Paris with ciee. There's a whole broad range of things that you can do. What most people tend to see at the end of that is they tend to see see people who come back that are more focused and have an idea of what they want to get out of their college experience, and therefore, they are more successful in doing those things.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I think you've covered a lot of ground here, and I know people are going to want to find out more about ciee, although, as you've said, maybe the website doesn't even quite capture it. What's the best way for people to find out about your organization?

Spencer Jones:

Oh, well, they should absolutely go to the website. It's www.ciee.org. and there's information about all of the many different programs that we have there. Or they can call us at 1-840-study. We have hundreds and hundreds of people that are waiting to counsel people and help figure out what's the best way to grow through study abroad. Those are easy things to do.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And do you have a Facebook page?

Spencer Jones:

We probably have, I'm going to guess here, over 100 Facebook pages. Pages. We have alumni that graduate from our programs every year. Thousands and thousands of alumni, and many of them communicate through Facebook pages for years afterwards. We also have a huge number of videos and blogs from students who participated. We really encourage people to write and to reflect on what they've done. And those are available not just at our website, but on YouTube and other venues for that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I was on your website this morning and I was noticing something about Mitchell Initiative. I think this is talking about George Mitchell, who, of course, is a Bowdoin graduate like me. So I was kind of intrigued by this. Do you tell me a little bit about that?

Spencer Jones:

Sure, I can tell you about that. That's something that's fairly recent, and it's been an effort that has started with the advent of our new CEO, Jim Pello, who is very interested in reaching out to like minded organizations in the state of the Maine. In the state of Maine, since we are a Maine organization as well, and that's a collaboration between the Mitchell Institute and CIEE to provide some scholarships for an abroad experience for people who have received a Mitchell Scholarship, so that the Mitchell Institute provides scholarships for university students study to graduates from every single town and city in Maine. And CIE has begun to provide an international component to that scholarship in conjunction with the Mitchell Institute. So we recently had two scholarship awardees, one who went to Jordan to study conflict there and another went to North Ireland to study conflict there. And those first two parallel some of the principal interests that Senator Mitchell's had recently.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And all of this is very nice because what it's saying is that you don't necessarily have to be exceedingly wealthy to travel abroad, that there are access points for different people depending upon their circumstances.

Spencer Jones:

There absolutely is. I think it's also fair to say that historically that access has been an issue in the entire field of study abroad. But CIEE has been been working very hard to try to alleviate that access problem and about a year and a half ago announced a significant scholarship fund called the GAIN Scholarship Fund, which has over a million dollars in its corpus and provides a significant number of awards.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think this is a great way to close our interview talking about higher education with Spencer Jones of ciee and I encourage all of our listeners to go to the website and find out more about your organization.

Spencer Jones:

Well, thanks. It's been great to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is always seeking new and interesting ideas from new and interesting people wherever they may be coming from. Recently we spoke with spiritual teacher Dave O' Shana via Skype from Finland. Dave O' Shana will be here in Maine on Thursday, October 4, 2012 at the Mayo Street Arts center speaking on Enlightenment Demystified. We hope you enjoy our conversation with Dave Oshana.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Dave, welcome to the show.

Dave Oshana:

Hi Lisa. Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And Dave, you have impressive credentials. I've looked through them you have a background in psychology and a long standing background in spirituality. And you've also been enlightened and you consider yourself what. Tell me exactly.

Dave Oshana:

I call myself an enlightened spiritual teacher, although I see myself more as a guide that I help a person find themselves. And when they fully find their true self, that for me would be enlightenment. It would be the end of their search. If their search hasn't ended, it wouldn't be enlightenment.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And this is something that you wanted to do because you've experienced it yourself?

Dave Oshana:

Yeah, that's right. It's actually also because I had been seeking for enlightenment from a very young age. It had been a very confusing and long and protracted search, going to very many different places and contorting myself both physically, mentally and emotionally into all kinds of shapes, behaviors, even dress codes, diets and lifestyles. And after some time, I even started to doubt that enlightenment existed. And I started telling all my spiritual peers, even at meetings where visiting teachers would come over. And I was surprised maybe more than anyone else when I found out that enlightenment is real, because it suddenly happened to me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, define enlightenment for the people who are listening.

Dave Oshana:

Okay. At first I saw enlightenment as a perspective shift where I had dropped back out of my mind and out of my thoughts. And now I was simply the watcher, watching my thoughts and my life happening and my relationships and my emotions. And I was just watching everything, enjoying it, but not really being moved around by the world that I was watching. But I have come up with a what I feel is an easier to understand definition. Less abstract, less far away. And for me, enlightenment is where a person becomes the self that they truly are inside. Many people say that they know inside them there's another person, and they just wish that they could be that person. But every day they find themselves prevented by something inside them from being what they really are. So for me, becoming enlightened is about washing away all of the stuff which obscures a person. It's a bit like when a sculpture comes across a piece of raw stone and starts to chisel it away because they can see inside a beautiful statue. That's what I see when I come into contact with people. I see their real self inside, which has often been suppressed and put down and even punished during their early years. And so they hide that self away.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Why is enlightenment important?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Or

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

once people are enlightened, how does it enrich their lives?

Dave Oshana:

Well, I really don't like to talk about the benefits, funny enough, because I don't think that enlightenment is something that one should go after for the benefits. For me, the enlightened life is a life of surrender to what is. It's a surrender to my God given nature and it's a surrender to the higher energies which bring everything into existence and make the universe run like clockwork. So I suppose, although I'm reluctant to talk about different religious concepts, I suppose my way is more of a Taoist way, whereas I'm going with the flow of nature. And what is. What enlightenment does though, is it releases a person from the false identity which they have their constant self preoccupation with. Working on themselves, tweaking their identity, dealing with their emotional and psychological stuff. When enlightenment happens, that stuff gets chucked out in one big parcel never to come back in the same way ever again. It's not that an enlightened person can't access their memories, it's just that their memories may as well be someone else's history and not their own.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And I know from a prior conversation with you that there are different things that you offer as a coach or spiritual teacher, different ways that you help people move along their spiritual path. Could you briefly describe these things for us?

Dave Oshana:

Primarily in spite of myself, there is an energy which supports and guides a person. That energy comes clearly into view when a person is with me, but they may also notice it working in their life after they've been with me. And I call that energy the Enlightenment transmission. It's an intelligent, transformational, inspirational energy. The second thing I provide is my human side, not just this invisible energy. And through my human side I guide a person with explanations, describe to them what's happening, help them out when they feel that they're getting stuck somewhere on their spiritual path or even just in their life. Because I see their life as intertwined with their spiritual life. There's nothing separate. And with the advice and guidance that I give, I also teach a form of healing moving meditation that cleans the energy bodies or it cleans out thoughts and emotions, leaving a person feeling empty, clear and relaxed inside. And I also give lifestyle advice which includes some information about the best kinds of food to eat and when to eat those foods, and in which situations and climates and which foods are suitable for a person's constitution. I offer those three things. An energy, a teaching, a moving meditation which has got various techniques and lifestyle advice as well as one to ones and or what you call one on ones, I think in America and group teaching environments which include one day intensives and also long residential retreats.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

My understanding is that you are coming to the United states to offer an introductory seminar and also one day intensive. This is coming up on Thursday, October 4th at the Mayo Street Art center in Portland. And the title of this introductory seminar is Enlightenment Demystified with Dave Oshana.

Dave Oshana:

Yeah, and there's a subtitle, experience the Enlightenment Transmission for yourself.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Dave, what is the best way for people to find out more information about what you do and about this upcoming event?

Dave Oshana:

Well, I have several websites, but the most recent website and it's undergoing constant improvements, but it has about 50 online class replays every Sunday. When I'm at home, I'm giving live classes on the Internet and if people come to devoshana.com so all one word Dave Oshana.com they can find out about this event and they can also listen to free audio, catch up with some of my teachings. There's also several other websites which I owned before daveshana.com like enlightenment-now.com which has some articles which I've written.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Very good. We thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us from Finland and we're looking forward to having you in Maine giving this talk, Enlightenment Demystified. And also thanks to Lisa Silverman here in Maine for letting us know that you'd be coming our way. We hope that our listeners will take advantage of your being with us.

Dave Oshana:

It's a pleasure. Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 55, Higher Education, airing for the first time on on September 30, 2012 on WLOB and WPEI Radio Portland, Maine. Also available via podcast on itunes and on our website drlisabelisle.com we hope you'll take the time to go to our website and read about individual guest information. We also hope that you'll take the time to like our Facebook page and and hear about our upcoming events. Even more importantly, perhaps we hope that you'll spend some time connecting with our sponsors. Every single one of our sponsors is a personal friend of mine that I've cultivated a relationship with over months, years, even decades. These are people that I care deeply for and believe in. These are people who are doing good things for the community. These are the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour sponsors that you hear about throughout our show and at the end let them know that you're listening to our show and that you appreciate their efforts on our behalf. This is Dr. Lisa wishing you all a bountiful life, but in particular wishing my son, Campbell Belisle HALEY A happy 19th birthday this October 1st and all the best in his upcoming years studying Biochemistry at the University of Maine. It's truly a pleasure to be your

Campbell Belisle Haley:

Sam.