Faculty internationalize the curriculum to show students the similarities and differences in cultures, nations, political systems, and values. Teaching students to evaluate competing claims and information joins their local heritage with the global context to encourage responsible action toward others. Starting with their tradition ways of processing knowledge in their particular cultural context, students expand their critical thinking and decision-making to consider the larger world as it impacts their personal, familial, and communal lives. Cross-cultural comparisons, research from other indigenous groups, and experiences from worldwide neighbors place them in historical, political, and social communities but with a global perspective. Indigenes learn to appropriate the opportunities afforded by globalization such as international communication, transnational organizations, and rapidly developing technologies, for example, distance education delivery, and integrated financial and trade markets. Because of the global nature of competition, they must develop skills that allow them to function in the world of the twenty-first century. While retaining their own language and culture, they see the larger world and the interconnections. Students gain a broader perspective, benefit from the comparative strengths of other nations, and learn strategies for ameliorating ethnic, religious, racial, and political conflicts.

A Carnegie Foundation report on undergraduate education in America claims, “A good college affirms that service to others is a central p= art of education.” Service-learning, an educational experience allowing students to participate in solutions to identified community or university needs, promotes further understanding of course content and a sense of civic responsibility. The community-based learning fosters moral, cognitive, and ethical understanding of social issues and people. It connects academic study with community service through structured reflection in three areas: enhanced academic learning, leadership development, and democratic participation. As such it can effectively supplement classroom academics for indigenous students in their critical thinking, problem solving, and civic and community responsibility. For example, reservation projects designed with participation, reflective research papers, and service document learning experiences. Diverse projects meet the variety of learning styles, cultural differences, and varied disciplines as well as build on indigenous knowledge and equip students with traditional skills. Through t= ask engagement, service learning offers a practicum for the theoretic curricula= by involving indigenous students in their communities’ social and economic enterprises.

Many writers are prolifically writing about Turkey, but what is missing is the important way in which family structures and religious views shape the Turkish government. In the modern Turkey, networks of kin are still the foundation of wealth, security, and personal happiness. That is a problem. For example, in the Kurdish society people, including rulers, have more loyalty to their family than to the state. When rulers want more people to serve them, they will just go into their kinship system, like the Barzani and the Taliban clans. The Muslim community in the southern Philippines has the same problem, The preferred marriage is between a man and his cousin because such an arrangement solves the problem of marriage and creates a strong lineage. Instead of marrying a women from outside his lineage, a man will marry his cousin, because then his wife will not be alien but rather a trusted member of his own kin group, Kinship carries strong obligations of mutual support and interest. People look to their kinship from day to day for their sociability, for getting jobs, and for receiving official favors. Kinship and marriage ties have important political and economic implications. For example, on April 22, it was announced that two Turkish owned state banks had stepped in to provide more than $750 million of loans to Calik Holding, which is owned by a Prime Minister Erdogan's son-in-law, in order to purchase the second largest media group in Turkey. Prime Minister Erdogan greatly compromised the independent of media. AK Party control of the country's second largest media group, ATV and Sabah newspaper sold it to a holding company managed by Erdogan son in law, and pressed state banks and other Arab country to provide the financing in addition to that Erdogan gave government contract to how is close to him such as Calik Company.

The Justice and Development Party (the Adelet ve Kalkinma Partisi AKP) has been on the defense for weeks now. It has been accused of corruption, distortion, nepotism, and the pursuit of fundamentalist policies;. For example, in the first case, Saban Disli, a close friend and aide to the Prime Minister, finally resigned from his positions in the party-Party Deputy Chairman, Central Executive Board, and AK Party Executive Council-after the charge of more than $1 million worth of alleged corruption. The second corruption case was the Lighthouse Case, taken up by the German judiciary, with ties linking the guilty parties in Germany and the AKP officials, such as Zekeria Karaman, owner of pro government Kanal 7. The case has drawn the attention of media because it has been said that both cases have associations with the AKP. When this religious community was in the minority, like the Gulen community, the secular community treated them unfairly. The secular government would protect secular elites and totally disregard the poor. The secularists were going after the religious community, such as exiling the leader of the Gulen movement, Fethullah Gulen, to the U.S. Also, the military and secular circles tried to have a coup d'état but failed. Now Gulen's religious groups are in power and taking revenge, going after the secular parties and putting them in jail one-by-one and taking over the state step-by-step. Even before, the Gulen community dared to criticize the military, and now they even go further asking for some generals to resign. Consequently, the AKP party has divided the country into the religious believers and the non-believers. The party has taken over very secular institutions, such as education, local governments, the presidency, and the police. In Turkey kinship's rules are much healthier than democratic criteria. Erdogan talks about justice, and his party committed to cleaning up corruption. Did his son serve in the military, which has the consequence of a jail term for not serving? As far as we know, Erdogan's son Bilal is working at the World Bank in Washington, DC. In order for Bilal to work at the World Bank, he needs to have a green card. How did he get a green card? Nurettin Demirtas, chairman of the Democratic Society Party (DTP) was held in prison on a charge of obtaining false medical reports that declared him unfit for military service. He faced up to five years in prison, but he was drafted into the army. Didn't Erdogan son also get medical reports showing him unfit for the military service? Why did the Prime Minister ‘s son not go to jail for not serving in the military? Is it because his Daddy is the Prime Minster?

Erdogan urged his religious community to boycott the newspapers owned by the Dogan Media group because the Dogan media group unveiled the corruption allegations that surrounded Erdogan. In essence, the AK religious party can be understood by examining the history of Islam in major's cities like Mecca, Medina, and Cairo, as well as the Ottoman Empire. When Bulent Ersoy, one of the Turkey's well known singers, made a comment on TV, she addressed the topic of the ongoing Turkish military's fight against the PKK. Basically she said that if she had a son, she would not let her son fight other people's wars. They declared Ersoy a betrayer of the state. However, how many sons of Turkish politicians, sons of generals, sons of prime ministers, sons of wealthy citizens, sons of judges, or sons of other well known people die in a war against PKK? There is always some kind of invisible hand that protects them. What happens is that always the poor and those who do not have connections cry and pay the price. When the AK party came to power, Erdogan insisted that the struggle is between democrats and defenders of an authoritarian political elite. Now elites in Ankara and in the AK party-- part of Gulen's community-- are the same. The battle is between the two sides over their obsessions as to which will control the state apparatus and by what means they will use democracy as a mask to accomplish it. Politics, wherever practiced, is based on a fair degree of exploitation and opportunism. Can democracy flourish in Turkey alongside those with religious loyalties? Who rules? Is it the religious leader Hodja Effendi?

COMMERCE, Texas - The passionate desire of several Greenville residents to help students in the Philippines has led them to Texas A&M University-Commerce where an agreement has been signed to admit Filipino students from the University of Mindanao.

Dr. Aland Mizell, president of Minority Care International, and A&M-Commerce President Dan R. Jones signed the Memorandum of Agreement that allows the students to enroll at A&M-Commerce and establishes a Cross-Cultural Studies Exchange and Internship Program.

"I am very excited about the relationship we are forming with the University of Mindanao," Jones said. "I firmly believe that education is our nation's best form of international diplomacy and we look forward to welcoming to campus our first student from the Philippines this fall," he said.

"This is a great beginning," Mizell said. "It will be good for the university in the Philippines and the students there," said Mizell, who earned a doctorate in international relations with a focus on minority politics and conflict resolution.

Seeing poverty and violence in the southern Philippines led Mizell to establish Minority Care International, a charitable non-governmental and non-profit organization committed to assisting the impoverished through economic and educational development.

"The gift of a scholarship to a student who would otherwise remain educationally disadvantaged offers a way out of poverty, disease, and desperation, changing life forever," Mizell said.

Two Filipino students will enroll this fall with one studying nursing and the other business. They will gain workplace skills in an internship that complements their coursework.

The University of Mindanao was established in 1946 and is one of the oldest universities in Southern Philippines with an enrollment of about 30,000.

Mizell, his parents of Greenville, and several Greenville residents, including businessman Dee Hilton and his wife, Mary Jean, have made trips to the Philippines to become acquainted with the nation, culture, and the students.

MCI not only provides full scholarships for impoverished indigenous and Muslim students, but also provides counseling and income opportunities for its scholars.

Through its initiatives, MCI stresses community development, life and work skills, and civic responsibility.

The students enrolling will work part-time in local medical facilities and at Trust Services, Inc., where Hilton is president and chief executive officer.

The students will join about 400 other international students at A&M-Commerce who are from 50 nations.

Read the source of this publication on Texas Daily News.

Minority Care International (MCI), in partnership with Texas A&M University-Commerce (TAMU) and the University of Mindanao (UM), is pleased to announce that the first two MCI scholars who embarked on MCI's Student Exchange Program have returned after a successful semester abroad in what is hoped to be the first of many for MCI.

Mindanao Times, one of Davao City's leading newspaper, published a feature article on Minority Care International's Student Exchange program. 

Minority Care International (MCI), in partnership with Texas A&M University-Commerce (TAMU) and the University of Mindanao (UM), is pleased to announce that the first two MCI scholars who embarked on MCI's Student Exchange Program have returned after a successful semester abroad in what is hoped to be the first of many for MCI.

(more details found in the attached files)

Read the news here.