FROM THE EDITOR

2/2/06

The increasing focus on internationalism and the College's expanding presence in the global community is topic of LAzine Issue 27. In 2005, with bipartisan support, President George W. Bush announced a plan for the federal government to help send 1 million American college students per year to study outside the United States. His reasons echoed the sentiments of educators—study abroad enhances student interest in academic work, helps them acquire important career “skill” sets, and continues for decades to influence their perspective on world events. Such benefits are key in a world in which one American job in six is tied to international trade.

The College has met these challenges with an explosion of international initiatives. Currently, enrollment in classes with international topics is surging across the liberal arts spectrum. Half of all liberal arts majors are involved in out-of-classroom projects, such as an internship, or a period in which they worked with faculty research, or a study abroad experience. We have a goal of boosting that number to 75 percent of all students in the next five years, which includes doubling the number of students who participate in study abroad programs.

One of our newest projects with a global dimension is the Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research (CALPER), one of fourteen National Language Resource Centers in the country funded by the federal government with the charge to improve the foreign language teaching and learning environment in the United States. The Center, supported by the College's Center for Language Acquisition (CLA), develops innovative materials for teachers and other professionals who teach foreign languages. Another focus is evaluating current methods of foreign language instruction and creating more efficient performance measures. Both CLA and CALPER put Penn State in a position of international visibility. One of CALPER's hallmark initiatives is its Study Abroad project, which is designed to enhance the learning experience of students studying a foreign language in country.

Another initiative that will have a global reach is our proposed development of a Center for the Behavior and Social Science of Terrorism. This Center will carry out interdisciplinary research in the behavioral and social sciences that will lead to deeper insights into the world of terrorism and counterrorism. For instance, one of the first major activities of the Center will be to hold a workshop with leading experts from around the world to help determine why people are motivated to join terrorist groups. This workshop will be organized in cooperation with Israel 's Institute for Counter-Terrorism and will take place on the Penn State campus.

In this issue, all of our stories involve issues of global importance. We feature two stories about alums involved in the opposite ends of the international finance gamut—microinvestment and multinational global trade. One consequence of global trade, outsourcing, has created a whole new industry worldwide—the call center. We explore the growth of Indian call centers with a new faculty member, and the toll they are taking on the young people who staff them. We also delve into the ethical issues of climate change and how we determine accountability for its effects, an aspect of the global problem that people have not yet examined. And finally, we talk to a Penn State student who, in her travel abroad to Haiti, experienced first hand the world of differences between her own life and those not as fortunate.

We hope you enjoy it, and we welcome any comments you may have.

 

The Ethical Climate of Climate Change

It has been nine years since more than 1,500 international senior scientists, including 105 Nobel laureates, signed the Union of Concerned Scientists- sponsored World Scientists' Call for Action at the Kyoto Climate Summit. This document, as well as others, set the stage for a strong climate change treaty. Since then climate change has occurred and continues to affect weather, agriculture, sea level increases, worldwide health, forests and wildlife, and marine life.

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The Mysteries of Global Trade

Global trade finance is one of those mysterious economic terms that we know affect our economy—and other countries' economies—but that's usually about as far as we know.

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From Vegetables to Vegetables

Alex Hartzler credits his entrepreneurial spirit to working in his grandparent's fruit and vegetable stand as a kid. So it is quite ironic that 30 years later, he's still working to help people maintain their fruit and vegetable stands.

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A World of Difference

The first thing Christina Waksmunski noticed upon coming home was the waste.

“Suddenly I was so aware of habits such as letting the water run while we brush our teeth,” the junior from Portage, Pennsylvania, explains. “In Haiti, people hardly ever have running water and when they do, it's only at certain times of the day. So people only shower when it rains—which is not very frequent.”

<Read More>



The Other Side of The Other Story

The next time you get frustrated because the Indian call agent on the other end of the phone doesn't understand you (or vice versa), keep this in mind: “Sarah” or “Tom” is sitting a cubicle in the dead of night, making or answering about 200 phone calls over eight hours. Besides the fake name, the person often tries to pretend he or she is located in the United States, trying mightily to neutralize an accent.

Sumita Raghuram, associate professor of labor studies and industrial relations
Sumita Raghuram

“Call center agents are strongly encouraged to use a made-up American name,” says Sumita Raghuram, associate professor of labor studies and industrial relations. “It is supposed to help them relate to the people on the other end of the line and may give the agents some psychological distance.”

From what? The worst part of the job: frequent verbal assaults by the person on the other end of the line. The call center agent has to try to be impervious to a barrage of often racial or sexual insults and tirades, usually inspired by the outsourcing of jobs by major corporations.

Even in the face of all this, call agent jobs in India are in high demand, says Raghuram, who studies workers at Indian call centers.

“These agents are either in college or college graduates. To find any kind of decent job in India is almost impossible,” she explains. “The companies provide food and transportation to and from the call centers. To find a job that pays this well—the equivalent of about $200 a month—is like heaven.”

Call centers have become a major industry in India since General Electric opened one of the first in the early 1980s. Due to the combination of a shift towards more service-oriented jobs and technological advances, many American companies have moved their customer service, or “back-office” operations, abroad. India, with its large English-speaking population, is the ideal spot for this people-intensive job, since wages are between one-tenth and one-half of the comparable pay scale in the United States.

About 70 percent of all outsourced customer contract processes are now handled by Indian call centers. Along with debt collection, call agents also reserve airline flights, adjudicate insurance claims, and offer technical support. Many Fortune 500 companies, including IBM, General Electric, American Express, Citibank, Ford, Hewlett-Packard, and Sprint, have at least one call center in India. According to India 's National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), the number of people working in call centers is expected to reach over 2 million by 2012.

Besides the low wages, another positive aspect of outsourcing cited by American companies is the time difference, says Raghuram.

“If a job is outsourced to India, you can turn it around in 24 hours and you don't have to wait an extra business day,” she says. “Call center agents all work the night shift to cater to the needs of the customers in different countries and that can save them a lot of money.”

Trailing agents during their working hours, Raghuram saw first-hand how the high-stress job affected workers. One aspect that particularly interested her was the impact of not only the verbal abuse, but the need to hide one's true identity on a nightly basis.

“Who you are is defined by the social group to which you belong and are surrounded by,” she says. “These workers are surrounded immediately by other call agents, their families and their culture. All of this is constantly being bombarded—either directly by customers or indirectly by trying to connect to people in alien cultures. The wall between their own self and who they pretend to be is constantly breaking down.”

The call centers agents undergo intensive training in American sports, movies, and geography, so they can make small talk. This is in addition to training in American diction and vernacular, and of course, anger management and relaxation techniques.

There are also some ironic and potentially devastating consequences. Due to the number of call center workers and their substantial earning power, the demand for American products is growing, and the culture is permeating India. These spending habits are unprecedented in others ways as well.

“It's all about immediate gratification. They are buying motorcycles, designer clothes, fancy apartments,” says Raghuram. “They are also incurring debt, which is a completely foreign notion in India. It is a strong tradition that no one would dream of living beyond their means.”

She does say that there is the occasional positive phone call—when the person on the phone is actually thankful and appreciative of the agent's work. These are the times, she found, when the call agent would really like to let down her front or “mask,” as Raghuram calls it.

“Agents would tell me that when they do talk to the person who appreciates what I'm telling them and says, ‘I'd like to tell your supervisor just how helpful Patricia has been,'” she says. “That is the moment I would like to say, ‘there is no Patricia; there is a different girl behind this call.' That is when they'd like to be able to be themselves.”

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