Colorado educators explore windows to Asia's lesser-known nations
This article originally appeared in CU Boulder Today.
While nearly every nation has a checkered past, reducing a country to a single chapter risks overlooking the richness of its history and culture.
Through a series of professional development workshops over the 2024–25 academic year, the South, Southeast, and West Asia Outreach Program (SSEWA) of the Center for Asian Studies (CAS) at CU Boulder helped teachers gain a more nuanced perspective on three conflict-affected countries—Afghanistan, Cambodia and Vietnam—and helped reshape how some Colorado educators approach global education.
“SSEWA workshops help CU Boulder scholarship and research expand and deepen Colorado educators’ knowledge of underrepresented regions in Asia,” said SSEWA Outreach Coordinator Hannah Palustre.
CAS ran the SSEWA program from 2006 to 2014 and relaunched it in 2022, through a $2.2 million National Resource Center (NRC) and Foreign Language and Area Studies grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Additional funding from the CU Office for Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship and Partnerships for International Strategies in Asia allowed SSEWA to offer workshops at no cost to teachers, expanding access and impact.
“I recently learned that ‘sewa’ means ‘service’ in Nepali, which seems fitting because the SSEWA outreach program serves teachers,” Palustre said. “Almost three years after our relaunch, we’re seeing a growing number of repeat participants—educators who continue to seek global perspectives for their classrooms.”