by Jane Terry and Linda Covey

Linda Covey, Religious Studies alumna (M.A. 2011) is teaching at MSU’s Dalian campus in China and recently shared her experiences with us:

Mainly, I wanted to share with you that this semester of teaching three religion classes (in addition to the five classes of Psychology two days a week) went very well.  It was certainly enlightening to me to hear the Chinese students’ comments on religion.  There was so little that they knew–some of them didn’t even know that there were any other religions except for Christianity and Buddhism.  A frequent comment at the send of the course was that they “could talk now” to foreigners about their religion.  I had 79 seniors in two sections, and one section of international students for two classes per week.

The international students’ course went much longer; the seniors were on Missouri schedule.  We just finished our term here, and I took that class on a field trip to a Buddhist/Taoist temple complex [see photos, above and below].  They had never been on any field trip and thought the whole thing was awesome (it was their final exam).  They had also never been in any temples.  Associate Dean, Beat Kernan, and another teacher went with us for the day trip.  The international students were South Korean, Indonesian, and African (Nigeria).

Of course, I cannot teach these classes without thinking of you and the rest of my thesis committee, along with other teachers in the department.  Remembering how all of you taught the classes I was in provides the role model for how to teach my own courses.