Spring 2002
Davis opens doors to global village
Joyce Ekman Davis (B.A. '48, industrial relations) doesn't speak a foreign language. Nor has she lived abroad, apart from the one year she spent working for the U.S. Army in Occupied Japan in the late 1940s.
But that relative lack of personal experience hasn't dampened her enthusiasm for what she considers one of the most important areas of education in the 21st century. "Foreign languages," she says, "are tremendously important. It's becoming a global world. One of the problems in the Middle East is that we can't find enough Arabic speakers for the State Department"-- a problem of particular consequence since September 11.
Ekman believes that increased awareness of the importance of the global village brings a renewed sense of urgency to language learning. "Global realization," she notes, "comes when [people] know they might be working in other places. If you can go over there with a knowledge of the language it shows respect, and you're more effective in the job.
Bahl bridges cultures with language
When Kari Bahl (German and deaf education '03) began studying German, she was already a far more accomplished linguist than most of her high school classmates from Lakeville. After all, German was her third language. She'd already mastered a second--English.
"My parents are deaf, so American Sign Language [ASL] was my first language when I was growing up," says Bahl. "I learned English through hearing relatives and through TV. I guess I've always been interested in foreign languages. I think having had to learn two languages [at home] made it easier for me to pick up German."
Bahl, 21, had always wanted to study abroad. The Joyce Ekman Davis Scholarship gave her the financial support she needed to spend the fall 2001 semester in Germany. At Freiburg University, she says, "At first I experienced culture shock. You think you know the language--but there are differences in slang and accents--differences you could never fully appreciate without living among the people who speak the language."
By the end of her stay, she felt "very comfortable."
Bahl's interest in bridging language and cultural differences extends beyond the classroom. She volunteers at a St. Louis Park clinic that offers a weekly support program for the hearing children of deaf parents. What she says about her experience in Germany might apply equally well to her work as a link between the deaf and hearing communities: "The best thing about knowing a language is just being able to communicate with people of another culture. I find it really rewarding." - J.W.
Photo by Diana Watters
"If you're going to work for [major companies], well, those businesses aren't just located in the United States. Even Enron had a plant in India!"
In 1998, Davis, a retired college administrator who lives with her husband in Pinole, California, demonstrated the depth of her commitment to language study when she established the Joyce Ekman Davis Scholarship for the study of foreign languages at the U. Limited to students in their junior year or above, the scholarship gives special consideration to applicants from the Foreign Language Immersion Program. Created with a $34,000 gift annuity, the scholarship eventually will be funded at $100,000, according to the terms of Davis' will.
The first Joyce Ekman Davis scholarship was awarded in 1999. The current holder, German major Kari Bahl, used her award to study at Freiburg University in Germany fall semester 2001.
That's just the kind of experience Davis had in mind when she set up the scholarship opportunity for young people like Bahl. "You have a better chance of appreciating the culture [of a foreign county] if you know the language. You mustn't be an isolationist. You're missing a lot if you are," she says.
Growing up in Rochester, Minn., young Davis didn't have much opportunity to learn about other cultures. Even though her parents spoke the Swedish of their immigrant forebears, they made no effort to pass the language along to the next generation. Davis recalls that her mother and father spoke to each other in Swedish when they wanted to keep something secret from the children. "When our parents figured out that we could understand [their Swedish]," she laughs, "that's when they stopped speaking it."
What her parents did communicate to her was a sense of the adventure of faraway places. "My mother had wanted to work in Glacier National Park when she was young, but could not," Davis remembers, adding that despite her missing her own chance for youthful adventure, her mother encouraged her daughter when an opportunity arose. Davis recalls, "In 1946, my roommate heard of a chance to go to Japan [as a civilian employee of the U.S. Occupation forces.] She wanted to go, but you had to take a War Department test. She was afraid to take the test alone, so I went along. She flunked, but I passed!"
After a year in Japan with the Army Corps of Engineers, Davis came home to finish her B.A. at the U. After graduation, her horizons--and her dreams--were expanding beyond Minnesota. In 1951, she left the state for an administrative post at the University of California at Berkeley. She spent her entire career there, eventually working in the Office of the President.
When Davis first reconnected with the U, it had been 40 years since her last visit to campus. Yet she never stopped thinking of herself as a Minnesotan - and she has remained loyal to the University as well. "I have all maroon-and-gold windbreakers," she says. "Whenever I wear my Minnesota jacket, people [here in California] come up and say, 'I like your governor!' I'm still a Minnesotan. That's where [my] roots are."
One of the great joys of giving for scholarships, says Ekman, is tracking "her" students' progress. She hopes to get a chance someday to meet some of those students back in Minnesota--both foreign language students and recipients of the women's gymnastics scholarship she co-founded with her brother, Lincoln. An avid swimmer, she also funded a swimming scholarship at Berkeley, and she says she enjoys attending an occasional swimming practice to see how "the kids" are doing.
After a lifetime spent in great centers of learning like Berkeley and the U, Davis believes unshakably in the value of education. "Education," she says, "is the only way to take care of a lot of [the problems of the world]--even terrorism."
"Terrorism is only tempting for people who have nothing else to look forward to. Education offers hope."