Sansakrit Vichitlekarn left everything he knew behind when he moved from Thailand to Eugene in 1994. The visiting assistant professor of accounting, who his students fondly refer to as “Stan the Man,” said he had never been far from his hometown of Bangkok prior to the move.
“The first day here I felt it was a culture shock,” he said. “But I felt warmly welcomed and continue to feel that way.”Vichitlekarn is just one of several University professors who travel from all over the world to teach in Eugene. While Vichitlekarn left his country for the first time only a few years ago, some professors spent their childhood living on other continents before moving to the States, and others left the U.S. to teach in another country before trying out their teaching skills in America.Vichitlekarn studied at the University and earned both his master’s and doctoral degrees. He began teaching this year after graduating last summer. While he said he has enjoyed his seven years in Eugene, he is planning to return to Thailand after spring quarter.
“I’d just like to go back to my mother country,” he said. “But I’d love to come back to the States someday.”
He said because his country helped pay for his schooling here, he must go back and teach for 12 years, which is double the amount of time he spent in school in Oregon. He already has a teaching position lined up at Skasetsart University in Bangkok.
“Once you know you’re going back home, you miss it more,” he said.
Although he is looking forward to being home, Vichitlekarn said he will miss Oregon and the relationships he’s formed, such as the one with his host family, who he lived with when he first arrived in Eugene.
When his father passed away in 1997, Vichitlekarn said his host mother in particular was very supportive.
“She took care of everything and was willing to sacrifice her job to take care of me,” he said.
Vichitlekarn said he will also miss his students.
“I love being with them,” he said. “I feel happy when I’m surrounded by them.”
However, the international diversity among the University’s faculty does not end with Vichitlekarn. It is also prevalent in other departments.
Scott Optican, visiting assistant law professor, has literally lived all over the world. Born in New York, he spent the first years of his life in the States before moving on to other countries, such as Austria, where he worked with the United Nations, and England, where he attended graduate school.
Since 1992, he has been teaching law at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, although this year he took a break to teach in Eugene. This is his first time practicing his profession in his home country.
Because the law school runs on a semester system, the academic year ends next week, and Optican said he can look back on the year and all his experiences teaching in the United States.
“It’s interesting to see the differences teaching in a U.S. law school,” Optican said.
While he said the experience has been more than worthwhile, one difference he had to get used to was the age and education level of his students. In the United States a student must have already earned their undergraduate degree, but in New Zealand, law students can be undergraduates.
“You’re actually teaching people right out of high school,” he said.
Optican said because students in the States have to earn their undergraduate degrees before going on to study law, they seem to have a better idea of what they want.
“Here, they know what they want out of their law school education,” he said. “But students are students no matter what part of the world they’re in.”
Optican said he also noticed the pace of busy Americans’ lifestyles.
“Everyone runs their own show,” he said.
Optican said at the University of Auckland, the law faculty comes together nearly every morning to drink tea and have a leisurely visit with each other. He said this is something he’s missed, so he successfully started the ritual among the University’s law faculty as a way for the professors to get to know each other better.
“It hasn’t caught on quite as much because people here are pretty busy,” he said. “But some of them seem to like it.”
While Optican had the experience of growing up in the United States, Sergio Koreisha, a professor of decision sciences in the business department, had the opportunity to live his childhood in South America. He said living in more than one country has enabled him to appreciate each country’s differences.
Koreisha was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, until his father moved the family to the United States when he was 12. He said at the time, there was talk of nationalizing industries and his father, who was not a native Brazilian, was afraid of losing his job.
“One day it was announced that we were going to move,” he said. “We boarded a plane and flew to New York.”
The family eventually settled in California, and although Koreisha has lived in the United States ever since, he said he still makes time to visit his hometown.
“My life has been here,” he said, “but I think I have the best of both cultures.”
Koreisha said he tries to instill an international flavor into his daughters’ lives that he had growing up. He said he has taken them to many other countries, such as France.
“I try to instill in them that there’s another country’s perspective, and we should try to consider them,” he said.