April 1, 2004
LINCOLN—International students at Union College will teach free ethnic vegetarian cooking classes each Wednesday evening in April. Classes will take place from 7 – 8:30 p.m. in Union Market, located in Union’s newly opened Ortner Center, 3800 S. 48th Street. Ingredients for the classes will be provided by Open Harvest, a cooperatively owned, natural food retail operation in Lincoln.
The class schedule is as follows:
April 7—Indonesian cooking with Agatha Agustiana and Rebecca Soegondo from Indonesia
April 14—East Indian cooking with Sujanah Jacob from Malaysia
April 21—Chinese cooking with Joey Leung from Hong Kong
April 28—Japanese cooking with Kanako Miyata from Japan
Those wanting to attend must pre-register by e-mailing Elizabeth Rodacker-Borgens at email@example.com. Deadline for registration is the day prior to the class.
The cooking classes have stemmed from a college writing class taught by Elizabeth Rodacker-Borgens, associate professor of English at Union College. Rodacker has begun to emphasize a concept called “service learning” in her college writing class. This concept—which stresses writing for the community, with the community or about the community—has developed into a collaboration between Union College, Open Harvest and a group of international students willing to share their cultural and food traditions by teaching free vegetarian cooking classes. These same students, along with their classmate Joanna Samborski from Poland, also had articles published in Open Harvest’s “News Bites” newsletter.
Union College has been noted for its high percentage of students from other countries. In the 2004 U.S. News and World Report, Union College tied for second (14%) in the Most International Students, Comprehensive College Category for the Midwest region.