In a small village in Niger, Africa, Heather Mangan could barely stand up. She knew it was something in her stomach.

“I needed to call my medical officer, but to get reception, it was a 10-minute walk,” Mangan said.

Although she could speak French, her host family and neighbors only knew Hausa, the native language.

They went to find somebody who could translate, eventually to find out Mangan was sick with a treatable stomach virus.

“That’s what they do; they look out for each other,” she said. “That day I was more thankful than ever to be with that village.”

At that time, Mangan was serving as a Peace Corps volunteer.

Three years earlier, she graduated from SDSU in 2007. Volunteering was in the back of her mind, but she decided to pursue a career instead.

She had been the managing editor of The Collegian her senior year, and after graduation she decided to take a reporting job in Idaho.

Not knowing if that was the career she wanted, she returned to Brookings to work at the SDSU Foundation. But, she said, the Peace Corps “was not something that I’d forgotten about yet.”

“A year passed, and I still couldn’t lose the dream to join the Peace Corps,” Mangan said. “I wanted to help people in a bigger way, and I wanted to see the world.”

In the summer of 2008, she applied.

During the application process, Mangan continued to put her journalism skills to use. In summer of 2009 she created The PostSD, an online magazine for South Dakota, and it launched Sept. 1.

“I wanted to tell stories that weren’t in the mainstream media using online and social media to host and promote it,” Mangan said.

When Mangan found out she was accepted into the Peace Corps, she had to leave her creation behind.

“I quit my job for this other dream,” Mangan said. “I sold all of my furniture, my car … I gave up my cell phone number,” Mangan said.

Mangan left the United States in July 2010. She was placed in Dantchaio, Niger, which is a small village in Africa. Before she could start her service there, though, she had to complete three months of training in Hamdallaye, another small village in Niger.

During those three months, she stayed with a host family while she learned about the educational system.

“Many of the people in my village were not educated beyond elementary school,” Mangan said.

She also started a girls soccer team.

“You become part of the village and live like they do,” she said.

On Sept. 23 Mangan finished her training and became sworn in as a Peace Corps volunteer. She was then sent to Dantchaio where she planned to live for 24 months.

“The biggest thing was just living like them,” Mangan said. “Niger is (one of) the poorest country in the world. In my village I didn’t have running water or electricity.”

“You eat the foods that they eat. You just live with them. That’s so important.”

Religion was a big part of the culture, as everyone in the village was Muslim.

“You’re daily life is wrapped around praying,” Mangan said.

She said she was the only Christian in her village, but she did not find that to be too challenging.

“I think I became more faithful,” Mangan said. “Ninety-nine percent of Niger is Muslim. There’s not one thing in America that 99 percent are.”

Religious extremists also exist in the country.

Al-Qaeda, a radical Islam group considered terrorists by most of the world, has been active in Niger, kidnapping people for money and attention from the western world.

“We had pretty high security,” Mangan said. “We always had to check in wherever we’d go.”

In early January, Al-Qaeda killed two French men in Niamey, the capital of Niger.

“At that point, the Peace Corps decided it was no longer safe for us to be there,” Mangan said. “We had to evacuate the country.”

Only being in Niger for six months, the news completely caught Mangan off-guard.

“That was the worst week of my life,” Mangan said. “I had an hour to pack up and say goodbye.”

In Niger, Mangan said that “people spend most of their time just being with each other. Everybody is a family.”

This made it extremely difficult to leave the people she had come to love.

“A woman that I considered my mother there started crying, and it was hard because Nigerians don’t cry,” Mangan said.

After that hour of saying goodbye, Mangan and the other volunteers were taken to Morocco for what was called a transition conference. At the end of a week there, Mangan had to say goodbye to those people as well.

“Some of us came back to America; some are in other counties,” Mangan said. “It was terrible. Those people were like my family.”

They were given the option of being flown back to the U.S., or taking that money for the plane ticket and finding their own way home.

“My friends and I decided we were going to travel,” Mangan said. “Right near us was Egypt. We wanted to see the pyramids.”

Not knowing that Egypt was about to see a series of protests that would capture the attention of the entire world, she and four friends took the money and flew into Cairo on Jan. 26. They stayed there for two days and went to Dahab, a resort city on the Red Sea, for five days.

“We were always constantly watching the television to see what was going on,” Mangan said.

“We were there; we were experiencing it. It was such a powerful thing. It was just meaningful to be there when it happened.”

The five of them were able to talk to Egyptian citizens who were both in favor of President Hosni Mubarak and opposed to him. Mangan said having that experience made a lasting impact on her.

“I used to think of Egypt as the pyramids,” Mangan said. “Now I think of Egypt as this amazing movement for changes.”

They left Cairo on Feb. 2, which was the day of the really big protests. Mangan said they were lucky to have such little difficulty making their flights.

“We couldn’t check the status of our planes,” Mangan said. “We couldn’t tell our friends and family that we were OK because the Internet was down.”

Mangan flew into the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City on Feb. 3 and stayed until Feb. 8.

Mangan had good spirits when hearing about yet another potential misfortune. She and her friend were not affected by it, but they heard something in the water caused a cholera outbreak in the city.

“We just laughed at that,” Mangan said, noting the string of dramatic events that seemed to follow her.

Mangan returned to her home in Pierre on Feb. 12 and is living with her family. She said she has “amazing support,” but is having a hard time making the transition from Niger to South Dakota.

“I had planned to be away,” Mangan said. “[My friends] said it, too: “You’re not supposed to be here.’”

Currently, she is not quite sure what her future plans are. She is applying for jobs, but she has also submitted reenrollment forms for the Peace Corps.

Because she was only in Niger for six months, rather than the planned 27 months, Mangan said she doesn’t think she was there long enough to make much of an impact.

“Not being able to do that, for reasons beyond my control, is really disheartening and difficult,” Mangan said.

But, the time she spent there did have a huge impact on her life, especially with what she values.

“Before I went to the Peace Corps, I was working … 80 hours a week, or something ridiculous like that. I had to learn to slow my life down. I learned more about face-to-face interaction with people.”

When asked if she would do it all over again, she replied in less than a second.

“In a heartbeat,” she said.

#1.2042921:168498081.png:IMG_0511.png:Heather Mangan celebrating Niger?s Independence Day on Aug. 3.:Photo Submitted by Heather Mangan

Schroeder has resigned from SDSU to accept the position as Associate Dean of Student Affairs for Ross University, School of Medicine on the island of Dominica, in the Caribbean Sea.

“I keep my eye out for promotional advances,” Schroeder said. “It’s been a career goal of mine to be in this type of a position … and ultimately, career wise, this position is where I want to be.”

Schroeder found the opportunity to advance her career by an on-line posting of this position and accepted it on Sept. 30. The public announcement of her resignation was on Nov. 17 and her last day at SDSU was Nov. 24.

As this job requires her to move to a vacationer’s paradise, Schroeder said it’s nothing but a bonus for her.

“I tend to be adventurous as it is, so I am really looking forward to this,” Schroeder said.

Students admire Schroeder’s persistence of advancing her career by keeping her eyes open for such opportunities.

“It’s easy to settle with what you have,” said Quinn Holden, junior industrial management student. “I think it’s great that she was persistent in what she wanted.”

After a series of thorough on-line and phone interviews with Ross University, Schroeder flew to Dominica in August 2010 for a formal interview and to get a feel for the campus.

“It was quite an extensive interviewing process,” Schroeder said.

She described the process as comprehensively being online, including résumé screening, leadership and administration assessments, personality inventories, interview-type essay questions, value ratings, international travel concerns and an assessment to measure her tolerance for different cultures.

Traveling and starting at an entirely different school and climate, Schroeder is confident in what lies ahead for her.

“I’m really not nervous; I really experienced what it’s like there and I met with the staff. I got a sense of what the student population was like and the culture, as well,” Schroeder said.

Schroeder has been the Wellness Center director for nearly three years, this coming March. Originally form LaCrosse, Wis., she will be moving far from the only three states she’s ever lived in, including Minnesota and South Dakota.

“I’ll really miss my co-workers at the Wellness Center, and the whole building in general,” Schroeder said. “There was truly great leadership among all of them.”

A search committee will be formed to select an individual to replace Schroeder. Mark Ekeland, coordinator of recreation programs and intramurals started acting as the interim director Nov. 25, and will continue to do so until a full-time director is hired.

Ekeland said replacing Schroeder is going to be difficult.

“If we could clone Dr. Schroeder, that would be great,” he said. “We couldn’t have asked for anyone finer than her.”

Amazing things can happen with a bit of resourcefulness, a plane ticket to one of the world’s most intense war zones and a fake press pass. Mike Shiley, director and the genius behind the film Inside Iraq: The Untold Stories, can testify to that very idea. Shiley will be visiting campus Nov. 8 to present the movie he filmed and to discuss current events in Iraq.

Shiley’s movie was created when he traveled to Iraq armed with nothing more than a camera and a fake ABC News press pass.

“Part of who I am is an adventure hound,” Shiley said. “I was in Yugoslavia in “93 posing as a photographer and got hired by CNN; and I have gotten into two natural disasters using fake press passes.”

Shiley was able to enter the ABC News compound and travel with their group posing as a cameraman and journalist. He hoped to capture a side of the Iraq war that is not normally presented to the public.

“I shot what I saw,” Shiley said.

Shiley claims that the program he will be presenting at SDSU is comprised of two parts. The first is a screening of his film and the second part is an informative lecture structured around questions from the audience. The presentation will conclude by presenting solutions that may peacefully resolve the conflict.

“Most of the discussion at the end of the program will be based on history, not current politics,” Shiley said. “The question now is what will Iraq be like after the war? It’s easy to start a war, but how do we end it?”

The University Program Council is hosting the event and has been attempting to reach a larger variety of audiences with an expanded speaker line-up.

“We’ve had really good response with speakers this year,” said Sam Wangberg, the lectures coordinator for UPC. “We are trying to think outside the box and reach groups we haven’t reached before.”

Shiley said he encourages everyone to come and see what the movie has to offer, as it will be time well spent.

“For two hours, let’s focus on something bigger than ourselves,” Shiley said. “We have been at war with Iraq since the college kids today were in kindergarten.”

Justin Johnson, a SDSU history student currently in deployment training at Ft. McCoi, WI, was extremely interested in the upcoming event. Johnson said he was surprised that he hadn’t heard about the film or it’s upcoming presence on campus before.

“A non-media biased view of the situation over there would be a good thing for everyone to learn about,” Johnson said.

In addition to posing as a phony news reporter, Shiley was also able to acquire a military uniform. With only 90 minutes of training he was acting as a fake gunner on a tank in the Third Armored Calvary Regimen.

As a result of his “service” to the military, Shiley was award a civilian combat medal.

Shiley wouldn’t reveal what happened when it was made known that he wasn’t an actual reporter and had no right to be there.

“You just have to come to the event [on campus] to find out,” Shiley said.

He has had many influences in his life and people he works to emulate while reporting.

“I’m like Hunter S. Thompson, without the drugs,” Shiley said.

Besides presenting information on the Iraq situation, he will also be discussing how students can create the lives they desire. Shiley is an advocate of creating his own destiny. He claims if you don’t design a life you want to live, someone else will design it for you. Designing a unique life is something he has become a champion at, especially when he gets the opportunity to record his life and present it and encourage people to do the same.

“Show up somewhere with some confidence, have a story that doesn’t suck and go for it,” Shiley said.

#1.1743567:1138447356.png:Mike Shiley 11-03-2010 56:Although he was never in the military, Mike Shiley was able to get a hold of a military uniform, enabling him to get right into the action.:Submitted Photo

The International Relations Council, formerly known as International Relations Club is the only umbrella organization that oversees smaller organizations, with the goal of working together on campus.

International students from 66 countries across the world are currently represented by IRC. Of those 66 countries, IRC takes responsibility in overseeing four main sub clubs: Chinese Students’ Scholars Association, Nepali Students’ Association, Indian Students’ Association, and African Students’ Association.

This fall, SDSU had the opportunity to greet approximately 500 international students from the 66 different countries represented. Of those 500, nearly 400 students are actively involved with IRC throughout the school year, keeping busy organizing events and voicing opinions.

International Relations Coordinator, Lin Lin, emphasizes the fact that IRC wants to create an increased welcoming atmosphere for the international students as well as the domestic students here on campus. A misconception regarding IRC is that participation within the council, as well as the festivities, are limited solely to international students.

“If you are talking about international relations in regards to meeting new people, it seems like segregating,” said Ely Madden, junior transfer student and english major. “A lot of people focus on the differences between people when we should focus on them as human beings. We are all human beings.”

IRC takes pride in welcoming everybody as a community and as human beings, highlighting the importance of full diversity.

“I’m very excited for the increasing international population. More and more countries are representing the SDSU campus … this is great,” Lin Lin said.

IRC, concerning future achievements, hopes to not only inform the public about the importance of diversity, but also to find innovative techniques essential for helping international students with their transitions to SDSU.

Beginning last semester IRC created numerous workshops to benefit students. Such workshops cover topics pertaining to healthcare and future career paths.

Vice President and senior visual arts major, Devanshu Narang, of Chandigarh, India is working alongside fellow IRC members in finding ways to ultimately benefit international and domestic students as a whole. He said he hopes that IRC allows for a growth of common ground between all students.

IRC in association with the four sub clubs have been dedicating an abundance of time to put together educational festivities, essential opportunities for the SDSU, as well as the Brookings community, to better enlighten themselves about different cultures.

International Relations Night, IRC’s upcoming event and annual tradition, gives international students the opportunity to inform SDSU about their culture using cuisine as a medium. By doing so, IRC hopes to unite people from all cultural backgrounds.

International Relations Night is Nov. 7, starting at 6 p.m., in the Volstorff Ballroom of The Union. The event features a buffet style dinner and a diversity showcase presented by students. Singing, dancing and a fashion show are among the entertainment offered.

Tickets are $15 for adults, $5 for kids (10 and under) and $7 for SDSU students (ID required).

“It’s going to be a great event (International Night). We had a full house last year. If you don’t come to this you will be missing out on a great college experience,” Narang said.

Madden, plans to attend the upcoming International Night.

“Generally speaking it’s good to expose people to these things [International Night]. It’s a great way to break the tension barrier between cultures,” Madden said. “It’s a good conduit to introduce.”

IRC welcomes volunteers. For further information regarding International Relations Council or International Relations Night please contact IRC President, Nardos Asfaw at nardos.asfaw@jacks.sdstate.edu or Vice President Devanshu Narang at devanshunarang@yahoo.com.

#1.1717739:3893883798.png:international-1-web.png:From left to right, Zhao Lee, Mayumi Morioka, Ladan Bahmani, Christophina Lynch, Shirin Pourafshar, Can Yang, Sun-hyeong Kim and Jeehee Ryu take time out of last year?s International Relations Night festivities for a group shot.:Submitted photo by Mayumi Morioka
#1.1717743:3516583763.png:international-2-web.png:Front Row: Mayumi Morioka, Yuko Yoshii, Kanako Watanabe, and Minae Takahashi. Back Row: Yudai Kumano, Shogo Eguchi, Nobuyuki Izawa and Yuto Fujikawa.:Collegian photo by Yuko Yoshii

For the first time in SDSU’s history, a semester has been named after a country.

Fatih Benzer, associate professor of visual arts, was on the committee that made the decision to name the fall semester after the Republic of Turkey. They decided to go with Turkey last February, and Benzer has been deeply involved in planning many of the related events.

“We chose Turkey for the first name because there are several faculty members here at SDSU who are from Turkey,” said Karl Schmidt, Director of International Affairs.

Benzer grew up in Izmir, Turkey. He came to the United States 17 years ago when he won a scholarship from the Turkish Council of Higher Education to study abroad. He then earned his master’s degree in painting from California State University and his doctorate in art education from Arizona State University.

One of Benzer’s first experiences upon arriving in the United States was walking through Target.

“It made me realize the influence of pop culture here,” Benzer said about seeing products lined up one after the other. “I felt like I was walking through one of Andy Warhol’s paintings.”

What attracted Benzer to teach at SDSU was the small size of Brookings, as he grew up and went to school in big cities.

“SDSU offers smaller classes which I like because it allows me more time and the ability to pay more attention to my students,” Benzer said. “This is especially important in visual arts.”

He also likes it at SDSU because he has more time to do his scholarly work, which includes art and research. He ties his research into his teaching.

To begin the Turkey semester, a sold-out community kickoff was held at Cottonwood Bistro on Sept. 9. It included Turkish cuisine, art, photos and live music.

There are four events Benzer will be directly connected with for the semester.

On Oct. 5 there will be a film screening of Crossing the Bridge, from which viewers will learn about the evolution of music in Turkey. Another film, Ice Cream, I Scream will screen on Nov. 30. It is about an ice cream peddler competing with large international ice cream companies. Both films will show at 7 p.m. in The Northern Plains Biostress Laboratory 103, introduced by Benzer.

Benzer will also be doing two lectures with topics about Turkey. On Oct. 14 from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Campanile Room about Turkey’s art and architecture.

On Nov. 3 from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Crest Room Benzer will have a discussion about growing up in Turkey from his own personal perspective. Topics he will discuss include culture, custom and human relationships.

Benzer does two styles of painting: iconographic and figurative. The purpose of his iconographic art is to create a bridge between East and West Civilization.

“The purpose of art in my life is very simple,” Benzer said. “It helps me understand the meaning of life… It is a very strong visual form for me.”

#1.1655444:1796155201.jpg:SDSU has started naming each semester and this fall was named after the Republic of Turkey.:SDSU has started naming each semester and this fall was named after the Republic of Turkey. Fatih Benzer, an art professor, represents the new semester?s name with his Turkish heritage.:Collegian Photo by Brittany Canales