Professor visits Czech Republic university

Chynna DeHoyos

The Signal

Czech Republic invited Everette Penn, associate professor of criminology, to visit the University of West Bohemia with hopes of setting up a cultural exchange last summer. Penn talked about his trip and what he and the University of West Bohemia are trying to achieve in establishing this cultural exchange.

Q: How did the University of West Bohemia contact you?
It is kind of funny how it happened. I was contacted through a professor here in our Humanities Department who travels over there regularly. Her name is Sandria Hu, professor of art, and she talked to her contacts at West Bohemia University. They asked if we have the desire to team up with them in the areas of political science, criminology and some of the social sciences. Well, an email came my way early this summer and through email our connection was fortified. And there came the visit.

Q: Did you have any prior interest in the Czech Republic?
I think I always had, being a former Army officer, an understanding of Soviet Russia, USSR of the past, and that history of communism versus capitalism. So yes, I always had a desire to travel to those Eastern block countries, so this was great that this opportunity came about.

Q: Why do they want to have UHCL as their American school?
Well, they have a program called the British and American studies program, and they already have a British university, but they don’t have an American university. Upon visiting over there, the students were very excited to have some sort of an [American] connection to them. I was able to give a lecture over there and they were very attentive. Sometimes I think we forget, in the United States, just how desired we are by many of the people from around the world. They did not have an establishment, so we are starting the progress to begin that relationship between our two universities.

Q: Can you tell me about the program and what they want to set up with UHCL?
Because they have this British and American studies program, the desire is that we have students and faculty between our two universities traveling back and forth visiting with each other, maybe even taking courses, research collaboration taking place and opportunities for those students who are over there to see this United States of America in which they are studying. Hopefully, perhaps our geography students, our cross-cultural studies students and our political science students can have an opportunity to travel to Czech Republic to understand what was communism, cross-cultural issues, socio-economic issues and what was a very different world before the 1984 time period when the change took place with the wall coming down and the fall of the Soviet Union.

Q: What could this mean for the university if the program gets set up?
Once we get [the program] in place, we will have an opportunity for our students to be able to be in the Eastern Europe area, to have a base for our students, not just to be in the Czech Republic but to be throughout [Europe]. If you ever travel to Europe, once you get there it’s very easy by train to go from country to country, so if we can get this going we can have a lot of opportunities for our students to truly be global citizens.