{"id":28053,"date":"2016-05-09T09:24:51","date_gmt":"2016-05-09T13:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=28053"},"modified":"2021-10-05T07:37:33","modified_gmt":"2021-10-05T11:37:33","slug":"after-bonding-over-shared-third-culture-kid-experience-psychology-professor-and-student-collaborate-on-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2016\/after-bonding-over-shared-third-culture-kid-experience-psychology-professor-and-student-collaborate-on-research\/","title":{"rendered":"After bonding over shared \u2018third-culture kid\u2019 experience, psychology professor and student collaborate on research"},"content":{"rendered":"

When she started her sophomore year of high school, Kim Brenneman<\/a> suddenly wasn\u2019t in Kansas anymore. Her family had moved to northern India, and Brenneman \u2013 now a professor and chair of the EMU Psychology Department<\/a> \u2013 spent the next two years attending the Woodstock School. It wasn\u2019t a terribly long period to spend abroad, but timing is everything; spending half of high school halfway around the world leaves its marks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was rough,\u201d Brenneman recalls of her family\u2019s return to Hesston, Kansas, in time for her senior year. \u201cWhat was important when I came back was the car you drove and the clothes you wore. Those were not important at all when I was at Woodstock.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having that extended experience outside of her home culture while growing up makes Brenneman what\u2019s known as a \u201cthird-culture kid,\u201d or TCK<\/a>. The \u201cthird-culture\u201d label acknowledges the mixed cultural identity a TCK often develops, in which they can feel neither completely at home in the culture they were born into nor the one(s) in which they spent considerable amounts of time.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A 1978 photo taken at Woodstock School, the day before the Gingerich family moved back to the United States. Kim Gingerich Brenneman with close friends Anita Sundaram (left) and\u00a0Shahnaz Kapadia, now deceased). (Courtesy photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI found that I identified more with kids who had had the same experience [of living overseas] after I returned home,\u201d says Brenneman, one of about 20 current EMU faculty and staff who identify as TCKs. (Although the \u201cTCK\u201d label includes the word \u201ckid,\u201d the effects of growing up in more than one culture are often life-long.)<\/p>\n

Brenneman\u2019s background later inspired the direction of her academic career. After graduating from EMU with a degree in psychology, she went on to get a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh. She wrote her dissertation on the well-being and adjustment of American kids living in Korea.<\/p>\n

Often, Brenneman says, the most challenging part of being a TCK is not living abroad \u2013 it\u2019s adjusting to life after returning to their home culture.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of the adjustment [for TCKs] is trying to figure out where they fit in. They [might be] American, but they don\u2019t feel completely American,\u201d says Brenneman. \u201cIt\u2019s hard for people who haven\u2019t been in that experience to understand it.\u201d<\/p>\n

A dozen TCKs on campus<\/h3>\n

That\u2019s something first-year student Cela Hoefle knows well. When she was 11, Hoefle\u2019s family moved to a city in northern Thailand, where she lived until she finished high school. She started at EMU in the fall of 2015. Hoefle is one of more than a dozen TCKs, including her older sister, enrolled in EMU\u2019s traditional undergrad programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people first see me they expect me to just blend back in,\u201d says Hoefle, who has been active in both the Third-culture Kids Club on campus (her sister, Nika, was co-president of the group before graduating this spring) and the International Student Organization.<\/p>\n

[Read Nika’s op-ed in the Weather Vane campus newspaper on being a Third-culture Kid<\/a> and more about Third Culture Kids finding a home at EMU<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

\"cela<\/a>
The Hoefle family and friends at a church in an Ahka village in Chiang Rai, Thailand, December 2015. From left: Katiana Hoefle, Dominika “Nika” Hoefle, Celestyna “Cela” Hoefle, Akoo Mayer, Patricia Magal and Joel Hoefle. Nika Hoefle is a recent graduate of EMU, while her sister Cela is a sophomore.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A psychology major, Hoefle quickly connected with Brenneman as a fellow TCK. Before long, Hoefle began assisting Brenneman with an ongoing research project on the psychological impact of EMU\u2019s required cross-cultural programs<\/a> on students.<\/p>\n

The goal, Brenneman says, is to understand and quantify what students mean when they say \u2013 as they often do \u2013 that their experiences on the university\u2019s cross-cultural programs were \u201clife-changing.\u201d One of Hoefle\u2019s roles in the project is helping with data collection by interviewing students after they return from studying abroad.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a TCK, I\u2019m still just trying to figure out what that experience means to me,\u201d Hoefle says. \u201cSeeing [these changes] in other people helps me understand myself in some ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

‘Globally knowledgeable’ students help with transition for TCKs<\/h3>\n

Although EMU\u2019s cross-cultural study programs give many students an often-profound first taste of life in unfamiliar parts of the world, it\u2019s a far different experience from that of being a TCK.<\/p>\n

One of the distinctions that Brenneman has observed between the groups is that TCKs tend to focus on the similarities between cultures, while students who experience life outside the United States for the first time through a cross-cultural tend to focus on differences.<\/p>\n

Those tendencies aside, Brenneman says the prevalence of cross-cultural education throughout the curriculum, along with EMU\u2019s emphasis on becoming more \u201cglobally knowledgeable and accepting,\u201d help create a supportive atmosphere for TCKs at the university.<\/p>\n

At the same time, she adds, the relatively large group of TCKs on campus contributes significantly to that same globally-aware environment that EMU prizes.<\/p>\n

\u201cTCKs bring strengths to the EMU community as a result of their experiences,\u201d Brenneman says. \u201cThey help bring out the global emphasis that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When she started her sophomore year of high school, Kim Brenneman suddenly wasn\u2019t in Kansas anymore. Her family had moved to northern India, and Brenneman \u2013 now a professor and ... read more about After bonding over shared \u2018third-culture kid\u2019 experience, psychology professor and student collaborate on research<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4515,5725,266,5603,5730],"tags":[6795,17205,11912],"feature":[],"class_list":["post-28053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-admissions","category-alumni","category-psychology","category-undergraduate-programs","tag-diversity","tag-kim-brenneman","tag-third-culture-kids"],"yoast_head":"\nAfter bonding over shared \u2018third-culture kid\u2019 experience, psychology professor and student collaborate on research - EMU News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2016\/after-bonding-over-shared-third-culture-kid-experience-psychology-professor-and-student-collaborate-on-research\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"After bonding over shared \u2018third-culture kid\u2019 experience, psychology professor and student collaborate on research - EMU News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When she started her sophomore year of high school, Kim Brenneman suddenly wasn\u2019t in Kansas anymore. 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