The Alumni Magazine for Worcester Polytechnic Institute. (WPI)
Issue link: http://wpialumnimag.epubxp.com/i/406282
Fall 2014 21 riosity about the exotic cuisine by bringing enough food to share, introducing them to such specialties as chicken with green curry sauce, sweet and sour fsh, and a spicy soup called tom yum kung. "It was the frst time I'd tasted Thai food," Weininger says. "Of course, it was wonderful." WHY NOT? More than three decades later, Tantayanon still refects fondly on her time at WPI. "Ev- eryone was very nice," she says. "We knew all the professors—because it's small, we were friends with them." Even the department's custodian left an impression, she says, when he offered to drive her and Rewat around Worcester as they hunted for an apartment. It was those friendly relationships that she missed most when she returned to Thailand. Chulalongkorn University has about 40,000 students and a much more formal culture, with none of the intimacy she had found at WPI. That may explain why Tantayanon, though she now lives 8,500 miles away from Worcester, has maintained a strong bond with WPI. Over the years, she's sent some of her own best students to do graduate work in Worcester. (Pavlik says the department was "consistently pleased with their perfor- mance.") And after helping set up the Bang- kok Project Center, she stayed involved, coor- dinating projects and forging a relationship between Chulalongkorn and WPI that has allowed students from the two universities to work together. "She could translate culturally between the two worlds, which was really invalu- able," Weininger says. Tantayanon has also been responsible for several innovations in the way science is taught at Chulalongkorn—innovations that Thai Connections Make Bangkok Project Center "Something Special" W hen Amy Kampa '15 stepped off a plane in Bangkok this past January, she was struck by the sheer size and bustle of the Thai capital. A native of rural Minnesota, Kampa had never been outside the United States before, and she soon realized that her frst foray to another country would be a major departure in more ways than one. Luckily, the staff of WPI's Bangkok Project Center had prepared her well before she left Worcester, covering everything from basic Thai vocabulary to "the bathroom situation," as Kampa puts it, explaining that anyone using a public restroom in the Southeast Asian country is expected to bring his or her own toilet paper. By the time she left Thailand two months later, after working closely with a team of fellow WPI juniors and Thai college students on an IQP analyzing the human dimension of a recent oil spill, Kampa knew she would miss Bangkok. "I miss the warmth," she says, "the warmth of the people smiling and patiently talking with me in Thai… My Thai friends were generous, kind, and warmhearted, eager to teach us their culture—the conventional parts as well as the bad words and night life." WPI's Bangkok Project Center was one of only a handful when it opened in 1989. Today, there are more than 40 project centers around the world, but according to Rick Vaz, the center's director and the university's dean of interdisciplinary and global studies, the Bangkok center is still something special. "It's defnitely unique among the project centers," Vaz says. The difference, he explains, is the close relationship that WPI has forged with Chulalongkorn University, thanks in large part to the work of Supawan Tantayanon and other Thai alumni. Over the years, the Bangkok Project Center has routinely produced winners and fnalists for the President's IQP Awards. Some of the more compelling projects have centered around Khlong Toei, a Bangkok slum community where WPI students developed a computer lab for a kindergarten and built a playground. Several proj- ects have been sponsored by Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn. "A number of our students have gotten to meet her majesty," Vaz says, adding that the princess is "gracious and dedicated to helping the less fortunate." What makes the Bangkok Project Center special, however, is the inclusion of Thai students from Chulalongkorn on IQP teams. It's a partnership that WPI students say gives them a greater insight into Thai culture. "It's the ultimate inside view," says Athena Casarotto '15, who worked with Kam- pa on the oil spill project. "They showed us where they hang out, we met their fami- lies. Their parents would be cooking us meals as we worked." Those friendships, Casarotto says, made her and her classmates feel at home in what could have been a very foreign place. "We really felt like we were living in Bangkok, like it was our city," she says. "I can't wait to go back."