170 academics There were mud huts, African compounds, Latin American adobe brick houses, Appalachian shacks, Asian stilt houses, slum houses and refugee camps to choose from. Typical American houses, dorm rooms, apartments, hotels or motels were not an option. When students experienced Harding University at Tahkodah (HUT), temporarily surviving the global village was a necessity. In 2000, Camp Tahkodah, located an hour from Searcy, gave Harding permission to use 100 acres of their land to develop a global village for students to learn how to live in different parts of the world in hopes of being more prepared for the living conditions they would face in future mission work or travels abroad. When current director of HUT Oneal Tankersley came on board in 2002, two houses were under construction. “Once I became the director of HUT, I designated two days a week to go out there and build, but it’s hard to get a lot done when it’s just you and maybe one other person,” Tankersley said. By 2003, the first group of students came for the two-week intersession course. A course was constructed called Developmental Ministries for students serious about going into the mission field or for those studying abroad at Harding University in Zambia (HIZ). In order for the students to obtain the greatest impact possible, a substantial amount of time in the global village conditions was necessary. Therefore, intersession was the best time to make that possible. Each intersession, the students who participated in the course were taught how to cope in different living conditions. They were taught in areas such as simple energy production, water purity, health care, general healthy living and sanitation. “Most people in the world don’t have systems as well-developed as we do in America,” Tankersley said. “Our students need to pay attention to how to deal with these sorts of things. We want to try and sensitize students to these issues.” Youth groups and junior high and high school students that participated at HUT stayed on one-night trips. Harding students who had an interest in health care missions stayed for one day and overnight, and summer interns stayed for three days. The intersession course was the flagship course, lasting two weeks. It was intended for those serious about missions. In 2007, the first group of students studied abroad in Zambia through HIZ. One student from that group who also experienced HUT said she would not ever want to trade the time she spent with her group because it was such a great experience. “I would recommend the HUT course to anyone because it made people aware of what is going on outside of their own lives, plus it taught people very valuable skills,” senior Sarah Hackney said. The course taught students different skills that were useful in different cultures and taught them appropriate technology that helped the locals find ways to use the resources around them. “The teachers really pushed us to learn a lot while we were there,” Hackney said. “They pushed us to expand our worldview, the compassion [we] have for others and our awareness of what is going on in the world around us.” Another student that experienced HUT had similar views on the time he spent there and how valuable it was to him in preparation of his summer 2009 trip to Africa. “It has been the best class I’ve taken at Harding,” senior Randall Gabriel said. “You learn everything from organic agriculture to appropriate technology in third world settings. They do simulations as close as possible to third world experiences, from language learning to buying food in a crooked, government-run market.” Although HUT was not always fun and easy, the students were thankful for the time they spent learning how to make an oral-rehydration solution or purify dirty water in hopes of bettering someone else’s life. Hackney said HUT accomplished its purpose for her semester abroad in preparing her for the living conditions she experienced while in Zambia. “There were several times throughout the trip when things would not go as planned and our group would say things like ‘It’s better than HUT!’ ” Hackney said. She said the funny thing about that statement was that her group loved HUT and suggested that it always be a required course in order to attend a semester in Zambia. Tankersley’s dream was to provide students with the quality of education to be “world-class, topnotch” people who understood cross-culture dynamics in a helpful and meaningful way. “I want the students to know the skills that would be useful to people to understand world issues,” Tankersley said. “I want the students to have that understanding in their mind because they experienced it. I want them to be able to watch CNN and process the news differently because they had a taste of those things.” Allison Weaver Basic Needs HUT prepares students for missions abroad
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