*note to reader: the internet is very slow and I'm not able to post that many photos, but will be able to in a few days' time*

Bond is situated on the tip of a large saltwater lake (complete with bull sharks, I’m told) and about 1.5 miles from the beach. Home to 3,000 students, it has a main area between its modern academic buildings of lake, fountain, and manicured gardens and hedges. There is something palatial about the place, and yet it is more corporate than kingly. The whole university has been so well-planned that the views across every angle of campus are stunning, and the effect is clearly not by accident.

Academics
Bond offers many accelerated degrees, with some students able to complete their bachelor’s in two grueling years. The academics are top notch. Study abroad students take classes in Humanities and Social Sciences (popular classes include those in computer gaming, multimedia studies/film, international relations, psychology, and criminology), Business (includes information technology, sustainable development/ecotourism, marketing, urban design and planning) Health Sciences (forensic science, exercise science, sport management) and Law (mediation, legal skills, and various classes on the Aussie legal system). Bond’s classes are typical very small, most under 24 students and many around 10 students. Some classes have a 1 hr. lecture and 2 hr. tutorial and others have a 3 hr. workshop format. Bond is continually expanding, and will soon open a Green building on campus, exemplifying best practices in sustainable building and design. Service learning is being woven into business classes here; projects have included book drives for African schools, teaching negotiation skills to high school students, and simulating the perils of drunk driving.

Student support/student life
Bond admissions encompasses domestic and international admissions. About half of Bond’s students are international, so the support is tailored. There’s “O Week”, or orientation week where students meet each other and learn about campus life. Had a nice tour with a full degree student from the Phillipines.

Housing
Most students live on campus in dorm-style high rise accommodations, with meals in the dining room. Student support, a café, a large multimedia library, outdoor pool, fitness room (complete with pilates classes!), basketball courts, and sand volleyball are all within throwing distance of each other.

Student report
Karine Almeida is studying for the May semester at Bond. She hails from a small school in Massachusetts and has not lived overseas before. Her energy was contagious as she talked non-stop for almost an hour about her time at Bond and how she’s grown to feel connected to people from around the world. She is a business and marketing majo and has found the classes “more realistic/situated in the real world than classes at home”. For her marketing class, she had to design a marketing plan to roll out a product to a new audience. Hers was how to pitch a new mini-car, popular in India, to an Australian audience. She’s found the academics difficult, especially due to the independence required and lack of quizzes, reminders, and general hand-holding. She said that she found integrating at Bond easy and was happy to find that May semester has the fewest Americans of any semester. At first, she had to overcome other students’ treatment of her as a representative of the U.S. government (some students are very critical of the Bush administration and Iraq war), and as an African American (students thought she’d be pretty tough and gangsta). But now, she has friends from all over the world – including Indonesia, Rwanda, Thailand, and South Africa. She admitted that her own stereotypes, about what it means to be Muslim for example, have been challenged and for the better. Karine is a great example of how coming to Australia can be an entry point to the entire world. This, to me, is what it’s all about.

Why study at Bond?
Bond has state-of-the-art facilities and technology (a mock stock trading room, mock courtroom, and t.v. studio, for example), strong faculty, and a multitude of degrees and courses. It is small, easily negotiable, and has a pulse to it. It is NOT a traditional Australian institution, and U.S. students will find the feel of it, the number of Americans, and the small class size very familiar.

The only downside that I see is in certain semesters Americans abound. This requires more effort on the behalf of our students to engage with students from Australia or around the world.

The evening found me taking a tour of the Gold Coast hotspots with John Stephens, a good friend of Jeff and CIS, and a former director at Bond and now consultant to Swinburne. I had been wondering why the Gold Coast was so named. Was gold found here? Was the sand particularly golden in color? Traveling along the coastal road at about 5:30pm answered my question: it’s the light at sunset. Positively buttery.

I had dinner with John, his wife Heather and her sister Ann. John is quite the cook, and dinner and conversation was delicious. And, I even got a donation to Clinique Monique (the clinic in West Africa that I help to fund)! During dinner, I got a phonecall from Bill Krebs (the Bond professor who teaches the environmental science course on the Great Barrier Reef) saying that take off tomorrow morning had been moved to 5:45am. So, it was off to pack and get some shut-eye…