Soka and BNBU Students Meet in China to Tackle Sustainability

• Campus News

"Global citizenship doesn't come from classroom study alone," said Dongyoun Hwang, professor of Asian studies at SUA. "It requires experience of other cultures."

This understanding of global citizenship as an active practice is one of the main lessons Hwang hopes students took from their trip last April to Zhuhai, China, where they participated in the inaugural Beijing Normal-Hong Kong Baptist University (BNBU)-Soka Joint University Forum on Sustainable Development.

Hosted at the Institute for Advanced Study at BNBU, the full-day forum brought student researchers together to share original work on environmental topics ranging from flood control to food waste, fashion systems, and Indigenous guardianship in the Amazon. Travel was sponsored by the Soka Institute for Global Solutions, ensuring cost was not a barrier to the six Soka students who took part in the forum.

Hwang organized the event together with fellow Duke University alumnus Yongming Zhou, vice president of academic affairs at BNBU and executive director of the Institute for Advanced Study. The idea for the forum grew out of Hwang's and Zhou's recognition of their institutions' unique alignment: BNBU's commitment to whole-person education and SUA's dedication to global citizenship. Notably, BNBU is China's first liberal arts college and, like SUA, a member of the Pacific Alliance of Liberal Arts Colleges.

"An important goal of the forum was to support the core educational missions of both institutions through in-depth discussions on sustainability," Hwang said.

Soka student participants underwent a rigorous application process, submitting a five-page research proposal to a faculty committee. Students whose proposals were accepted wrote a full research paper by the end of January and made revisions incorporating faculty feedback prior to presenting their work at the forum in April. SUA students were excited to dive deep into questions about sustainability and exchange ideas with students across the Pacific.

"The forum presented itself as the perfect opportunity to push me to research something outside of my senior capstone," said Raven Gellerman '26, a Life Sciences and Environmental Studies double concentrator from Sacramento, California. "I was especially impressed by the goal of sharing research with our peers at BNBU. It made our research projects feel that much more valuable."

Gellerman's research examined the impact of community fashion systems, using two campus initiatives she developed as a student sustainability educator - annual clothing swaps and the ongoing Soka Closet clothing exchange program - as specific case studies. She concluded that compared to the environmental and financial costs of buying new clothing, these initiatives saved a total of 87,800 kilograms of carbon dioxide, 139,700 cubic meters of water, and $183,000.

Sakura Arai '26 of Kawagoe, Japan, teamed up with Mitsue Hanaka '29 of Tokyo on a research paper that analyzed waste colonialism, a practice in which developed countries export their waste to developing countries to take advantage of fewer environmental regulations and lower labor costs. While imported waste causes significant air, soil, and water pollution and has negative effects on human health, Arai and Hanaka also found that importing countries are often economically dependent on waste trade.

"It is deeply rooted in economic and political systems," Arai explained. "Such a complicated issue requires multidimensional solutions, from grassroots to international politics, for both waste exporters and importers."

Students' learning was not limited to the knowledge and skills they honed through their individual research projects. They stressed the scholarly exchange with their peers at BNBU was equally enriching. They especially appreciated how the forum exposed them to a broad range of topics and approaches to sustainability.

"SUA students' research topics were focused on more international, theoretical, and systemic environmental issues, while BNBU students' presentations were about their science experiments or inventions of environmentally friendly products," Arai said. "I was glad that we inspired each other with such different perspectives."

For Gellerman, a major highlight was the personal connections she made with BNBU students. "Being there in person to share our passions and form friendships was incredibly meaningful," she said.

The group was especially moved by BNBU's warm hospitality, which included private van transportation from Hong Kong International Airport to Zhuhai, a welcome dinner, and a full-day excursion to an ecological reserve and a local museum.

The forum will be held again next year, this time with Soka hosting BNBU in Aliso Viejo. Arai and Gellerman highly recommend that interested students apply to participate, not only to strengthen their academic expertise, but also to grow as global citizens by working across cultures to address critical challenges.

"While we all had different approaches to sustainability," Gellerman said, "we all cared about the same outcome: a more sustainable, equitable world."