Westmont Magazine A Southeast Seminar

Mike Leming ’70 is one of 10 professors nationwide participating in the two-year ASIANetwork Faculty Development Seminar, designed for teachers lacking formal training in Southeast Asian Studies.

This summer he worked with a mentor, discussing, reflecting, reading, and researching Asian issues. Next summer, he will spend a week each in Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia, visiting universities and cultural sites to observe and participate in everyday cultural activities. The goal of the program is enhancing liberal arts teaching about Southeast Asia.

Mike, one of the nation’s foremost experts on bereavement, teaches sociology classes, Thai studies, and social thanatology at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. He has published numerous articles about cross-cultural and comparative studies of kinship, religion, death rituals, and bereavement behavior and has written or edited 11 textbooks and anthologies.

He has traveled widely in Asia, studied the Thai language at Chiang Mai University, and led St. Olaf College’s Term in Asia. In 1995 he was one of three liberal arts college professors who received $35,000 Pew Evangelical Scholars grants, which funded his research on the Karen tribe of northern Thailand.