Traveling to the end of the world
	A conversation with Dr. Judith Dykes Hoffmann

Dr. Judith Hoffmann in Tierra Del Fuego, near Antarctica.

Judith Dykes Hoffmann came to TLU in 1988 as a non-traditional student. She stepped into Dr. Richard Milk’s class and walked out a changed person. Dr. Milk and other faculty members inspired her, challenged her, transformed her. She graduated summa cum laude from TLU in 1992 and went on to earn her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. In 1997, Hoffmann returned to TLU where she inspires, challenges, and transforms students every day as an assistant professor of geography. As the recipient of the 2008-09 Hugo E. Gibson Award for Spiritual and Academic Enrichment, Dr. Hoffmann is literally traveling the world.

Why was it important to you to receive the Gibson Award?
As a geographer, it is important to me to experience the world. With the Gibson Award, I was able to visit Argentina this winter and will go to India in May. As geographers we all have those places we want to go to before we die. For me, I wanted to say I’d been to the southernmost city in the world. And that’s Ushuaia, Argentina. It’s the jumping off point to Antarctica. And Argentina has so much more. I went to Buenos Aires, then north to the subtropical Iguazu Falls, south to the regions of Patagonia and Pampas and then down to Tierra Del Fuego. But then the prize was the Perito Moreno Glacier – so I had glaciers, tropics, this massive city called Buenos Aires, and the end of the world, all in one trip. And the Gibson Award helped pay for that.

What does this experience mean to you?
To begin with, geographers as a whole are a very different group. We get excited about experiencing these places. We can talk about volcanoes and glaciers, but to actually see one and experience it firsthand is incredible. I can stand in front of the glacier and take a photograph, but I also take the actual experience back into the classroom. When I share it, I just love watching the students’ eyeballs light up! And of course the ultimate goal is to take students there. When they can go and experience it firsthand, they share an excitement that they would never have by just looking at a book. That’s why I’m such a big proponent of study abroad and global studies.

Are you planning a student trip to Argentina?
Dr. [Ana María] González and I are planning an interdisciplinary course for Fall 2010 –we’ll travel to Argentina that December. We will be tracing Cabeza De Vaca’s steps since he went through Seguin and traveled in Argentina.

You said you are also going to be in India?
Dr. [Robin] Bisha and I will be there in May, mostly in the region of Ladakh in the Himalayas between Pakistan and China. The Gibson Award has a religious component, and so Robin and I are going to visit 1,000 year-old monasteries in Buddhist communities there. We are exploring the possibility of taking students to India as well. India, like Argentina, is a country that is changing rapidly – part of a changing world.

How do you see the world changing?
Over the next 50 years you’re going to see millions – possibly billions – of people moving out of poverty into middle class. They want the American life. So over the next 50 years, the role of the United States is going to change drastically. It’s not necessarily that the U.S. is going to lose its position as a global superpower, it is just that other nations are catching up to us. Like China. Like India. Like Argentina. I tell my students that the world then will be so different from the world we are living in now. I have such a sense of urgency to get this across to our students because if they are not aware of what the post-American world will be like, then they are not going to be able to take advantage of this new and exciting world that is beginning to emerge. ♦