If you had asked Bonnie Glass-Coffin in fifth grade what she wanted to be when she grew up, she would have told she wanted to be an oceanographer. In seventh grade it would have been a journalist or a poet.

But it was a foreign exchange experience to Peru her senior year in high school that "rocked [her]
world" and led her to the study of anthropology.

"After Peru I became convinced what I needed to do in order to make sense of cultural differences," she said.

Returning from Peru energized and fascinated, Glass-Coffin went on to study anthropology and Spanish literature at Whitman College in Washington, eventually earning her Ph.D. from UCLA. Now as an associate professor at USU, Glass-Coffin finds her reward in imparting her love of culture to students.

"Anthropology asks us to look deeply and critically at human similarities as well as human differences," she said. "It's what makes people tick."

Approachable and sympathetic with students, Glass-Coffin said she doesn't like to lecture. Instead, surrounded by USU students she says are "hard workers and dedicated to their studies," she likes to play to different learning strengths by using several teaching methods and especially by fostering debate-style discussion in the classroom.

But the best learning experience Glass-Coffin says she can offer students is the opportunity to travel -- especially to her beloved Peru.

"It's fabulous. It absolutely takes a lot of energy," she said. "Students engage in learning by focusing on problems they have to solve immediately.

Traveling to a foreign country where just obtaining a meal can be difficult forces you to be the outsider, she said. With that "shift of marginality," students gain a better perspective on a "world that is more complex than it has ever been before.

And when your field of expertise is "the holistic study of mankind," that perspective can be the whole point.

-- PHOTO BY JOSH J. RUSSELL; TEXT BY BROOKE NELSON