Sometimes doing field research involves dodging cow pies in an actual field. At least, that was the case for a group of Jean C. Oi's students.

Oi discussed the importance of taking students beyond the classroom in a March 6 talk titled "Cow Pies and Democracy: Teaching in the Field," presented as part of the Center for Teaching and Learning's "Award-Winning Teachers on Teaching" lecture series.

Michele Marincovich, associate vice provost of undergraduate education and director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, introduced Oi, calling "Cow Pies and Democracy" the "most colorful title" in the lecture series.

Oi, the William Haas Professor in Chinese Politics, began her talk by laughingly apologizing for her word choice. "I still can't believe I chose that title, but I think it aptly describes what I do with my students," she said.

Oi teaches courses on political change in China, and much of her research has focused on village elections. Though China has been a single-party state since the Communist Party took control in 1949, the country has held direct elections for village officials since the 1980s, a move that has been greeted by some as a possible first step toward a more democratic state.

In 2001, Oi taught a course about village elections for Sophomore College, a three-week summer seminar for incoming sophomores.

Although the class was "very successful," her students kept saying, "I wish we could do this in China," Oi recalled. She agreed.

Without leaving Stanford's campus, "I think it's difficult to convey the different world [the Chinese] are living in," Oi added.

The year after she first taught Sophomore College, Oi had the chance to take students abroad for a class as part of the Overseas Seminar Program.

They spent two weeks at Peking University learning about village elections and China's political situation. They heard guest speakers from the country's Ministry of Civil Affairs, and the students designed research projects requiring them to interview villagers and village officials.

In the third week of the program, Oi and her students took a bus to Heilonjiang, a northeastern province on China's border with Russia. As the bus approached the village, the road became blocked by a long line of carts delivering corn to the local dairy farm. Oi had all the students get off the bus, and they walked through fields and pastures to get the rest of the way to the village.

"This is where we had to dodge the cow pies," Oi explained.

Oi characterized what she did with her students as "demystifying" the process of doing research. Students learned how to interview people in the field.

"When we got to the village, I said, 'OK! Go!' and they all just scattered," Oi said. "If you set your expectations high, students are going to produce."

Oi's students got to witness a village election. Villagers lined up to mark paper ballots to elect a village committee head. The votes were tallied on a chalkboard, and the winner got 509 votes, just a few more than the runner-up.

Many of the villagers that greeted the students had never seen Americans before, Oi said. "Russians were the only foreigners they had ever seen," she said.

One student was a 6-foot-7-inch Olympic gymnast who drew crowds wherever he went.

"I've seen them on TV, but I'd never seen a real one," one awestruck observer said, marveling at the tall athlete.

Oi said her students felt like they had earned "bragging rights" after their trip to China. "They felt like they had done something none of their peers had done," she said.

One even changed her career plans after the seminar.

"Her parents were very worried about what would happen to her in China, and maybe they should have been," Oi quipped. The student had been planning to go to medical school, but she instead decided to declare a major in political science and study rural China.

"I think I did change some student lives," Oi said.

Oi is also a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the director of the Stanford China Program.

Addressing a packed auditorium on March 5, Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico, spoke with intensity about Latin America’s prospects for both social welfare and economic well-being in the coming century. Mexico, which Goldman Sachs recently projected to be the world’s fifth largest economy by 2040, was emblematic of this electrifying future, he said. On the one hand, there is great promise for economic growth, stability, and entrepreneurship; and with this great promise, he was careful to note, comes great responsibility for the reduction of poverty and inequality through a “package of powerful social policies.”

Fox’s lecture was sponsored by FSI as part of the 2008 Robert G. Wesson Lecture Series in International Relations Theory and Practice, and was hosted by the Graduate School of Business. Before being elected president of Mexico, a position he held from 2000-06, Fox was president of Coca-Cola Mexico. Since leaving office, Fox has been involved with a sweeping initiative to construct a social agenda for democracy in Latin America for the next 20 years, launched by Alejandro Toledo, former president of Peru from 2001 to 2006. Toledo is a Payne Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Stanford this year.

"It is a pleasure to welcome my friend, former President Vicente Fox, to Stanford, the Freeman Spogli Institute, and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, where serious scholars and practitioners are committed to develop democracy that delivers concrete results for the poor and fosters social inclusion," said Toledo.

Fox also discussed issues specific to the relationship between Mexico and the U.S., such as trade, immigration, and NAFTA—all of which benefit both countries, he said. Looking ahead, he hoped that Latin American democracy would not to be taken for granted; “it has to be nourished, it has to be taken care of, it has to be promoted.” But his outlook for Latin America was resoundingly positive, that this is a time for its countries to consolidate democracies and freedoms, consolidate economies, and promote new leadership. After years of military dictatorships, corruption, inefficiency, and poor development, “People decided to go for change,” Fox said, “and change is a magic word. It moves people to action.”

The Wesson Lecture Series provides support for a public address at Stanford by a prominent scholar or practicing professional in the field of international relations. The series is made possible by a gift from the late Robert G. Wesson, a scholar of international affairs, prolific author, and senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Previous Wesson Lecturers have included such distinguished speakers as McGeorge Bundy, Willi DeClerq, Condoleezza Rice, Mikhail Gorbachev, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and Mary Robinson.