05/12/2007

Student from Beulah kicks off ambitious worldwide trip

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Micinski

LANSING (AP) — Blond-haired, blue-eyed Nick Micinski was raised in a tiny town near Lake Michigan and never met a Muslim until he began attending Michigan State University.

But Micinski, who turns 21 on May 25, thinks that makes him the perfect person to answer questions from people who associate Islam with terrorism and have little appreciation for the diversity of Muslims in the world.

"I see myself as sort of an intermediary between my grandparents' generations and my parents' generations, and what Islam and the Middle East are actually like,” he said during a recent interview with The Associated Press. "I really see my role as helping to facilitate this back-and-forth.”

Micinski spent last fall semester in Egypt in a Michigan State study-abroad program studying Arabic. He embarks this month on a seven-country, 74-day research trip around the globe to study how non-governmental groups are helping Muslim immigrants integrate into their new countries while retaining cultural ties to their homelands.

The third-year student from Beulah is one of only four students nationally to win a grant from the New York City-based Circumnavigators Club. The stipends also will go to Christopher Ahern from Northwestern, Molly Jamieson from Princeton and Elspeth Williams from Georgetown. The money enables them to go around the world in 10 weeks this summer to study a research topic of their choosing.

The Michigan Chapter of Circumnavigators initially gave Micinski $8,000 for his trip and has since added $500, says Mary Carroll, the chapter's foundation coordinator. He also got some money through Michigan State.

Carroll says both Micinski's presentation and his topic stood out among the roughly 25 applications, in part because what's happening in Iraq and elsewhere makes Muslim culture so important right now.

"You just don't know what insights (from his research) he might have that could help in some way,” she says. "He's a very resourceful young man.”

Micinski starts his travels May 28, when he'll leave Detroit for Sao Paulo, Brazil. After traveling to France by way of New York City and Iceland, he'll move on to Scandinavia, Russia, the United Arab Emirates, India and Singapore before returning to Detroit on Aug. 10.

Michael Schechter, a Michigan State political science professor who will be supervising Micinski's independent study this summer, says the actual research will begin in Dearborn, home to one of the nation's largest Arab American populations.

Micinski will ask the same research questions there that he plans to ask in other countries, then come back and interview Dearborn residents again when he returns. He says he's asking them what services and benefits they get from organizations helping Muslims, if they encounter prejudice against Muslims in their respective countries and what advice they'd give to help improve relations with other communities.

He'll hook up with some members of the Circumnavigators Foundation on his trip, and get translating help from family members in Finland and the family of his girlfriend, Monica Mukerjee, while he's in India. Mukerjee and Micinski are studying international relations through Michigan State's James Madison College.

His mother, sister and grandparents are meeting up with him in Finland, and Mukerjee will be in India on her own study-abroad trip when he gets there. Michigan State professors who had contacts in the other countries he's visiting are lining up people who can help, and he also has used the Internet to find groups to contact in different countries.

Micinski already has made phone calls and sent e-mails to people and groups he wants to interview on the trip, including two Muslim women's groups in Russia and a Muslim community in Brazil. Unable to speak Portuguese, he had to fall back on the Arabic he learned in Egypt to set up the Sao Paolo interview.

Micinski was required by the Circumnavigators to set up the trip himself, and has spent about $4,000 of his grant money on plane tickets. When he's not staying with friends, he plans to stay in hostels.

"I'm a broke college student already. I can live pretty cheaply,” he says.

Micinski's father, the Benzie Central school district superintendent, and his mother, who teaches sixth grade in the district, have some concerns about his safety. But they say he learned a lot from his trip to Egypt, and they'll be able to keep in touch through telephone calls and e-mail.

"As a parent you want them in your own back yard,” Sue Micinski says. "But I really feel like Nick has a lot to contribute.”

Schechter praised the theme of Micinski's research, which Micinski plans to use in his senior thesis next year.

"I can't remember someone his age who was as thoughtful and self-observant” during his study-abroad experience, Schechter says of Micinski's time in Egypt. "He really is a gifted conversationalist, the kind of person who easily engages people in conversation.”

Micinski occasionally called his mother's class while he was in Egypt, and the students were able to follow his travels on his blog.

He plans to post his thoughts and photos on a new blog during his summer trip, and will put together a slide show for friends, family and his hometown when he gets back. Not everyone can travel abroad, he says, but they can learn from what he finds as he traverses the world.

"When I was in Egypt, I saw people who got disillusioned by studying abroad, by seeing poverty, by seeing the struggles. I was really enraged by it and challenged by it,” says the former Eagle Scout.