Student comments about Mary Katherine Crabb

“I’ve always believed that one can learn more from personal experience than from books or teachers, and Mary Katherine Crabb is a good example of that. And by sharing her personal experiences, rather than lecturing, I think the audience was much more intrigued by what she had to say; and therefore, we learned quite a bit. I think as Americans, we get so caught up in our dominating ‘culture’ (that often turns into a harmful mindset) that we forget there are other ways of thinking out there. And the only way to realize this is to diversify ourselves. I’m glad Missouri Southern is helping people make the first step in doing this by providing intercultural experiences like the international semesters.” – Allison Rosewicz

“I really enjoyed listening to Dr. Crabb’s personal experiences in Cuba. This was one thing I was looking forward to. There were many speakers talking about politics, Castro, and the future of Cuba, but what I was waiting for was to get to know the people of Cuba and their lifestyle. Dr. Crabb had the ability to put her experiences with the people in colorful words and she remembered a whole lot of the talks with the Cuban people. What had a big impression on me was that she never said directly how Cubans are or judged them, but by telling her personal experiences there she could not have done a better job describing the Cuban people.” – Alice Hossain

“Dr. Crabb gave one of the most effective presentations I’ve seen in a long time. I feel like I learned more from her storytelling approach to relaying information about Cuba than I have from any speaker so far. She was an excellent writer. She showed she was very knowledgeable of her subject without being boring, which is hard to do.” – Virginia Fairchild

“I was very surprised at the format Dr. Crabb took with her presentation. At first I did not know what to expect. (I was expecting it to be boring actually.) But once she had the ball rolling it worked really well and turned out to a very insightful. Her speech was more personal and turned out to be an excellent way to present the personal life of Cubans.” – Terry Cunningham

“I found Dr. Crabb's presentation very enjoyable. She had a good idea reading her journals. It allows us to see a first hand view of what it is like if we were to visit Cuba. I actually thought that each story she told she was going to say she was hussled because each one involved a sad situation.” – Hannah Marsh