The sun rises over the Gulf of Palermo, shining down on the group of students as they whisper with immigrant community members while watching a play. Katsuo A. Nishikawa Chavez stands farther back, next to another proud Trinity University professor, beaming at their students as they make connections with immigrant communities and between the social sciences and humanities.
His pride in his students and his intent to help them become global citizens as they explore their interests are what keep Nishikawa, Ph.D., at Trinity. He’s served the Trinity community as an international studies and political science professor for 18 years and spent 11 years as the director of the Center for International Engagement.
Nishikawa says studying abroad is the equivalent of a research lab for the social sciences. By taking students overseas, introducing them to new perspectives, and encouraging them to think critically about different perspectives, he hopes to develop the next generation of social scientists who will investigate the connections between different cultures and their ideas.
“If you're able to collaborate and cooperate with people from different perspectives, you can find better, more creative solutions to problems,” Nishikawa says. "Diversity of thought, diversity of opinion, diversity of perspectives can enhance any one person trying to make meaning or understand a specific thing.”
With this guiding mission, he co-created two study abroad programs: Performing Human Rights and Trinity in Japan. Nishikawa worked with other faculty in the Carlos Alvarez School of Arts and Humanities and the Michael Neidorff School of Business to ensure these programs would give students life-altering tools and open doors they thought were closed to them.
Through the Performing Human Rights program, Nishikawa takes students on a two-week trip to Palermo, Italy, as an extension of their spring course of the same name. In the spring, students learn about migrants who arrive at the U.S. Southern border. When students travel to Sicily, they continue their work with migrants and refugees who crossed the Mediterranean. This collaboration between students and migrants provides the foundation for students to develop dialogue through theatre and engage in social change.
“I co-lead (Performing Human Rights) with a theatre professor, and we're coming at issues from very different perspectives, but there the students start making the connections between them and start making it into a holistic perspective that combines art and social science in a public space to do theatre,” Nishikawa says.
One thing Nishikawa teaches during his Trinity in Japan program is the benefits of “slowing down” and working on “continuous improvement,” embracing the Japanese principle of Kaizen. He doesn’t want his students to regret studying abroad because they rushed through the experience. He encourages them to slow down and notice where they are.
The first thing that Nishikawa does during the Trinity in Japan program is give his students a journal and a pen. In this journal, they write down their observations and collect data to interpret later. As social scientists, the journal and pen become tools akin to a pipette and a beaker for those in a typical science lab.
Writing like a social scientist requires students to notice everything around them. Nishikawa encourages his students to immerse themselves in the greenery, stop to notice the towering mountains, and listen to the sounds of nature passing by. He tells his students they don’t have to be perfect, but they should be committed to learning.
“By definition, learning is uncomfortable,” Nishikawa says. “It's not about having information; it's about accessing, evaluating, and using information, and having these other sets of skills that you can use with people. I really fell in love with the fact that (through these programs) we were developing humans to work in society.”
As Nishikawa has watched these programs develop throughout the years, he's seen how these experiences have paid off for students academically and beyond.
“After 11 years, we have a really integrated program where the learning that is happening in the classroom supports the experiences that students are having in the field,” says Nishikawa.
By leading these programs, he has developed, and will continue to develop, experiences that introduce students to places they never imagined they could go.
“We are exploring what the possibilities are for using the time we have with students to transform them, to really make a mark on them that encourages them to be leaders, to give back to society, and to be people who can function in a democracy,” he says.
Editor's Note: In the header image, Katsuo A. Nishikawa Chavez (far left) speaks to his students on the 2025 Trinity in Japan trip. Nishikawa is not pictured in the majority of images because he is usually behind the camera taking them.