The absolute value of luminosity

Borrowed from the website of CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, the title of this article describes the optimal results of near light-speed collisions in the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator.
It also reflects the explosive potential of students creating “social enterprises for high impact” at Thammasat University’s Social Innovation Lab (G-Lab), says Niyata Limpiti, tasked with recruiting undergraduates for the Global Studies and Social Entrepreneurship (GSSE) programme, where they “learn to become creative leaders who can innovate sustainable solutions to critical social problems”.
Here in the tranquil environs of Thammasat’s Rangsit campus, students lounge on beanbags and listen to guest lecturers before exploring their full potential through hands-on, project-based activities. Students take practical courses with names like Foundations of Leadership, Social Innovation Project, and Globalisation Flow, which offer a set of core skills essential to thriving in the 21st-century international community.
Fuelled by curiosity about the nature of social inequalities and what she can to address them, Bungkee Punyisa is a freshman in the programme who calls herself “a self-directed learner”. Taking full advantage of the opportunity to forge human connections that are a hallmark of GSSE, the Bangkok native interned last year at Local Alike, a Bangkok-based social enterprise that works “with local communities and businesses to create the best experiences for everybody”.
At Local Alike, the intrinsically optimistic Bungkee met fellow intern Nam, who had spent time in Australia where she learned about the struggles of Tibetans experiencing cultural restrictions in China. “When I talked to her I felt connected,” says Bungkee, explaining the trigger for her life-changing gap year, when the two new friends set off for Dharamsala, northern India, to learn from Tibetan exiles. “Living there made me realise how dedicated Tibetans are to preserving their traditional culture. I want more Thais to appreciate this, and the realities of the repression of Tibetans in China, and see how they still have hope.”
The transformative experience inspired Bungkee to organise a local chapter of Students for a Free Tibet, which will hold its first meeting at the Ma:D Club for Better Society on Ekkamai Soi 4 later this month.
“I still don’t have a clear idea of what I want to do in the next five years. But I feel I have new opportunities and new possibilities,” she says with quiet confidence about her GSSE experience. “Most importantly, I’m finding a new way to look at the world.”
Bass Piranat a high-energy, highly self-directed student sophomore on full scholarship from Ranong, Thailand’s least densely populated province, is determined to make a difference in issues such as environmental degradation and an education system he would like to see become more student-centred.
After visiting a school in Bang Na and listening to the students’ stories of divorce and drugs that made learning a challenge, Bass came up with microfinance-style solutions that impressed his GSSE teachers. In poorly equipped classrooms in Klong Toei slums, he saw how the cycle of poverty persists, but was motivated to come up with ideas that could bring holistic education, empathy and broader perspectives to teaching. 
“Children don’t really have an opportunity to learn there, and despite the charities active in the area for many years, poverty still exists,” he noted, recalling his own experience of large classes in Ranong. “I was one of just a few students really interested in learning a foreign language. I want to be a social innovator and help people in Ranong.”
At GSSE, he’s gained insight from an internship at the SCB Foundation and exchanged views on community development in a roundtable with fellow high-energy young Thais and headed by the US ambassador. Bass sums up his real-world experience by simply saying, “I’m in an exploration phase.”  
While the GSSE programme will produce its first graduates in 2019, in Geneva, CERN is already firing up its fabulously named High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider, with the hope of yielding even richer data than churned by its current accelerator. “Luminosity is an essential indicator of the performance of an accelerator, measuring the potential number of collisions that can occur in a given amount of time, and integrated luminosity,” says the hi-tech lab.
Acceleration. Collision. Luminosity. The principles apply just as well to the activities at Thammasat’s GSSE. 
But instead of particles sent slamming into each other, the GSSE and G-Lab creates space for unprecedented intersections in three distinct realms: Social Innovation + Impact Entrepreneurship, 21st Leadership + Innovation, and Human Centred Design.
Niyata says GSSE encourages students to discover “rare perspectives on a “hidden” world and empowers them to make equitable social change in a globalised world. This matches the university’s mission of solving “Thailand’s problems with moral commitment for the greater good of society”.
During her time with exiled Tibetans, Bungkee was struck by the efforts of a young Indian woman who devoted much of her time and energy to helping the community. “I was deeply impressed with their sense of hope,” she smiles.
“The luminosity of the mind, the nature of clarity of the mind, is something that I cannot simply explain in words to you,” writes the Dalai Lama, who Bungkee got the chance to meet during her transformative time in India. “But if you undertake this kind of experiment on your own you will begin to understand, ‘Ah, that’s the luminosity of the mind!’”

For more information about Thammasat University’s Social Entrepreneurship 
programme and its School of Global Studies, call (02) 564 3153 or 086 788 8064 or visit www.sgs.tu.ac.th.