Education was always emphasized in Gregory Young's family. He now uses his own and others' educational experiences to enhance students' awareness of the world and its inhabitants.

A professor of international business and economic law at Cal Poly Pomona since 1985, a visiting professor at some of the world's leading universities, an author and a former Securities Exchange Commission lawyer, corporate attorney, bankruptcy trustee and magazine publisher, Young adds another line to an extensive list of achievements this fall.

The Pomona man leaves Tuesday to teach at Western University in Azerbaijan. He is among approximately 800 American educators and professionals who will work in 140 countries as Fulbright scholars. Shahla Rahman Young, his wife and a recent magna cum laude graduate of Cal Poly's master's in world history program, will accompany him and teach Islamic history and conversational English at the same university.

Young became accustomed to geographic changes as a child born in Los Angeles and "family" reared by parents and paternal and maternal grandparents in California, Illinois, Virginia and Mississippi. Childhood confidence fortified by a nurturing and loving family helped make it possible for him to become a global citizen.

The time in the former Soviet Union republic will be more time spent in exotic and uniquely different countries.

Young has taught and lectured at England's Cambridge University and universities in the People's Republic of China, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Vietnam and the United States.

His educational and travel experiences have dual objectives: to increase his own knowledge and cultural awareness and expand opportunities for Cal Poly Pomona students to study, learn and live elsewhere.

Young's feelings about learning and spiritual things were formed in the nucleus of family.

A.S. "Doc" Young, his father, was a columnist and editor for the Los Angeles Sentinel, Chicago Daily Defender and Amsterdam News newspapers and Ebony magazine, a syndicated writer and one of the nation's first black screenwriters. Hazel Young, his mother and now a San Dimas resident, balanced occasional work for the IRS and in real estate with her role as homemaker and mother to young Greg and his sister, Brenda, now an entertainment industry attorney.

His parents stressed educational excellence and cultural awareness for their children. That message was reinforced by grandparents and it wasn't limited to higher education.

"My maternal grandfather was the Rev. Harrison Pierce Jackson, an ordained Baptist minister and the best man I ever knew," Young said. "He was a quiet, humble man and highly regarded in Jackson, Miss. because he was a good listener and totally unselfish."

Even Jackson's single "selfish" moment was exercised for the sake of family and education. He owned a significant parcel of land in Jackson and sold part of it to the Catholic church for a priest's home. Church officials returned years later, asking to buy the rest of the land to build a grade school and a convent.

"One of the conditions of the sale was that if any of his grandchildren wanted to attend the school, they could do so for free," Young said. "My grandfather was Baptist, but not rigid in his beliefs. It wasn't about whether you were Baptist or Catholic in his mind, but whether you were good and could provide good things for children and the community."

Young's formative education took place in the Catholic elementary school and an all-black middle school in Mississippi, a predominantly Jewish junior high in California and the ethnically diverse Los Angeles High School. The mix created culturally rich experiencess for Young and helped him easily adjust to international endeavors as an adult.

"It was all enriching," added the man who went on to earn a bachelor degree in philosophy and business at Cal State Los Angeles, a jurisprudence degree from Loyola School of Law and a master of laws degree in international and comparative law from the University of San Diego, all with high honors.

Young's heroes were his father who told him to read biographies so he'd understand the challenges others faced and overcame to improve chances for future generations; his maternal grandfather who taught him the value of spiritual and personal generosity and Ralph Bunche, the United Nations diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who, despite fame, remained humble, appreciative of others' struggles and accessible to all who called.

Young's first college effort was interrupted.

He was at UCLA when he was drafted into the Army. His next stop was in Vietnam with a tank division.

Laughing now about what he didn't find funny in the Southeast Asia war fields, he said the Vietnam tour "motivated me. I felt if I can move a tank, education will be easy."

He was an armored specialist and tank weapons expert when he was "first" discharged from the Army. In 1986, he returned to military service to serve four years as an Army Reserves first lieutenant and training officer in the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps.

The 1970s and 1980s were busy decades for Young.

He worked in the SEC's enforcement division investigating securities' fraud and in its corporate reorganization division; taught part-time at Pasadena City College, Cal State Dominguez Hills, Glendale Law School and Loyola School of Law; served as a partner in the private law firm of Edwards, Edwards and Young, a corporate consultant and a bankruptcy court trustee; sat on the California Building Standards Commission and published Sepia magazine.

Attracted to the "polytechnic" part of Cal Poly Pomona's curriculum, he started lecturing there part-time in 1976. In 1985, he joined the full-time faculty at the Inland Valley university.

His work at Cal Poly opened international doors for him.

In the late 1980s, he became the chair of a task force to study the question of establishing an international business major within the College of Business.

"That involvement caused me to think more about globization, international business and international law," Young said.

Sequential steps subsequently led him to Dr. George Eisen who headed Cal Poly's Institute for Regional and International Studies (IRIS), a core of interdisciplinary educators, the Global Cal Poly international newsletter, presentation of papers for IRIS in Finland, Latvia and Estonia and stimulating international interactions with historians, philosophers, archaeologists, sociologists, educators and lawyers.

"All this was interesting for not only scholarly reasons, but also for the adventure," he asserted.

The experiences fueled more professional development for Young and enabled him to determine if academic theory could be practically applied. Through Cal Poly's College of the Extended University, he found opportunities to teach students in foreign countries and take Cal Poly students beyond the Pomona campus.

Young, students, Cal Poly College of the Extended University's Dean Van Garner, Cal Poly professors and the Cal Poly's International Center officials journeyed into collegiate and cultural environments in Vietnam, former Soviet republics, mainland China and eastern Europe.

In 1999, he was part of a Cal Poly team conducting interviews with technology experts, business executives, arbitration specialists, lawyers, government officials and U.S. Embassy personnel throughout China. Team members later wrote a book which was published in Mandarin and is now used by Chinese college students.

He spent the summers of 1998 and 1999 studying at The Hague Academy of Internationl Law, served as a visiting fellow at Cambridge in 2000, 2001 and 2003 and took Cal Poly students to The Hague in 2002 to watch arguments before the World Court in the Peace Palace. In summer 2002, he taught at Guangxi Teachers University in China and also in Ho Chi Minh City for Cal Poly's new master of business administration program in Vietnam.

As a Fulbright scholar, he will teach public international law, introduction to international arbitration and contemporary international business law problems at Western University in Baku.

"You can learn as much interacting with people abroad as interacting with people at home," Young reasoned. "That's true whether you're in a formal academic environment or not. You forge friendships and learn more points of views, cultures and perspectives. You get a better sense of people.

"People everywhere tend to extend themselves if you're respectful, open-minded and interested in them. After all these years of work, I've found another field to feel extremely passionate about and ways to open up new avenues of adventure for my students here and abroad," he concluded.