2009 SIT Graduate Institute Students Arrive on Campus

Last week 172 graduate students from 33 different countries arrived at the World Learning campus in Brattleboro, Vermont. Students in the SIT Graduate Institute’s incoming class traveled from as far away as Azerbaijan and Zimbabwe, with 26% of all students coming from outside the United States. Twenty seven of the students will enter the MAT program (Master of Arts in Teaching) while the remaining 145 will enter the PIM program (Program in Intercultural Service, Leadership, and Management). This year’s incoming class brings with it a wealth of national and international experience, including 26 US students who have participated in the Peace Corps or Americorps-VISTA programs.

On Tuesday, the incoming class attended an opening ceremony with Marge Bruchac, an Abenaki storyteller and anthropologist. Bruchac invited the students to be thoughtfully aware of their place in history, urging them to “be careful about what it is we are taking from the past, and what it is we are passing on to the future.” After her introductory remarks, students and faculty joined hands and danced to Abenaki songs, before breaking into small discussion groups.

To see more photos of the incoming class, click here.

SIT Graduate Institute Campus Community Farm Works to Create a Sustainable Food Source

The SIT Brattleboro campus now has an active community farm, thanks to the hard work of SIT Graduate Institute students, alumni and staff from the Brattleboro-campus Environmental Working Group. The 2 acres farm, donated by World Learning, is being tilled and planted by the Farm Manager Steve Hed (an SIT Graduate alum) with the support of the World Learning/SIT facilities crew. The project is a partnership with Post Oil Solutions, a Brattleboro-based organization.

The vision of this initiative is to create a sustainable and just food system, both locally and globally.  This vision is derived from a deep concern that people today either lack access to or are disconnected from the importance of nutritious food grown through sustainable agriculture methods.  Produce grown on the farm will be used in the SIT Graduate Institute cafeteria and donated to the Brattleboro Drop In Center, a community food shelf. 

Through the efforts of all involved, the Farm Initiative group has received a grant from the Vermont Community Foundation. Additional funds were also raised from the RENEW Conference on Social and Ecological Renewal held last month on the SIT campus.

There will be updates and photos available on the SIT Graduate Institute website, so look for news about upcoming gardening and food preservation workshops, produce sales, farm tours and other community events. See the PDF for more info or write to SITFarm@sit.edu.

SIT Graduate Alum Offers Advice on Professional Networking via LinkedIn

Written by Megan McBride, SIT Graduate Student/World Learning Americorps VISTA
 

Laura Beth Barnes, alum of SIT Graduate Institute’s Program in Intercultural Leadership and Management, quips that she first logged on to LinkedIn as a way to avoid working on her capstone, the final project SIT Graduate students complete before finishing the program.  Her results, however, are not a joke: within ten days of creating an account, she received calls from head hunters offering her jobs in her field of sustainability and corporate responsibility.  Now, Laura is honored that the same people whom she regarded as pioneers in her field while she studied at SIT Graduate Institute view her as their peer and contact her with questions.     
 
In November of 2007, Laura signed-up for LinkedIn, an online professional networking site.  At the time, she was skeptical about it and started out by inviting only five people to join her network.  Wanting to keep her personal and professional life separate, she was at first hesitant to invite friends to join her network.  Laura soon realized that having more people in her contact base gave her a larger network and she started to reach out to people in key positions and locations.  From these initial contacts, she received a wide range of invitations from other professionals in her field.   
  
Laura currently works as a Responsible Sourcing Manager for Mothercare PLC, a UK-based retailer with stores internationally.  Prior to joining Mothercare in July 2009, she procured several short and long term consulting jobs through her connections on LinkedIn.  Laura comments that jobs in the professional fields that SIT prepares students for are difficult to find and usually not advertised on online job sites such as Monster or Yahoo Jobs.   She notes that using LinkedIn has not only introduced her to a wide net of people in her field but has also helped her stay in touch with those she meets at conferences and helps them to remember her and to understand her field of work. 

Laura observes that LinkedIn is like Google in that you can search for profiles containing certain key words.  She utilizes key terms from her field in her profile and recommends finding a balance between business and non-profit terminology to gain the broadest search results.

Laura cautions online networking site users to be vigilant with all their profiles, whether on professional sites or the more social sites such as Facebook.  She guards her online presence and is aware that her reputation is at stake when she forwards a contact invitation from a colleague to a person in her online network.   

Like a resume, Laura advises keeping profiles up-to-date with current information and accomplishments and she recommends updating profiles at least every two months.  When a person updates his or her profile on LinkedIn, all contacts are automatically sent an update.  Laura regards this as a perfect way to “stay on the radar” of other professionals in her field.  She warns that one can not simply create a profile, leave it untouched and expect results. She strongly encourages other World Learning alums to take advantage of the global connections they have via World Learning’s LinkedIn site.

Theory to Practice: Two SIT Graduate Institute Students Put Their Education to Work with World Learning’s Development Program in Northern Uganda

by Megan McBride, SIT Graduate Student/World Learning Americorps VISTA

Those who attend SIT Graduate Institute attest to its strength in field-based learning.  Current graduate students Demba Diallo and Rachel Unkovic had the opportunity to apply this learning when they completed their practicum in Northern Uganda with the International Development section of World Learning.

Rachel and Diallo spent three month working in the Kitgum district of northern Uganda on the Kacel Watwero project, which seeks to assist vulnerable children through youth leadership training.  In December, the members of the Kacel Watwero project produced a needs assessment, entitled “Speaking for Ourselves: An Assessment of the Needs, Resources, and Gaps in Services Available to Children and Youth in Kitgum District, Northern Uganda.”  
   
The strength of the Kacel Watwero project lies in the community-focused approached, called participatory project design, which World Learning and its partners utilized.  Diallo comments, “I have seen projects that failed in northern Uganda because the design was parachuted in from other parts of the world.” Rachel agrees; “The World Learning project focused on asking youths their opinions on the dangers facing the children in their own communities, and how to protect these children.  There is no one in the world better situated to answer these questions.”

Part of SIT Graduate Institute’s requirements include a six-month field practicum following the nine months on-campus phase.  Diallo observes that his course-work and training in the concentration of Sustainable Development in the Program of Intercultural Service, Leadership, & Management (PIM) prepared him for his work in Kitgum.  He remarks that, at SIT, they “teach you to be open-minded and respectful when learning about other cultures, things that are very important in development work.”  Rachel, who is also an alumna of the SIT Graduate Institute’s TESOL program, adds that “without having had the opportunity to study other conflicts, areas where conflict and identity interchange, and, most importantly, post-war development scenarios, I would not have had the capacity to comprehend much of what I heard.”  Rachel’s concentration is in Conflict Transformation in the PIM program at SIT Graduate Institute.

Work on this project has left a deep impression on both Diallo and Rachel.  “I learned so much about the resilience and strength of people, and their ability to work and hope and love, despite having lived through war and lost loved-ones.”  Rachel continues, noting she learned that “civilians, rather than governments and NGOs, are the true experts on reconstruction and post-war development.”   Diallo concurs with this lesson, citing that he learned to “always value the people you are trying to help by being as inclusive as possible, and that, “investing in youth is one of the best ways to do development work.” Their experience in Kitgum will guide their capstone thesis and presentation that marks the completion of the PIM degree at SIT Graduate Institute.

Upon completion of the PIM degree, both plan to continue working with vulnerable populations.  Rachel hopes to continue in the area of humanitarian aid and post-war development.  “I want to work to help policy-makers and larger governments remember the importance of listen to local peace-workers in individual communities.”  Diallo expressed a desire to return to Kitgum to continue to connect with the youth, stating, “they are part of my life.”  He comments that the youth of northern Uganda had begun to lose hope, but with the help of the youth leadership training of Kacel Watwero, “they are actually engaged and dreaming of being successful.”

Technology and Study Abroad: Some Reflections (Part II)

by Alvino E. Fantini, Former Academic Leader for Study Abroad / The Experiment in International Living (programs of World Learning)

(Part I of Technology and Study Abroad was published on the World Learning NOW blog on January 13, 2009)

Recently, I was asked to do what I found to be an interesting task: reflect on the impact that technological advances have had on exchange programs and study abroad (for the upcoming publication The History of Study Abroad: 1965-Present).  Here are some thoughts.  Feel free to add to them by posting comments below:

Communication and Technology

Of course, the travel mode was not the only thing that changed. Advancements in technology accelerated so rapidly over the past 40-50 years that how we communicated with our academic leaders, student groups, and colleagues abroad, were also affected. It would be hard for someone today to imagine how laborious, time consuming, and slow were most of our administrative procedures in comparison with today’s world, especially when dealing internationally.

It is also hard to imagine that basic office equipment consisted of the typewriter and telephone. Group lists, documents, records, etc. were all typed by hand, often requiring multiple copies which were made by using onionskin copies and carbon sheets (white for distribution copies, yellow for file copies, and green for chron files). And mistakes in typing were annoying and time consuming because mistakes had to be erased and corrections done separately on the original and each of the multiple copies.

Duplicating in larger quantities meant cutting a ditto or mimeo stencil master and then running off multiple copies by hand on the ditto machine or Gestettner (at first, manually operated and later electric), taking care not to ruin the stencil or smudge the copies; or worse yet, getting the ink on your hands and clothes. Selectric typewriters in the 1980s were an advancement; they facilitated the typing process and cut neater stencils but the process remained essentially the same. Later models with a small screen above the keyboard which displayed what you were typing were of dubious progress, in my estimation, since the lack of synchronization between the print that appeared on the screen and the typing process was somewhat disconcerting.

A simple yet vivid memory dates back to 1964 with the installation of the first photocopier on the entire SIT campus (then known as Sandanona). This first photocopier was a marvel — slow, but still a marvel. Copies were reproduced on thick and heavy glossy sheets that usually emerged slightly browned or burned but this beat making carbon copies on the typewriter.

And of course everything was mailed by post both within the US and abroad, meaning that advanced planning time was essential for communicating since this generally took about three weeks by airmail to Europe and often longer to other parts of the world.

Also, telephone calls were expensive and often difficult when calling certain places in the world. A call to La Paz, Bolivia, for example, required making a prior appointment with an overseas operator a few days in advance, who then placed the call at a designated time to an operator in Buenos Aires who in turn relayed the call to La Paz via radio. Europe of course was easier to manage by phone but quite expensive so staff relied heavily on telegrams. The introduction of the telex machine, and later the fax, both made a great difference in the speed with which we could now communicate with other parts of the world. Given this situation at that time, it was not hard to enforce a rule that program participants not call home during their stay abroad since this was considered to constitute an “interruption” to their cultural immersion.

The change in communication possibilities, of course, had a tremendous effect on how we designed and implemented programs and how we coordinated work with colleagues abroad in so many countries around the world. Slow communication meant time lapses between communiqués; it required more advance planning, and thoughtful composition of letters and documents (we even had an official editor who periodically checked correspondence sent out for formatting and accuracy in accordance with institutional standards). Instant communication sped up the process to the point where most people now expect to turn around an item within a day or so. Clearly, the latter is more “efficient” but also more demanding in terms of instantaneous responses.

Today, by contrast, with all the means available for rapid communication, it is much more difficult to maintain total cultural immersion as we used to think of it. Today’s participants commonly walk around plugged in much of the time — listening to their favorite tunes, instantly sending text messages to friends and family around the world, snapping and sending pictures and even video clips back home on the spot, and of course maintaining conversations face to face on skype as often as they wish and at absolutely no cost. The effect of this modern miracle is obvious, giving one the ability while being in Japan, say, to speak — and see — friends and family back home at will.

When I first began to use skype about 3 years ago, I noted in the line below the screen that the number of users at any single moment was commonly at about three to four million and already that number is now generally at about twelve to thirteen million people speaking, and perhaps seeing, each other at the same moment around the world, distance notwithstanding. Today, exchange and study abroad participants can dip in and out of their host culture as they choose, by surrounding themselves within a cultural cocoon of their own creation, if they so desire. They may be abroad in a new and strange environment, yet they can still maintain instant and frequent contact with everything familiar to them.  How times have changed!

Alvino Fantini is Professor Emeritus with the  SIT Graduate Institute and recently served on the Graduate Faculty for the  MA in Language Communication at Matsuyama University in Japan.

SIT Graduate Institute Sees Rise in Applications from Sponsored Students

Applications for 2009 received through Fulbright, Ford, Rotary dramatically increase.  INTERLINK Fellowship applications triple.

By Marshall Brewer, SIT Graduate Institute, Admissions Counselor for Language Teacher Education

BRATTLEBORO, VT (February 25, 2009) – Applications to SIT Graduate Institute from sponsoring organizations have dramatically increased for 2009 programs.  Dossiers received from applicants sponsored by the Fulbright Program, the International Fellowships Program of the Ford Foundation, and the Rotary International have jumped significantly over previous years.  In addition, applications to the innovative SIT INTERLINK Fellowship have more than doubled for 2009.

While sponsorship of SIT graduate students has long been welcomed and successful, the dramatic increase in this year’s applications signals two compelling conditions. 

Certainly, the world economic crisis is a motivating factor for many would-be international students desiring US graduate degrees.  Sponsored applicants for SIT’s 2009 programs come from these countries:

• Angola
• Indonesia
• Ivory Coast
• Kenya
• Japan
• Jordan
• Madagascar
• Mozambique
• Namibia
• Russia
• South Africa
• Turkmenistan

Another factor believed to contribute to the current rise in application rates is the quality of learning derived from previous sponsored students.  Juan Rostrán of Nicaragua said of his 2007-08 SIT experience.

I am not only strengthening my teaching skills, but also developing intercultural understanding. [SIT’s] focus on experiential learning makes it rare… [Being] in a classroom with colleagues from all around the world enriches the intercultural adventure.

The SIT INTERLINK Fellowship begins its second year in June.  In this unusual program, highly qualified English teachers receive a fifty percent tuition scholarship and a two-year teaching contract through INTERLINK Language Centers at Al-Yamamah University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.  Drawing heavy interest from all continents, English teachers have deluged Fellowship offices with inquiries.  Unlike other options, this is a non-competitive fellowship; acceptance is offered to all who are qualified.  More than twice as many fellows are expected to begin in 2009 than a year ago.

While many decisions about 2009 students have yet to be made, the increase in sponsored students this year is a strong indication of SIT Graduate Institute’s reputation and the world’s need for intercultural leaders.

SIT in NYC

by Susal Stebbins, SIT Graduate student

In these first few weeks of 2009, SIT grad students can be found trekking merrily through the streets of Manhattan, chatting about micro-enterprise in Haiti, fresh water wells in Liberia, the desirability of a United Nations decade for interfaith dialogue, a possible internship with the International Girl Scouts… not to mention our friend playing Mongolian music in a bar in Brooklyn Tuesday night and what’s showing on Broadway this week.

We are here for our Organizational Behavior II class, examining recipes for effective organizations from perspectives of systems thinking, organizational structures, human resources, politics, and culture. We gather direct experience (and networking opportunities) by visiting the physical spaces and leaders of a myriad of United Nations institutions and International NGOs. The class is a partnership between SIT and the Levin Instititute for International Relations and Commerce, based in the heart of Manhattan (and founded in honor of Neil D. Levin, Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, who perished in the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001).

SIT Professor Ken Williams supplies seemingly endless theories and inspiring and instructive stories – for example about the organic formation of a children’s rights hotline which connects street children in more than 20 cities in India with all the services they need, empowers young people to serve each other, and trains police and health care workers to understand and address children’s needs. He checks in with the class every day – what are we learning, what do we need, who will we meet with, how will we get there?

Levin Institute Provost Lynne Rosansky contributes lectures and conducts a simulation of  management structure functions, assigning students to roles as international president; heads of European, North American, and Asian operations; design and production managers and workers, with real life scenarios that get us thinking about strategies for communication, motivation, division of labor, etc. The European division cheerfully and obliviously churns out a bumper crop of faulty products, suddenly our red ink is declared toxic, and we nearly have a company meltdown, but quick consultation on new quality guidelines and flexible production staff save the day. 

Mary Alice Mazzara, Levin Institute’s Dean of Students, has combed through her vast network of contacts to arrange our visits with various international institutions. With each interchange – two to five per day – an SIT student serves as host and time is allowed for thought-provoking questions and lively dialogue.  I am delighted to meet SIT alumna Venkatesh (Venky) Raghavendra, now Senior Philanthropic Director of American India Foundation, hear so many insights from him, and then discover that he has not only worked with my dear former colleague Anil Chitrakar from Nepal, but they are close friends. Similar old and new connections are being uncovered and forged every day by my classmates.

I am building my own collection of memories of New York – stumbling across Carnegie Hall and the lions of the New York Public Library, finding new Tibetan friends at Columbus Circle, losing myself in the colors of Monet and Rodin’s luminous bodies emerging from white marble at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and standing shoulder to shoulder with my classmates in the sculpture garden of the United Nations.

Susal Stebbins is a PIM student (Intercultural Service, Leadership, and Management degree). She calls Minneapolis, Minnesota and Kathmandu, Nepal home and has had a rich life experience with many strands of writing, photography, social activism, music, and teaching.

Professor Nikoi Kote-Nikoi: promoting academic excellence and shaping economic policy in Ghana

Written by Susal Stebbins, SIT Graduate student

Like many of his colleagues at SIT Graduate Institute, Economics Professor Nikoi Kote- Nikoi practices what he teaches.  In doing so, he is having a major impact in implementing effective poverty alleviation policies in his home country of Ghana.

Nikoi came from a position as Economist at the World Bank and has been teaching at SIT (and more recently at Smith College, Marlboro College, the University of Ghana, and colleges in Zimbabwe and Bangladesh) on and off since 1989. The off-times – one extended leave-of-absence and one sabattical -  have allowed him to expand his part time business working as an economics consultant, researcher and policy developer in Ghana. 

Nikoi spent two years as Director of Research at the Institute of Economic Affairs in Accra, Ghana.  Based on that experience, Nikoi took the opportunity of his 2003 sabbatical to implement a new model for his own economic think tank. He had discovered that generally “if you’re doing consulting to pay the bills, there’s not much time to do [the] basic research” needed for developing sound long-term policy. Nikoi established the think tank by approaching donors to fund an endowment to support the Center for Policy Priorities.  Nikoi partnered with a researcher at the University of Ghana, and hires appropriate additional researchers (sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists) for specific projects as needed.

The Center for Policy Priorities was established in 2003. Nikoi explains, “We identify ourselves as a private, not-for-profit, non-governmental, public-policy research institution.”  He defines the Center’s focus matter-of-factly: “Our overall goal is poverty alleviation. We do basic research, come up with policy options, and advocate with government to augment existing policy or implement different ones accordingly.” The Center devises a research agenda for two or three sectors of the economy for three-year periods. Areas of concentration have included international trade and labor market issues (wages, job development, etc.).  Once the research is completed, results are published and disseminated to key stakeholders and decision-makers.

 “We do roundtables with primary recipients, who are mainly those in a position to implement the policies we’re advocating, and also with advocacy allies in civil society who are in a position to either apply pressure for implementation or help facilitate the implementation. So we do workshops at the Institute, not only on the outcomes of the research, but on strategies on how we can get them implemented. So right away we’re building a constituency around particular policies.” The institute also uses radio and television and Nikoi writes newspaper columns to build public pressure for policy changes.

The Center’s current strategy is to work on macro-economic policy that affects development outcomes across the country as a whole, by producing evidence-based studies that would help establish a positive environment for micro-level development practice.  Nikoi elaborates on the reasons for this: “Often you can do excellent research at the village level, or at the firm level, and try to implement the right interventions, and then the government will do something that entirely negates your efforts…So we think about what needs to be done at the national level to help this village or firm get its goods to market, or sell them abroad, or secure an uninterrupted flow of inputs at low transactions costs.”

The Center has been focusing on policies to address the developing Ghanaian oil industry. Oil was recently discovered in Ghana, and the Ghanaian government anticipates producing 20,000 barrels of oil a day by 2010, to be gradually increased ten-fold over ten years. Nikoi reflects that everyone in Ghana is concerned about what that would mean for Ghana’s long-term development goals. “If you look at the history of African nations that have discovered oil, it’s not been good… Everyone thinks that oil should be the ticket out of poverty, but in fact the opposite has often happened. So the whole country is interested in not only why that seems to happen to these bonanza economies in Africa, but also what we can do now by way of policy to prevent that from happening to Ghana.”  Nikoi is currently analyzing what happened in neighboring Nigeria and other African countries when oil production took off to see what policy lessons can be gleaned from their experience.

Just as the US conducted its historical 2008 election, Ghana also is having presidential elections in early December.  Nikoi’s institute has been, for the past year, assisting a Ghanaian political party to prepare for the elections by developing economic analysis and positions for their electoral platform.  He is also consulting for them on the current global financial crisis.

SIT graduate students benefit greatly from learning the details of Nikoi Kote-Nikoi’s practical application of economics and advocacy theory to complex real-world situations. Hopefully, they will be able to follow in his footsteps of maintaining a strong connection between academic excellence and making a positive impact on conditions in the world.

SIT Admissions Counselors on the Road: Coming Soon to a City Near You!

Every fall, the Admissions Counselors from SIT Graduate Admissions hit the road and attend various fairs and conferences Most of the time, it will be an Admissions Counselor, but sometimes they are joined by alumni or current students, and sometimes alumni take the reins and cover the events for them.  Either way, you will meet people with first hand experiences at SIT who are knowledgable about our programs and the opportunities available to you at SIT Graduate Institute.

The Journey to the SIT Graduate Institute

By Susal Stebbins

What a journey it’s been! I arrived at SIT Graduate Institute after a ten-day drive through the great Columbia River Gorge in Oregon, across the Continental Divide, through the Great Plains and Black Hills and Badlands and across rolling northern Midwest hills and flat as a pancake Ohio farmland, through New York wine country and then the late night rustic roller coaster of Route 9 from Bennington to Brattleboro. I know other SIT students crossed even more varied lands, nations, and great oceans, not to mention equally complex cultural terrains. Reaching orientation at SIT became a mutual large dot on the time-space maps of our lives.

And zooming in on that dot, we found it to be a multi-layered pivotal point. We are uploading information – about mailboxes, degree programs, new faces and the new names that go with them, advice on enjoying the feeling of being connected and welcoming the discomfort that comes with true multi-cultural living…In the midst of this, Alvino Fantini, an ex-faculty member connected to The Experiment and World Learning for more than 40 years, jovially informed the assembled MAT and PIM students, “Hoje, eu declaro Portugues a lingua oficial da escola.” What?! Laughter and bewilderment rippled through the crowd. Alvino explained – in English – that language and culture can exclude and that our task is to use our awareness to be inclusive.

My own awareness was that I was awed by my classmates: one who had been a political prisoner for standing up for minority rights in India; others who had worked with Habitat for Humanity in Chile and with the Peace Corps in Namibia; another who had come to SIT to become more proficient in teaching English in her native Tibet; another an African-American woman with a three-year-old son who had dreamed and worked for years to come to SIT and was reveling in all the ideas and possibilities.