The Muskie program [6] celebrates International Education Week (IEW) with the release of the 2011 Muskie Host University Application [7]. Since 1992, Muskie fellows have contributed to campuses across the US by adding their unique perspectives to the classroom and campus life. University hosts benefit from the enthusiasm and dedication of these bright and promising Eurasian leaders. At the same time, Muskie fellows gain new knowledge while building important linkages with their classmates and advisors. In many cases, alumni and professors continue to collaborate professionally after fellows return to their home countries.
Involvement On-Campus and in the Community
Georgia Southern University (GSU) [8] benefited from the contribution of Saida Akbarova, a 2008 Muskie fellow from Uzbekistan who volunteered to teach the university’s first Russian language course [9]in twelve years. Akbarova employed technology to engage her students by arranging Skype interviews with Muskie fellows at other universities.
Aygun Dadashova, a 2009 international affairs fellow, and Asvad Gabul-Zada, a 2008 public health fellow, joined the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville [10]’s International Cultural Team because they wanted to share Azerbaijani culture with children and youth. The team visited an elementary school [11] in Branson, Missouri where Dadashova and Gabul-Zada taught students about a traditional game played in Azerbaijan during the holiday of Novruz Bayram.
Continuing Collaboration
Khatuna Gogaladze, a 2006 environmental fellow, and mentor Dr. Matthew Auer didn’t end their collaboration when Gogaladze returned to her native Georgia. Gogaladze applied for and received a Muskie Mentor/Advisor Exchange (MAX) award to bring Auer, professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University [12], to Tbilisi to facilitate a workshop [13] on the relationship between environmental management and economic growth. Fellow and mentor worked together to lead a training for eighteen Georgian government officials.
The Admissions Office Perspective
With extensive experience in university admissions, Kate Piasecki knows what makes an international student a successful contributor on-campus. Piasecki currently serves as Assistant Director of MBA Admissions at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School [14], a longtime Muskie host. Kate discussed her impressions of Muskie fellows in the following video interview.
Interview with an Academic Advisor
As an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University’s top-ranked Peabody College of Education and Human Development [15], Dr. Brian Heuser has served as advisor to several Muskie education fellows. Heuser shared his thoughts about the Muskie hosting experience in a recent interview.
Q. Why did your university apply to host a Muskie fellow?
A. Vanderbilt/Peabody chose to host Muskie Fellows because of the very strong fit of that program with our own in International Education Policy & Management (IEPM). Building strategic capacity in education through rigorous empirical, organizational and policy training is what we do at Peabody. The IEPM faculty members also have extensive expertise in the post-Soviet regions and therefore have direct professional interests in building human capital and institutional capacity in the region.
Q. How has the hosting experience internationalized your campus?
A. The hosting experience has further accentuated our international graduate student emphasis in the IEPM program. Nearly a third of our students are from other countries and many of our best students have come from the Muskie program. Perhaps most importantly, the Muskie program has allowed us to naturally internationalize our curriculum through including policy case studies from the former Soviet states and then having students from those countries deepen the level of context and discourse, and therefore understanding.
Q. What connections have you made with your Muskie fellows’ home countries as a result of the hosting experience?
A. Our Muskie graduates have served as a strong conduit between their home countries and Peabody. By virtue of the careers that Fellows enter as a result of participation in the Muskie Program, and through the professional networks they forge, we have been able to expand our own connections in their countries for academic research, graduate internships, university collaboration and further policy work on behalf of our faculty.