Students

GSE students' work takes them around the world, where they participate in a wide variety of projects. Recently, GSE students have been working in...

China...

Bill Dunworth, an Ed.D. candidate in Higher Education, spent the past summer in the north of China analyzing the effectiveness of Western forms of management education on China's long-term economic development. Bill plans to move to China later this year to undertake dissertation research that will determine if the cultural, organizational, and educational differences between China and the West will result in China using Western management models to develop its own approaches to organizational management and management education.  Such an occurence will have profound implications for the way firms manage globally and how business schools in the West teach management.

Ning Rui, a Ph.D. candidate in Policy Research, Evaluation, and Measurement, plans to visit Sichuan Province in December. He is scheduled to meet with director of the Chinese Cochrane Centre to learn about the medical emergency rescue systems and strategies used in the wake of the earthquake and evidence-based approaches (e.g., systematic reviews of relevant health-care interventions) to the prevention of epidemic disease outbreak and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

El Salvador...

Jennifer Kobrin, an M.S.Ed. candidate in Intercultural Communication, spent 12 weeks in El Salvador designing and implementing a baseline survey for Save the Children's new preschool program.  Working in Ahuachapán, a poor and underserved rural area, the Save the Children team met with almost 1,000 women who were pregnant and/or caring for young children.  Often, these interviews took place in schools, which allowed Jennifer to talk to villagers, school directors, teachers, and rural heath promoters.  In addition, her team met with the Ministries of Education and Health twice.  Jennifer explains that "this research project presented many challenges, including ensuring that instruments were translated accurately and were understood by our participants, and preparing our findings.  Scientifically measuring the effectiveness of community impact programs is an important aspect of Save the Children's work."

Indonesia...

Rachel Throop, a Ph.D. student in Education and Anthropology, has been a key part of GSE's response to the tsunami which struck coastal Asia in 2004. With a group of Penn professors and students, she traveled three times to Indonesia's Aceh province to work with teachers and schools that had been affected not just by the tsunami, but by the years-long civil conflict that had preceded it. The Penn team introduced the Indonesian teachers to inquiry-based methods and collaborative mentoring. This work dovetailed with Throop's interest in the theory/practice relationship in teaching. The Penn team of which Rachel was a part worked with teachers leaders and provincial education administrators and in local schools during their four trips to Banda Aceh, approaching their work with the Acehnese as a partnership.

Iraq...

Working with Columbia's Center for International Conflict Research, Tom Hill (a third-year doctoral student in the Education, Culture, and Society program) has been in Iraq, developing and implementing an innovative conflict mitigation program. The program has three main components: training Iraqi facilitators to analyze and address community conflict; developing a nationwide network for promoting peace and conflict mitigation; and working with youth to help them strengthen their connections to one another and their communities and to build their own conflict-resolution skills.

Paraguay...

In Paraguay, Educational Linguistics student Katherine Mortimer is studying the use of Spanish and Guarani (an indigenous language) in urban and rural areas. How are the two languages used, and mixed, and in what contexts? Has the national program of bilingual education changed these rules? What ethnographic or social conclusions can we draw from Guarani/Spanish language use patterns? Her study investigates educators' perspectives on the question of whether a purified or colloquial variety of Guaraní should be used in schools, how these perspectives vary across relevant social groups, and how they involve ideologies of language that may mediate the potential for social change implicated in Paraguay's ambitious program for national bilingualism and biliteracy.

South Africa...

Noah Drezner (Ph.D. '08) traveled to South Africa with a cohort of GSE higher education students. After reading extensively about South African history - including apartheid and the recent transformation to a democracy - the group visited four different types of universities and met with community leaders to learn about educational opportunities available in South Africa. Their itinerary covered the entire history of the anti-apartheid movement, ranging from Soweto, where Black students' protests against learning Afrikaans began, to Kliptown, where the South African Freedom Charter was signed in 1995. Student comparisons of the American and South African systems of higher education focused on a variety of topics, from women's rights to fundraising.

Zambia...

Western countries and agencies have been bringing HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs to Africa for years. But do they really work? How effective are these programs, and how do we know?

With the help of a Provost's grant, GSE doctoral students Clarisse Haxton and David Seidenfeld did some research, both in Zambia and at Penn, to find out. In Zambia, they interviewed villagers, administrators, and teachers about HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs there, and then returned to the United States to complete a review of the research on how HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs are evaluated.

David, a third-year Ph.D. student in Education Policy and an IES Predoctoral Fellow, focuses his research on evaluating HIV education prevention programs in Africa.  David's study investigated potential obstacles for people seeking condoms in rural sub-Saharan Africa and what effect these obstacles have on condom dissemination.  He worked closely with government and non-government organizations that are interested in learning how to improve condom access and fight the spread of HIV.  David's grounding in applied statistics, study design, and policy analysis that he acquired at GSE has proven invaluable for developing his research.