Dr. Barbara Finkelstein (EDPS) is one of two recipients from across the campus of this year's Study Abroad Development Grant from the Office of International Programs. This competitive grant was established to facilitate the development of short term study abroad courses taught in new locations, to new students, with unique academic foci not currently covered by existing UM study abroad programs. Successful applicants receive a $4,000 summer grant to create a 3-credit course.
Dr. Finkelstein will use this grant to develop a study abroad course to Liberia during Winter term 2010. Liberia has been selected as the venue for this study abroad course because of the deep historical relationships this West African country has with the State of Maryland. Historically, free Black Marylanders helped to settle Liberia in the 19th Century. Most recently, in August 2007, this relationship expanded with the establishment of the Maryland-Liberia Sister State Program with Bong and Maryland Counties in Liberia—Maryland’s first and only sister state relationship in Africa.
The College of Education hosted a visit from Dr. Elizabeth Davis-Russell, President of Tubman Technical College in February 2009, who expressed a strong desire to develop an exchange of faculty and students in mutually beneficial ways. This visit was arranged by Dr. P. Bai Akridge, a visiting scholar in the International Center for Transcultural Education, who has been instrumental in developing the Maryland-Liberia Sister State Program and will assist in the development of this study abroad program. Tubman Technical College in Maryland County and Cuttington University in Bong County will be the two primary sites for this study abroad program.
The study abroad course entitled “Education and Culture in Liberia” will engage students in systematic explorations of the ways in which Liberian students, teachers, parents, community leaders, curriculum makers, and cultural authorities cultivate a sense of place and possibility for rising generations of young people in a world of increasing cultural congestion, economic interdependence, information exchange, and knowledge systems.
In order to tie the academic study of education to explorations of cultural, social, political, and material forms and perspectives on the ground in Liberia, students will supplement traditional forms of academic study by learning to apply oral historical and ethnographic techniques to the challenges of gathering knowledge and perspectives from face-to-face encounters and living-learning experiences on the ground. This study abroad program will create opportunities for students to engage in collective conversations with counterpart students, teachers, policy makers, school administrators, and host families. |
