Open letter to the folks in Comparative & International Education

Last Monday, I joined many of you in folding chairs on a field for a chilly, wet morning. Normally listening to 1400+ names being called wouldn't be my idea of a good time. But I'm glad I went, because our community is worth it.

Graduates with faculty Peggy (left) and Alex (right)

Last month, Lehigh's Dean of Education announced that the Comparative and International Education (CIE) program would be "sunsetted," or phased out over the next three years. No new students would be admitted, and non-tenured faculty (essentially 2 of the 4) could seek employment elsewhere whenever an opportunity arose. So I was in the last graduating class to receive the full CIE master's degree experience. Though the sunsetting had a minimal effect on my plans, I shared in your confusion and grief and concern. I care about the faculty and students being left behind, and I'm sad that this is the context of my departure. Because overall, reflecting on my time in CIE brings me a lot of joy.

In this post, I want to acknowledge the impact that CIE has had on me over the past two years.

1. Thank you, Dr. Peggy Kong, for insisting that we keep practicing our 30-second "elevator pitches" explaining our program.

Since "comparative and international education" sounds to most people a little bit like "ghlsdfjklsdfhl," my elevator pitch has come in handy as I've explained that...

• CIE examines the complex interactions between global, national, and regional forces in shaping schools. 
• For example, international NGOs like the World Bank and UNICEF are encouraging developing countries to adopt certain practices in schools. But these practices need to be contextualized. Local officials, teachers, and communities all have their own ideas about what direction education should take. 
• Likewise, some corporations seek positive press for their corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs overseas. These programs create great sound bites but their real effects on communities are far from simple. 
• It compares and contrasts aspects of school systems, often at a national level. 
• For example, how do various countries try to prevent students from dropping out, and how do they respond to dropouts? To what degree have they succeeded, and what cultural/historical factors have influenced their success or failure?
• It looks at educational borrowing and why it's so tempting to try, yet so difficult to achieve. 
• For example, why can't American schools be more like Finland's? Why are China and Thailand throwing around Western educational buzzwords like "student-centered learning?" Answer: It's complicated. (Works for everything!)

2. Thank you, CIE course readings, for teaching me big words. 

Now at parties, everyone will think I'm really cool when I start discussing the hegemony of neoliberals in promoting institutional isomorphism in semi-peripheral regions.

Thanks also for showing me what's way more fun than parties: reading articles that contain sentences like "The repatriation or export of the designs and commodities of difference continuously exacerbates the internal politics of majoritarianism and homogenization, which is most frequently played out in debates over heritage." I've always been a social outcast nerd, but you have taken it to a whole new level.

With Sothy

3. Thank you, Dr. Sothy Eng, for advising me.

If it weren't for Sothy, would I even have come to Lehigh? Probably, because
1. It's a quality program.
2. It's less than an hour from my parents' house.
2. It's by far the cheapest school I applied to, even without the tuition remission that came with becoming Sothy's graduate assistant.


However, Sothy was definitely a big selling point. He's Cambodian and he's one of the main faculty in the CIE program. Need I say more? He met up with me and a Cambodian alumna in Phnom Penh in winter 2014, when I was first looking into the program and he was conducting a tour for some Lehigh undergrads. 

At that initial meeting, Sothy told me about some cool opportunities, like the internship and assisting him, that I didn't want to count on when I decided to come... but he later helped make them happen. I'm so glad he advocated for me. He pushed me to master new skills, problem-solve, get things done, and still make time for fun, especially during the internship. Assisting him also offered the opportunity to learn and grow; the tasks were rarely mindless. 

Sothy provided the emotional support and kicks in the pants that I needed for each step of my thesis. His Cambodian connections and experience were invaluable for me in getting approval and working out logistics to survey Cambodian students for my thesis. His statistics class taught me practical skills for making sense of my data. Along with my co-advisors, Dr. Alex Wiseman and Dr. Nikki Tannenbaum, he provided invaluable feedback throughout the writing process.

Many thanks also to the marvelous reseach scientist Whitney Szmodis for helping me interpret Sothy's directions, prioritize tasks, and figure out how to implement them. Whitney is a master encourager, a calming presence, and generally a great person to have around. She and Sothy make a good team.

It was great having Whitney (far right) there to launch the internships last summer

4. Thanks, Lee Iacocca, for funding my internship in Cambodia.

Interning at Caring for Cambodia (CFC) was a fantastic experience that taught me a lot and... no surprise here... raised more questions in my mind about Cambodian education. It improved my knowledge of Khmer language and culture, and gave me a firsthand glimpse into Cambodian public schools. I also got to collect my thesis data while there. It was also a great chance to build relationships with other Lehigh students and fellow interns, both in the CIE program and beyond.

Demonstrating a lesson at a seminar for ESL teachers

Lehigh's partnership with CFC is unique, allowing students to do research projects benefiting CFC, both from the US and on the ground in Cambodia. Many CIE students had the opportunity to visit for data collection. I think Lehigh is about the only place in the US where everyone in the room with me has visited Cambodia. That eased my transition back to the US, giving me a shared interest and experience with my classmates, as well as a fresh perspective on Cambodia as I heard their impressions. It took time before I could make it through the day without mentioning Cambodia to anyone; Lehigh offered an appropriate outlet for some of those conversations. 

5. Thanks for teaching me new skills. 

While at Lehigh, I've learned how to...

• get Institutional Research Board approval
• review someone else's journal article submission
• write about regression analysis results
• develop a grant proposal
• build a website on WordPress
• defend a thesis

...and more. I've been seriously impressed by the caliber of professors and the standard to which they hold students, who are up for the challenge.

Part of the "more" could be how to mingle and network, but I'm not sure I succeeded at this one. Students involved in the Lehigh-Caring for Cambodia partnership were invited to a social with distinguished alumni in New York City. We were encouraged to take the initiative and strike up conversations with them about the benefits of the partnership for us. I was determined to overcome the awkwardness and act outgoing. "Hi, are you John? I'm Chelsea. Nice to meet you." But the very first person I approached seemed uncomfortable with something I'd said. I couldn't put my finger on my faux pas for a couple minutes, until I asked him why the graduation year on his name tag was still in the future.  

"I'm Lehigh's president," he responded. Aha. I had no idea he'd be attending and hadn't put it together that the John Simon sipping wine with me was the same President Simon who'd e-mailed everyone on occasion. He was nice about it, but couldn't redeem the situation.

With "John," about 30 seconds before I crawled into a hole

6. Thanks for the language practice.

Even though Sothy insists on speaking English with me (it's much faster given my limited Khmer), I got to practice Khmer with our special guest for Cambodian Culture Night, as well as daily during my internship last summer. I had a classmate whose German is much better than mine and several with great French. Elsewhere in the US, I don't have many polyglot friends. 

Four of us pictured here are Francophone 

7. Thank you, fellow Cambodia enthusiasts, for being gracious when I put you in a tough spot. 

When I organized the Cambodian Culture Night on rather short notice, many of you came to my rescue and gamely jumped in to advertise, decorate, and cook... even though the end of the semester meant you had a ton of other work to do. You pushed through the technical difficulties and made it happen. What a relief! I owe you guys big time.

8. Thank you for making me laugh. 

From the "Who wants to be a volunteer?" video in International Development, to the Spurious Correlations website in Statistics, to Tricia's epic happy birthday song for Christi in Diversity, to all the cat memes in Research, to a running joke about Mao's nudist habits in Chinese Education, it's been a good time. Not to mention all the hilarious moments created by Zoom (a video conferencing app), such as when we left all the online students isolated in their own breakout room long after their a 5-minute discussion ended, or when they got to hear our mass confusion and consternation over a spider (or mouse?) in the classroom.

9. Thank you, CIE students and faculty, for enriching our discussions through your diverse cross-cultural experiences. 

You've lived in Switzerland and Japan and Chile and China and Saudi Arabia. You hail from Afghanistan and Indonesia and Norway and Latvia and South Africa. I could go on. 

Through you, I've learned about implications of Kyrgyz, Iranian, English, and Algerian cultures for their school systems. Through you, I've also learned about the diversity in US schools, whether the absence of women in California's history curriculum, or Mississippi's clusters of Japanese immigrants, or options for special needs students in Pennsylvania's Saucon Valley school district.

Cupcakes with flags for each country represented in our class, plus a couple with school colors or globes

10. Thanks for encouraging my questions.

I came to grad school hoping to work through some questions in my mind. Like any good research endeavor, it's left me with far more than when I started. But I think that's OK. Lehigh gave me space to think about and research a few of my incoming questions, and it gave me permission to ask a lot more as I continued reading and learning. It pushed me to challenge my assumptions, to examine people's motives, to be skeptical of wannabe "white saviors" (myself included) and words like "empowerment" and "developing." 

Sometimes it's been frustrating not to find more neat answers, but that's probably closer to real life. At least now I have a bigger framework in which to place my questions, knowledge of resources that might speak to them, and the awareness that theories are vital in coloring what facts I use to construct an answer. At first I resisted that idea, wanting "just the facts, please." Now I see why facts without theories are incomplete.

The cognitive dissonance was likewise frustrating but good for me. I was around a lot of people whose beliefs differed from mine - sometimes dramatically. At a few points, I seemed to be the lone dissenting voice. That's not a comfortable place to be, but it's a place where growth tends to result. And growth, more than a piece of paper or a chance to sit in a folding chair on a field, is the whole reason I came.