A new IIE-AIFS Foundation book, Women in the Global Economy: Leading Social Change explores the landscape of women’s participation in the economy and the key role women play in fueling economic growth by creating stable societies. The book notes how investing in women is increasingly seen as a driver for social and economic development. 

The book is edited by Trish Tierney, Executive Director of IIE’s San Francisco office, who also oversees IIE’s Center for Women’s Leadership Initiatives and directs innovative programs linking the power of women and the power of technology. 

Contributors to the publication include distinguished academics as well as leading intellectuals and practitioners in public policy, government and the non-profit sector.  

Chapters in the book include: 

• Gender and Development: Investing in Women and Girls
• Women as Social Entrepreneurs: A Case Study
• Women and the Informal Economy: Economic Actors and Global Leaders
• Bridging the Technology Gender Divide
• Yemeni Women: A Reading through the Papers of the Arab Spring
• The Intersection of Market-Based Approaches and Gender
• Women and the Global Social Network: Social Media and Women’s Economic Sustainability in the MENA Region
• Expanding Women’s Access to Capital and Microfinance

Click to learn more about Women in the Global Economy.  

On March 21, join Trish Tierney and three of the authors, social media expert Beth Kanter, along with Nuket Kardam and Fredric Kropp from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, for a panel discussion and book signing at IIE San Francisco. Visit the eventbrite page for details and to register. 

The books are available for purchase on the IIE Bookstore. 

 

In IIE’s Opening Minds blog Edie Cecil, IIE Vice President for Professional Exchanges and Community Outreach, writes that 32.4 percent of girls in Ethiopia enroll in 9th grade, but only 3.5 percent continue to 11th grade, which is their path to advance to university. Cecil asks: "Imagine what the impact would be on the girls, their families and their communities if we could significantly increase that number?" 

Read the blog post to find out how IIE’s new Higher Education Readiness (HER) Program will address this challenge and provide 100 girls in Addis Ababa with the tools they need to continue to university.

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and JAY Z’s Shawn Carter Foundation have announced a partnership to support study abroad scholarships for U.S. undergraduate students with financial need. 

Four inaugural Shawn Carter Foundation-Gilman International Scholarships have been awarded for the spring 2013 semester. The four scholarship winners for this year are:

• Brittany Hardy, a first-generation college student from Gary, Indiana, and religion major at Princeton University, will study abroad for a semester in Athens, Greece.

• Natalie Holman, who is from Chicago studying anthropology, public health, and Spanish at Northwestern University, will study and live with a host family in Barcelona, Spain.

• Laquisha Springer, a first-generation college student from Hartford studying behavioral neuroscience at Connecticut College, will study psychology in Copenhagen, Denmark.

• Quenton White, from Detroit and attending Wayne State University with the goal of going on to law school, will study at the University of Salford in Manchester, United Kingdom.

The collaboration between the Shawn Carter Foundation and the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program supports the State Department’s goal of expanding opportunities for students with diverse backgrounds to study abroad and builds on the foundation’s efforts to broaden the horizons of its scholars. The four Shawn Carter Foundation-Gilman International Scholarships will be implemented by IIE. 

Read the press release for more information. 

IIE San Francisco will host an education policy briefing by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert O. Blake on March 22 from 9:00 - 10:30 a.m.  

Assistant Secretary Blake will speak about the increasingly important role that education collaboration plays in the U.S.-India relationship and will talk about some new initiatives including Obama-Singh, community college engagement and Passport to India. A discussion following his talk will address constraints to deepening U.S.-India education collaboration, strategies for expanding the numbers of U.S. students in India and potential new areas for future cooperation such as through massive open on-line courses (MOOCs). 

For more information, please contact Mary Karam McKey at mmckey@iie.org.

Articles in the spring 2013 issue of Boston College’s International Higher Education magazine look at the fundamental questions about for-profit higher education. Articles focus on the new trend toward "branding" universities, higher education and its impact on income distribution, religion and higher education in Europe, and others. 

Read the issue here. 

The Rockefeller Institute Bulletin highlights an important chapter on roles for U.S. Universities in Latin America in the new IIE-AIFS Foundation book Latin America’s New Knowledge Economy: Higher Education, Government, and International Collaboration. 

In the book, leading scholars from Latin America and the U.S. (including the Rockefeller Institute’s Jason Lane) explore factors that have been catalysts for higher education reforms such as increased access and equity, emphasis on international study, and investment by foreign universities and corporations. 

Other chapters in the book include: 

• Training the 21st Century Knowledge Workers: Higher Education and Workforce Development in Latin America
• Building Knowledge-based Economies in Latin America: The Role of National Study Abroad Scholarship Programs
• Trends in Student and Academic Mobility: From "Brain Drain" to "Brain Gain" in Latin America
• Toward 100,000 Strong: Western Hemisphere Academic Exchanges
• Academic Research and Advanced Training: Building up Research Universities in Brazil

Click to learn more about Latin America's New Knowledge Economy.  

The Institute of International Education will host the Annual Best Practices in Internationalization Conference at the IIE headquarters in New York City on March 21-22, 2013. Leading experts in the field and the winners of the 2013 Andrew Heiskell Awards for Innovation in International Education will present successful strategies for internationalizing the campus. The conference will focus on themes such as internationalization strategies, expanding participation in study abroad, and building international partnerships.

Even though registration has closed, IIE encourages you to follow the conference on our Twitter feed (@iieglobal) and on Facebook. We will be updating both accounts throughout the day.

To learn more about the Best Practices Conference and to download the conference agenda, please visit: www.iie.org/bestpracticesconference2013. 

On April 5, 2013, SUNY Global will host an all-day workshop entitled "SUNY Language PACT: Building Community to Strengthen Language Learning." This event continues a dialogue about modern language education that was initiated by last year’s workshop, "SUNY-MLA Collaboration for Language and Culture Education: Exploring New Structures for a Changing World."  

Four issues were identified that are central considerations as we work to enrich teaching and learning of languages at SUNY. The SUNY Language PACT (Pipeline-Access-Culture-Technology) initiative seeks to address each of the four concepts. The workshop will provide an opportunity to continue our dialogue on fostering collaboration among and across language programs, increasing student access to language study, and making the most effective use of SUNY’s vast language offerings, faculty expertise, and technology to enhance opportunities for students. This workshop is open to all and will include presentations and facilitated discussions with expert practitioners from SUNY as well as from universities throughout the U.S. and beyond. 

To learn more or to register, visit the conference website. 

 

The event is free and open to the public and will feature a dozen or so top scholars from around the world convening to discuss key global trends in higher education that have been at the heart of the Center's work since its founding nearly 20 years ago. 

RSVP is required. For more information about this event, please see the event program or contact highered@bc.edu.

The aim of the conference is to broaden relations between foreign universities and universities of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and other CIS countries in different spheres to create long-term collaboration.

The conference will feature informative sessions, innovative discussions and a creative atmosphere to discuss higher education in Eastern European countries. 

Visit the Eastern European University Association website for more information. 

The Voices from Fragile States collaborative initiative led by the University of York in its 50th anniversary year, in partnership with Columbia University, will bring together representatives from selected fragile or conflict-affected countries with policy-makers, academics and donors with the aim of building local capacity in the education sector to help deliver peace and long-term development.

The conference aims to achieve the following:

• Enable best practices to be identified and shared to support future policy directions leading to increased local capacity.
• Highlight the importance of education as a peace-building tool to the international donor community.
• Provide a platform for country representatives to highlight issues to funders of education programs and promote stronger South-North and South-South dialogue.

IIE President Allan E. Goodman will be one of the conference speakers, and IIE Scholar Rescue Fund scholars will participate on some of the panels. 

To see a list of other participants, and to find more information and registration, visit the conference website. There is no registration fee, but you must RSVP if you wish to attend. To register directly, please follow this link.  

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is offering a short-term Democracy Fellowship under the Democracy Fellows and Grants Program (DFG), funded by USAID’s Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG Center) in the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA). The DFG program is managed by the Institute of International Education (IIE). The Democracy Fellow will be hired as a full-time, IIE consultant. 

The DRG Center is working with bureaus and offices across USAID to better integrate awareness of how USAID’s sector-based development efforts influence and can be designed to support democratic development, good governance, and rights-based practices.  The Fellow will develop a sector-level PEA tool that will enable USAID Missions to engage in systematic analysis of the political and economic interests, incentives, power dynamics, and processes that shape the governance, management, and operation of a given development sector, as a basis for integrated, cross-sectoral programming.

For more information about this position, visit the fellowship web page. 

The deadline to complete the U.S. Study Abroad survey for the upcoming Open Doors Report is Friday March 29, 2013. The U.S. Study Abroad Survey captures data on U.S. students traveling abroad for academic credit and is part of our annual Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange. The Open Doors Report, supported by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State, has long been regarded as the authoritative source for statistical data on international student flows to the U.S. IIE’s research team relies on the efforts of dedicated individuals from each U.S. institution to help keep these statistics as current and accurate as possible. 

If you have any questions about the survey, need to update your institution’s contact, or require an extension, please send an email to iieresearch@iie.org or call (212) 984-5554.

An article by Scholar Rescue Fund Executive Director Jim Miller for the American Academic Research Institute of Iraq (TAARII) newsletter explores the impact of the Fund’s Iraq Project, which was launched in 2007 with generous funding from both the private and public sectors. 

The Scholar Rescue Fund has since awarded fellowships to more than 265 Iraqi scholars, allowing them to resume their teaching and research in safety. While partnering universities, colleges, and other institutions of higher learning all over the world — including many of TAARII’s institutional members — have generously opened their institutions to Scholar Rescue Fund Iraqi scholars, there has been a particular focus on engaging partners in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region. Celeste Riendeau, Program Officer for the Iraq Scholar Rescue Project also contributed to the article. 

Click here to read the article.