Degree Name

MA in International Education

First Advisor

Adrian Sherman

Abstract

This International Education “Course Linked Capstone” creates an original program, with unique program facets and dynamic curriculum, unlike anything currently being practiced in the field. In this hypothetical program, called “The Bridge Across the Atlantic”, or BAA, two actual organizations, World Learning Visitor Exchange Programs, WLVEP, and Africa Consultants International, ACI, will join forces. In reality, WLVEP and ACI have never worked together and have never conducted two-way exchange programs. The author chose these two organizations because of strong personal and professional ties to both organizations and because he possesses solid working knowledge of their histories and missions. Portions of “The Bridge Across the Atlantic” program will look familiar to anyone acquainted with World Learning’s Youth Peacebuilding and Leadership Programs, YPLP, a division of WLVEP. During two summers of successful YPLP programs, including leading the YPLP Iraq 1 program in 2009, the author gained significant insight in what it takes to create transformative potential on youth programs. “The Bridge Across the Atlantic” program design takes the best of YPLP, drawing from strengths in already existing components, particularly ‘dialogue’ and ‘team-building’, and incorporates new design features. The program’s goals are to provide opportunities for Senegalese and U.S. American students to learn about each other and about themselves and to further develop leadership and inter-cultural skills.

This Course Linked Capstone reads as a description of a program that has already been designed, funded and approved. Readers will find that some of the statements made in this capstone are very politically charged, and too critical of the field of IE to ever be included in an actual program description.

Portions of this program design are written to maintain a political edge. Though this may seem unrealistic to readers, its purpose is to make this hypothetical program, in part, a statement about the current state of the field of IE. When sell-ability and marketability are taken out of the equation for program design, and professionals are free to look at programs purely for their educational value and transformative potential, what might that program entail? What might a program whose reciprocity was thought of in terms of equity of experience and equal access to knowledge for both countries involved, look like? This program is the author’s answer to these questions.

Disciplines

International and Comparative Education | Other Education

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