SPRING 2018
INDIA
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
PRACTICUM
AU P H I G H L I G H TS
1
SPRING 2018
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Kilian Ordelheide WRITER & COPY EDITOR Lucas Peters PROOFREADER Amanda Murphy CONTRIBUTORS Hannah Meltzer Kristina Keenan Amber Cooper IMAGERY Peregrine Olander Lia Kiladis DESIGN Leland Co.
Sam McKeown G’18 admiring the biodiversity of the mangrove forest during the Sustainable Development Practicum
PRESIDENT’S LETTER Dear AUP Worldwide Community,
three extraordinary women will receive honorary
AUP faculty members Michelle Kuo, Youna Kim
degrees from AUP: Kaija Saariaho, a Paris-based,
and Brian Schiff, as well as to tell you about the 10th
What a pleasure to be addressing you at the top
Finnish composer of opera; Claudia Rankine, the
anniversary of the Center for Writers & Translators
of our third edition of the new AUP Magazine.
prize-winning poet and playwright; and Rachael
and the 30th edition of the Cahiers Series both led
This year, alumni have played the largest role
Denhollander, the first woman to go public in the
by Distinguished Professor Daniel Gunn. You will
yet in the life of our University. Over 20,000
Larry Nassar sexual assault case.
also find here a profile of the AUP Democracy Lab, supported by The Center for Critical Democracy
strong around the globe, you have donated 1,000 hours of your time to mentor current students,
We have a lot to share in these pages. Student,
Studies. Our Quai d’Orsay campus is now in the
support our events worldwide, and participate in
alumni, and faculty profiles abound – notably
construction phase and there are beautiful visuals in
the President’s Alumni Advisory Council (PAAC).
that of Professor Emeritus Farhad Nomani and
this issue that illustrate what our new student learning
I genuinely feel that alumni have now encircled
his prolific return to research on labor economics.
center will look like when its doors open to students
AUP and supported its ascension. Thank you for
See how Karen Slosberg G ’13 and Sin-ming Shaw
in spring.
writing to us with internships and jobs, for giving
’65 are supporting future generations through
career advice to students, for providing us with
grants and awards. Follow students in Global
We invite you inside these pages to discover the
feedback as we design AUP’s future curriculum,
Communications on a trip to Auroville, India to learn
excellence, diversity, transformative experiences,
and for reaching deep into your pockets to give
about their work on the ground with local NGOs
and achievements of the students, faculty and
generously to our first capital campaign. Thank
during the tenth anniversary trip of this Sustainable
alumni of our University. In 56 years of bringing
you, as well, for making AUP’s global reach so
Development Practicum. Learn how keeping in touch
together students from a broad swath of nationalities
extensive and so reliable, so inclusive and warm.
or reconnecting with classmates, current students, or
speaking as many languages, AUP has been
faculty has never been easier with the launch of AUP
a learning laboratory on the farthest front of
Global, our new alumni portal.
global higher education. AUP Magazine is our
Commencement 2018 will be an exciting one as
annual testimony to the work taking place in our
we welcome back graduates of the ’90s for a special “un-reunion” that members of the classes
On campus, AUP faculty continue to raise the
classrooms and across the world in the communities
have designed, and celebrate the Global Nomads
University’s academic reputation and profile.
and countries where our global alumni live, work
Group, an NGO founded by four ’90s graduates,
Faculty published a record 19 books and more
and lead.
and Gisel Kordestani ’96, who will receive The AUP
than 150 articles in 2016, gave over 200 academic
Presidential Medal of Distinguished Achievement
presentations, and conducted 30 study trips all over
for her mobilization of technology in the service
the world serving half our student body. We are
of political responsibility. At Commencement,
proud in this issue to introduce you to new books by
Dr. Celeste Schenck, President
12
16 18 60 38
62
AUP HIGHLIGHTS 7 9 11 12
Professors in Print A Decade of Literary Innovation AUP’s Global Community Goes Online Distinguished Alumni Award: Global Nomads Group 14 Honorary Degree Recipients 2018 16 Presidential Medal of Distinguished Achievement
28
ON CAMPUS
30
FEATURE 30 The Quai d’Orsay, Building for the Future 38 A Decade of Success
ALUMNI CAREERS 54 “BJ” McDuffie: Being the Change 58 Writing at the Intersection: Politics, Art & Culture 60 A Novel Journey: A Word with Writer Caite Dolan-Leach
CLASS NOTES 62 We‘ll Always Have Paris: The Love Stories of AUP
GIVE & TAKE 70 Alumni Reward Student Excellence 74 AUP Ascending
CON T EN T S
18 Modeling Democracy in the Classroom 26 A Resounding Yes from an AUP Senior 28 The Consummate Economist
AUP
HIGHLIGHTS Discover thought-provoking work penned by our dedicated faculty, an alumni initiative that changes the world, and exceptional individuals who have impacted our global community and will be honored at this year’s Commencement.
6
AU P M AGAZ I N E
PROFESSORS IN PRINT As the record of AUP’s faculty’s productivity mounts, so does the University’s reputation for hosting international conferences, editing globally recognized publications, and producing highly regarded research across the entire spectrum of our curriculum. Raising AUP’s academic profile this past year are three new books written by Professors Michelle Kuo (History), Youna Kim (Global Communications) and Brian Schiff (Psychology), each of which mobilizes dialogue and exchange as a means of deepening forms of cross-cultural understanding in a way that our world appears to increasingly need. Kuo’s poignant memoir, Reading with Patrick, published by Random House, explores the power of literature to illuminate historical and ongoing issues of race and exclusion in America, if not the power to resolve or transcend them. Praised by the New York Times for its complex exploration of literacy, the book was also shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book
Prize for Social Justice. Kuo recounts in spare, elegant, often self-deprecating prose the personal story of her time with Patrick, a student she first taught during her tenure with Teach For America, and to whom she returned to read literature three years later during his incarceration. Kuo’s story unfolds against the rich historical portrait of one of the poorest (and still de facto segregated) places in the United States – Helena, Arkansas, the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement, buried in the Mississippi Delta. The experience of this teacher and student in a rural county jail has a powerful influence on their respective life journeys. As novelist Claire Messud says, Reading with Patrick is: “a defining story for our times, and, abidingly, a testament to the power of language and of books.” In Kim’s carefully researched Childcare Workers, Global Migration and Digital Media, published by Routledge, readers take an eye-opening trip around the world with some of the most depended on, though quickly forgotten, women in our
AU P H I G H L I G H TS
7
society: childcare workers. Kim’s investigation follows these global workers, nearly all women, illustrating how their employment often takes them from the comfort of their own home on vast transnational migrations, during which they join a mass of “global nannies” and are ultimately welcomed, not always warmly, into the homes of relative strangers. Along the way, these women find themselves both empowered by technology and, in some ways, beholden to it. While many of them are undocumented, with some seeing childcare work as a type of freedom, nearly all of them are digitally tethered to their home countries and families. Although their cellphones provide a type of social capital, often times the digital connections these devices enable impose yet another type of disempowerment and inequality; in turn, this continuing dependence leads to a mediated migration suffered by these unseen women. They are entrusted with the health and wellbeing of the next generation all the while they must endure the ongoing aggression of everyday racism.
Psychology, published by Oxford UP. Written for scholars of narrative psychology, Schiff’s work is also illuminating beyond its field, particularly for readers in other fields where narrative is a focus and interest of analysis or for the educated reader interested in the role that narrative plays in our lives. Schiff’s work is replete with rich, yet accessible illustrations, and begins with a consideration of the history of narrative psychology before expanding into a new theoretical understanding of storytelling as a way in which we interpret and make sense of the world around us. Schiff’s analysis illustrates why we must consider a person within multiple social contexts – such as their history, culture and social relations – before we can begin to have an understanding of that person. In its discussion of how human beings make meaning, the book argues for the importance of context, describes some of the applied uses of narrative psychology and raises ethical questions about its application, and offers a glimpse into the near-future of psychology.
Those looking to further understand the human psyche or to better comprehend how we are able to make meaning in complex cultural and social contexts may well find answers in Schiff’s A New Narrative for
Explore one of these volumes published by AUP faculty members and broaden your own scope of cultural awareness and understanding. Whether you seek a searing, deeply personal narrative that seeks to
8
AU P M AGAZ I N E
understand race relations by means of a shared experience of literature, a better understanding of the globally lived, yet culturally invisible journeys of childcare workers, or a deep exploration of the ways in which we understand our world and the people around us through psychological narratives, these works by AUP faculty will ensure that you continue your own lifelong learning beyond the classroom.
BRIAN SCHIFF
A NEW NARRATIVE
for
PSYCHOLOGY
EXPLORATIONS IN NARRATIVE PSYCHOLOGY
A DECADE OF LITERARY INNOVATION This year The Center for Writers & Translators (CWT) marked two exciting milestones. Not only did the Center celebrate its 10th anniversary, but it also ushered in the 30th edition of the landmark Cahiers Series with the publication of Sylvia Brownrigg’s Invisible Countries. Since its inception in 2008 the Center has been one of the jewels in AUP’s crown. Distinguished Professor Daniel Gunn is the catalyst behind much of what the Center has accomplished; in partnership with his colleague Professor Daniel Medin, he has given visibility and reach to AUP’s reputation as an international site of literary convocation, translation, edition and publication. The CWT began as the brainchild of Gunn, the Center’s director, who identified a very particular need at AUP. “I had noted over my years at AUP that many interesting, talented writers and academics came to AUP,” Gunn says. “They talked or read, but
no trace remained of their passage. I had the idea of starting a center that would make more of the visits of literary and academic dignitaries to the campus and commemorate their visits with an edition which became the Cahiers Series.” After the launch of the Cahiers Series, jointly published by the CWT and London-based Sylph Editions, the Center quickly flourished. It delivered on its mission to promote literary activity on campus across cultural borders and internationally – especially as such activity relates to the art of translation. In more concrete terms, the CWT sponsors readings of visiting writers and translators on campus, as well as debates and lectures, sometimes in conjunction with the famed Shakespeare & Company Bookstore located across the Seine
from Notre Dame, just down the quai from AUP. Many of the visiting literary dignitaries also teach a class in AUP’s Creative Writing or Comparative Literature programs while they are in Paris. In fact, through the efforts of the CWT, our campus has hosted not one, but two Nobel Prize winners: Gao Xingjian and J.M. Coetzee. The Center’s projects are numerous and of the highest quality. Beyond hosting the visits of renowned literary guests, the Center has also edited a series of notable publications, including the historic four-volume The Letters AU P H I G H L I G H TS
9
of Samuel Beckett that was completed under Gunn’s editorial stewardship and the auspices of the Center. In addition, the Cahiers Series continues to publish multiple editions every year. As part of this effort, Medin oversees the arts journal Music & Literature and the annual translation issue published by the White Review. Ambitious projects such as these would not be possible without a broad network of support. Luckily there has been no shortage of students and alumni to help in various capacities. In a typical semester, over a dozen students and alumni gain valuable experience for their work in the CWT. Every semester one chosen student gets to work hand in hand with Gunn on the Cahiers Series, honing his or her editorial skills; in the latest edition of Music & Literature, Medin was assisted by four AUP students and two alumni; indeed, more than sixty students worked with Gunn on his over two decade long multi-volume Beckett project. “They were all acknowledged by name in the volumes of the Letters themselves,” Gunn says. “That’s been very good for their CVs, especially if they were going on to graduate school.” One such intern, alumna Lilyana Yankova ’10 – today employed by AUP in
10
AU P M AGAZ I N E
the Office of Academic Affairs – was able to identify a textual reference that had long eluded the finest of Beckett scholars. One of the CWT’s most remarkable accomplishments is the impact it has had on the international literary community in just ten years. The previous editions of the flagship publication of the CWT, the Cahiers Series, have included original works by Lydia Davis, Gao Xingjian, Muriel Spark, László Krasznahorkai, Anne Carson, Georgi Gospodinov and Javier Marías. Each writer is paired with an outstanding artist, the result of which is a beautifully bound textual and visual work of art. In celebration of the 30th volume of the series, the CWT published Invisible Countries by Sylvia Brownrigg, an homage to Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Brownrigg’s cahier, which is a series of stories, each of which follows an unnamed woman as she travels to seven “invisible” countries, is at times poignant, at other times sinister and even melancholic. Within these stories, Brownrigg explores everything from touristic voyeurism to the general malaise
one often feels at being ushered through airport security. Each story features images by the outstanding British artist Tacita Dean. The accompanying images – painted on postcards and exquisitely rendered, often of surreal landscapes – combine with Brownrigg’s stories to create an uncanny and unusual textual journey for the reader. This combination of literature and art will be continued in upcoming volumes of the Cahiers Series, already in production, which include contributions by celebrated French writer Éric Chevillard and renowned Arabic translator James Montgomery. “It’d be fantastic if we could continue on the same path,” Gunn says, “especially as creative writing becomes ever more central to AUP.” With a decade of success like this already behind it, we can be sure that The Center for Writers and Translators will continue to have impact by bringing the creativity of writers and artists into our circle, pushing the boundaries of translation and the written word, all the while influencing literary communities both on our campus and abroad.
AUP’S GLOBAL COMMUNITY GOES ONLINE AUP’s 20,000 alumni live and work in 145 countries, pursuing successful careers that take them to every corner of the world. Our international community has always had a rich and distinct network of its own, despite distance and time, but it can still be difficult for us to stay in touch with old friends and fellow alumni, now far flung. At AUP, we recognized the need for an
integrated solution that allowed alumni to connect seamlessly via a common platform. Introducing AUP Global: an interactive website and mobile application that makes
expands, more features and exclusive it simple for you to connect personally and professionally, enabling you to maintain existing alumni connections and to forge new ones years after graduation. AUP Global is designed to meet the needs of alumni around the globe, allowing you to get back in touch with old friends and cherished classmates from your time at AUP. Working closely with a dedicated team of developers, we created an online space where you can post messages to the alumni community, share travel plans, find out about upcoming events, post and search career opportunities,
browse through old magazines or yearbooks and visualize the alumni community on an interactive world map. As AUP Global
content will be added to help you explore our community. AUP Global aims to make connecting and reconnecting easy for alumni, while achieving our top priority: remaining in touch with you as you travel the globe. The process is aided by a new feature, AUP Global’s automatic synchronization with your LinkedIn profile. If you authorize this feature, fellow alumni and the University will always have your latest address and email. Launched in November 2017, AUP Global is already connecting alumni worldwide. Max Nokhrin ’08, a product manager based in Toronto, says: “AUP Global is a great interface to reconnect with my former classmates and other AUP alumni across the globe. Given how often our community moves around the world, this tool is invaluable.” AUP Global is an exciting new way for you to engage online and take advantage of the many resources and opportunities that we provide for our alumni. Connect with AUP’s worldwide network at global.aup.edu
AU P H I G H L I G H TS
11
DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARD: GLOBAL NOMADS GROUP In 2003, against all odds, Global Nomads Group (GNG) sent a team to Iraq while the country was still ruled by Saddam Hussein. The goal of GNG, then as now, was to leverage technology to establish real-time dialogues between teens in the United States and Iraq. Although the team had been granted special permission to make this historical, cross-cultural connection, just two weeks later the two countries went to war, threating this historic initiative; despite the armed conflict, a dialogue was established between the youth of Iraq and the United States using new technologies. In their conversations, the Iraqi teens spoke freely about their lives and experiences during the
COMMENCEMENT CEREMONY
M AY 2 0 1 8 12
AU P M AGAZ I NE
war, while the young Americans shared their perspectives; both groups gained insight into the war from their peers’ point of view. Relationships transcending politics were built that withstood the test of time, continuing long after the fighting ended. Although new and rising technologies made it possible for these young people from Iraq to talk to their American counterparts and to create lasting relationships despite the war, this dialogue would not have happened if it were not for a few smart, caring individuals with forwardlooking ideas – the four founders of GNG, who mustered courage and a lot of rugged determination to bring Global Nomads Group to life. Global Nomads Group, which uses technology to facilitate communication amongst students worldwide, working through school curricula, began in 1998
as a result of the combined efforts of AUP alumni Jonathan Giesen ’95 and Mark von Sponeck ’96, with David Macquart ’99 and Christopher Plutte ’98 joining shortly thereafter. The four AUP alumni had very fluid roles in the early stages of GNG. “We all had to be generalists and learn a little of everything, so we could jump in and make things happen,” says Christopher Plutte. “That could be learning how to set up a satellite, writing a lesson plan, engaging with a Ministry of Education in a foreign country or a teacher in a rural community. That is really what GNG is about, and it’s a skill that we developed at AUP: being able to navigate diverse backgrounds and get things done.” Each year GNG has varied the regions in which the network operates as the founders have continued to seek out ways to expand their programs, reach a greater diversity of young people and provide opportunities to connect youth. By leveraging technology, storytelling and personal connection, GNG enables realtime conversations to take place between middle school and high school students. These
conversations promote empathy, awareness and agency, preparing young people to tackle some of the world’s most pressing issues, as they did during the war in Iraq. Since its founding, GNG has expanded well beyond their first dialogue established between youth in Iraq and the US. Today, they have reached approximately one million young men and women across all seven continents. “If we use technology and innovative pedagogy to connect and guide young people to engage in meaningful dialogue,” says Plutte, “they will make new discoveries, not only about each other, but also about themselves, their communities and their ability to take action on the issues – local, national and international – that affect their lives.”
teachers and parents. The long-time friends commemorated this monumental event and exchanged stories about the changes that had subsequently occurred in their lives in Iraq, in the United States and around the world. Connections that were first forged through technology and enabled by the courageous initiative of four AUP alumni, were allowed to flourish, face-to-face, and through their stories a deeper understanding of each other’s heritage and culture could take place. “Ultimately,” says Plutte, “these connections will result in a network of global citizens who have the skills and disposition to change the world for the better,” a value that, in Plutte’s view, unites GNG and AUP.
GNG co-founder David Macquart ’99
In March of 2013, a decade after they had met online as teens during the second Gulf War, the Iraqis and Americans met in person in New York City, this time as adults, with many now academics, doctors,
AU P H I G H L I G H TS
13
HONORARY DEGREE RECIPIENTS 2018 We are honored to recognize these three extraordinary women who embody the values of our University through their art and activism.
Claudia Rankine Recipient of a 2016 MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, Claudia Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry, including Citizen:
14
AU P M AGAZ I NE
An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, and the plays The White Card and Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx. Rankine is also editor of several anthologies, including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. Additionally, she co-produces a video series, The Situation, alongside John Lucas, and is the founder of the Open Letter Project: Race and the Creative Imagination. Among her numerous awards and honors, Rankine has received the Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts. Rankine’s bestselling book, Citizen: An American Lyric, uses poetry, essay, cultural criticism and visual images to explore what it means to be an American citizen in a “postracial” society. A defining text for our time, Citizen was the winner of the 2015 Forward Prize for Best Collection, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry (the first book in the award’s history to be nominated in two categories, poetry and criticism), the NAACP Image Award and the PEN Open Book Award. Citizen was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Award and was selected as an NPR Best Book of 2014. Citizen also
holds the distinction of being the only poetry collection to be a New York Times bestseller in the nonfiction category. Ms. Rankine, a graduate of Williams College, lives in New York City and is the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University.
Kaija Saariaho Kaija Saariaho is a distinguished Finnish composer and performer whose work challenges both the conventions of opera and the boundaries of genre. In 2016, the Metropolitan Opera mounted its first performance of her L’Amour de loin (2000), the first opera by a female composer to be staged by the company since 1903.
Saariaho studied composition in Helsinki, Fribourg and Paris, where she has lived since 1982. Her work at the Institute for Research and Coordination Acoustic/Music (IRCAM) was a breakthrough in her musical expression, as she discovered compositional techniques based on computer analysis of the sound spectrum. Her characteristically rich, polyphonic textures are often created by combining live music and electronics. Over the course of her career, Saariaho has received commissions from the Lincoln Center (for the Kronos Quartet), Opéra de Paris, the BBC, the New York Philharmonic, the Salzburg Music Festival, the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris and the Finnish National Opera, among many others. She has received major composing awards, including The Grawemeyer Award, The Wihuri Prize, The Nemmers Prize, The Sonning Prize, The Polar Music Prize, and most recently the prestigious BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award.
writer in public policy. A passionate educator, she has taught appellate advocacy and judicial philosophy, and continues to educate on issues of abuse and abuse prevention. She speaks frequently at universities and conferences in support of victims of sexual and domestic abuse. Since the Nassar case, Ms. Denhollander has been active in spearheading legislative reform at the state level and has testified before state judiciary committees.
Rachael Denhollander
She is a New York Times op-ed contributor and has appeared on CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC,
An advocate and educator, Rachael
FOX News, BBC, and NPR. In March 2018,
Denhollander became internationally known
she participated in the United Nations’ 62nd
as the first woman to file a police report
Commission on the Status of Women, as
and speak publicly against Larry Nassar,
a featured speaker on a panel organized
one of the most prolific sexual abusers in
by Pathways to Peace, an official Peace
recorded history. As a result of her brave
Messenger of the UN. She has been named
activism, over 250 women came forward as
one of TIME
survivors of Nassar’s abuse, leading to his life
Influential People.
Magazine’s
100 Most
imprisonment. Ms. Denhollander lives in Louisville, Kentucky,
COMMENCEMENT CEREMONY
M AY 2 0 1 8
Ms. Denhollander holds a degree of Juris
with her husband and three (soon-to-be four)
Doctor from Oak Brook College of Law
young children.
and is a member of the California Bar Association. She has worked for human rights organizations and also as a researcher and AU P H I G H L I G H TS
15
PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF DISTINGUISHED ACHIEVEMENT Gisel Kordestani ’96 Gisel Kordestani is a tech entrepreneur and thought leader who has worked in early-stage startups and management consulting and has spent over eight years at Google in senior global roles in finance and new business development. In 2013, she founded Crowdpac, a crowdfunding site for politics
COMMENCEMENT CEREMONY Gisel Kordestani ’96
M AY 2 0 1 8
that empowers small dollar donors and helps thousands of candidates run for office in the United States and United Kingdom. Gisel joined Google in 2003 and played an early role in developing the company’s global financial and commercial systems, as well as in leading new business development teams across Europe, Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East with a focus on new advertising, social and web platforms. Prior to Google, Gisel worked in business development for Sony Pictures and Brandfever.com, an e-commerce startup. She also spent several years as a management consultant with financial services clients across Latin America, the US and Europe. Gisel is a board member of Mercy Corps, a global humanitarian aid organization engaged in transitional environments that have experienced natural disaster, economic collapse, or conflict. She is a founding member of the Leadership Now Project, a nonpartisan membership organization of business professionals who are working to improve the future of democracy. Gisel is an advisory board member of
Gaza Sky Geeks, a tech accelerator and coding academy that she created while at Google. She is also a producer of the films Under Siege and The Idol, both about Gaza. Gisel holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in International Affairs from The American University of Paris. Â
Mercy Corps efforts across the globe
ON
CAMPU S 18 Modeling Democracy in the Classroom 26 A Resounding Yes from an AUP Senior 28 The Consummate Economist
18
AU P M AGAZ I NE
MODELING DEMOCRACY
IN THE CLASSROOM The Democracy Lab stimulates student engagement through contemporary political and social debates and new design-thinking pedagogies.
Despite the fact that 123 of the world’s 192 countries consider themselves to have democratic governments, democracy has never seemed quite so fragile. Today’s democracies are challenged by populist upsurges, the rule of oligarchies, widespread corruption and unprecedented inequality, to name but a few of the contemporary challenges to this form of government. As debate rises over what democracy meant historically and what it means today, we have arrived at a critical crossroads concerning the future of democracy and those democratic institutions we have so long taken for granted. Enter the AUP Democracy Lab. This experimental new course, co-taught by Professors Peter Hägel and Stephen Sawyer, Director of AUP’s Center for Critical Democracy Studies, Professors Peter Hägel and Stephen Sawyer ON C AM P U S
19
provides students with a hands-on approach to understanding democracy’s failures and repairing democratic institutions. The Democracy Lab grew out of Sawyer’s collaboration with other AUP faculty creating FirstBridge courses – interdisciplinary freshman year courses designed to provide two disciplinary perspectives on a contemporary problem, or what faculty call “disciplinebased interdisciplinarity.” As Sawyer puts
that democracy is always in some deep sense experimental.” The D-LAB builds on Sawyer’s work in the Center for Critical Democracy Studies, because by design the projects undertaken in the D-LAB are closely tied to those debated in the Center’s various forums. The Center regularly holds lectures and discussions, screens films, hosts international conferences, and edits the prestigious Tocqueville Review
Far from an absolute foundation, democracy is a profoundly unfinished and historical project. -Professor Stephen Sawyer it: “It was so stimulating to work with faculty members from so many different disciplines, to hear their perspectives on key democratic themes and to be able to introduce students to the necessarily interdisciplinary nature of the democratic. Democracy is far too important and foundational to be the specific domain of any one discipline.” In creating the Democracy Lab, Sawyer was particularly interested in trying to adapt new design-thinking pedagogies into
founded in the early ’70s and recently moved from Sciences Po to AUP. All of these activities adopt the interdisciplinary approach to critical democracy studies that the Center promotes. The D-LAB, in many ways, is a natural extension of the Center’s own mission, as well as, more broadly, that of AUP, taking, as it does, debates from the Center to the classroom.
a course on democracy. “We decided to call it a lab, or the D-LAB, because it is our conviction
Over the semester, students in the D-LAB are charged with finding a problem to research
20
AU P M AGAZ I N E
within the context of this experimental course. Accordingly, they study inequality, xenophobia, abstention, global citizenship, sustainability, climate change; the list of issues to analyze is inexhaustible. What really sets this course apart is how students must actively imagine “fixes” for the social, political and economic problems they have unearthed, finding dignified and empowering solutions to the problems of our time. “The idea of the D-LAB,” according to Sawyer, “is that students identify a key problem in our contemporary democracies that they would like to address. We ask them to work in groups to refine the problems until they are defined clearly enough that they could actually culminate in a solution within one semester.” In the first iteration of the course in spring 2017, one of the more interesting projects was accomplished by a group of three freshmen women who were interested in helping migrants arrested during their passage through France. In their research, these students discovered that there were many associations providing services to these migrants; however, there was no single website where migrants could find all the resources and services that were available to them. Before the semester came to an end, these three students had built a website that contained a variety of tools, links and
information accessible to migrants and anyone interested in aiding migrants in their search for legal, social and political aid. As this project exemplifies, the D-LAB provides a hands-on, design-thinking, experimental space where students are allowed the sort
by breaking it into specific problems that can be tackled by students over the course of one semester. In the first iteration, the course was framed by the theme of global citizenship, a concept at the heart of the AUP mission. The second iteration added a new element:
explains, “lateral learning amongst peers is as important as a more traditional ‘vertical’ model of pedagogy.” To accomplish this style of learning effectively, it is necessary to have peers who have already gone through a given experience and are continuing to
Professor Sawyer teaching students
of freedom necessary to devise potential solutions to the major challenges confronting our contemporary democracies.
graduates of the first D-LAB were asked to tutor students taking the course for the first time. The tutoring of their peers created a leadership opportunity for students exploring
work on a project. Within the space of just one year, from the first to the second D-LAB, Sawyer and his colleagues have created a kind of “generational” model of leadership
In essence, the D-LAB is able to address any major issue that arises in a democratic setting
the theme of engaged citizenship. “Within the experimental democratic classroom,” Sawyer
in addition to providing pedagogical opportunities for tutors mentoring their ON C AM P U S
21
peers. The continuity of the work year upon year is what makes it relevant and exciting to students as they engage in ongoing research, design thinking, problem solving and creation of real-world experiments. In the D-LAB, AUP students have an opportunity to engage in a wide variety of projects and initiatives that are almost entirely of their own imagining and design. In an experimental course like this, faculty act more as facilitators and mentors than as traditional teachers, helping to guide students on their journeys rather than lecturing. At the end of the course, having a tangible, workable solution for a real-world problem is transformative for the students who invent them. Says student Marly Phillips Nicol: “As an individual who has always had difficulty defining where home is and what role a national identity plays in one’s identity, I found the questions the D-LAB asked concerning citizenship to be foundational in my exploration of the different facets of identity that seem quintessential in defining us.” The outcomes of the course – in new skills gained, sense of personal agency and efficacy acquired, and broader understanding of the responsibilities of global citizenship integrated into a student’s character and ethos – are dramatic. As 22
AU P M AGAZ I NE
Sawyer says, the possibilities of the D-LAB are endless: “We have already created websites, apps designed to help people move beyond a tourist’s understanding of a given location, service portals to help people navigate the difficulties of dual citizenship, and associations and events designed to bring people together.” Because healthy democracies require citizen engagement and continual re-invention, the Lab has been created to stimulate multiple forms of student engagement with contemporary political and social debates. More than a buzz word, global citizenship at AUP is currently percolating in the D-LAB, inspiring students to participate in democratic processes with tangible results.
BACK TO SCHOOL D-LAB: GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP PO/HI3091C Spring 2018 Wednesday 15:20-18:15 Credits: 4 Period(s): 5-6 Profs Peter Hägel & Stephen Sawyer Prof. Hägel’s office: G-L17 Mon & Thu 15h-16h phaegel@aup.edu Prof. Sawyer office: PV 202 Thu 10h30-12h and by appointment ssawyer@aup.edu
INTRODUCTION In our age of globalization, citizenship is experiencing major transformations, in practice as in theory. Migrants destroying their passports, states offering citizenship for sale, an increasing number of people holding multiple passports – what do such realities entail? As global governance is gaining traction, citizenship, a concept that used to be conceived in national terms, is receiving a cosmopolitan imagination. But what could global citizenship consist of? Our Democracy Lab explores this question in very concrete terms. It provides a hands-on, design-thinking, experimental space where students elaborate a specific problem of global citizenship and devise a potential solution together. Following an introduction, the course is therefore divided into five sections: I. Asking a question II. Defining the Problem: How do we address these matters? III. Conflicts: Can everything be solved with an app? IV. Resources for implementation V. Crafting solutions
CLASS OUTLINE SECTION 1: ASKING A QUESTION These sessions are designed to familiarize students with some of the major issues in the construction of global citizenship. Students will attempt to identify specific problems within these larger global issues. Each class is divided into three parts: Part 1: class discussion on the issue; Part 2: professor-led discussion on how this issue is being treated by scholars and activists; Part 3: group brainstorming on how this problem might be addressed, with presentations back to class. Week I: What’s the Matter with Global Citizenship? Introduction Activity: Boat People? Video: Abrahamian, Atossa Araxia (2015). The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen. New York: Columbia Global Reports. Week II: Global Citizenship (cont.)– conceptual/analytical questions Readings: Martha Nussbaum, Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism (The Boston Review, 1994) Pallas, Christopher L. (2012).
Identity, Individualism, and Activism beyond the State: Examining the Impacts of Global Citizenship. Global Society 26/2: 169189. Shachar, Ayelet (2009). The Birthright Lottery. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1-18. (EBSCO ebook via AUP library) Calhoun, Craig J. (2002). The class consciousness of frequent travellers: Toward a critique of actually existing cosmopolitanism. The South Atlantic Quarterly 101/4: 869- 897.) SECTION 2: DEFINING THE PROBLEM: HOW DO WE ADDRESS THESE MATTERS? Week III: Global Circulation: Who is Circulating, How and Why? Choose your group: formulating the problem 1. Student-led group presentations on problems based on groups listed below (choose one, maybe two problems) 2. Potential solutions: Intellectual, Civil Society (Business, associations, etc.), Political/Institutional 3. Group feedback on tools that could be used to solve these problems
4. Professor led discussion of an issue/ problem/aspect of global citizenship Types of solutions: 1. Working with existing NGOs 2. Creating your own project 3. Policy 4. Research Week IV: Discussion of Global Cities in Transition The Politics and Society of Post- 1997 Hong Kong with Tze-ki Hon & Hok-yin Chan (City University of Hong Kong) 6pm, location TBA. (Attendance is mandatory) Week V: Mid-term Review Reviewing your group’s problem and designing YOUR global citizenship Midterm review Week VI: Mid-term Introduction to design thinking Working backwards lab: from solution to problem 1. Billionaireswatch.org 2. Moneythink 3. Tocqueville21 Discussion: 1. What problem are they trying to solve? 2. What are the resources available for
solving that problem? 3. Other ways of solving the same problem? Week VII: SPRING BREAK - no classes Week VIII: Which problem do YOU want to solve? Focusing YOUR problem/solution – group discussion/individual worksheet. Presentation: 5-10 minutes/20 minute discussion with class Week IX: Refugees in Paris: Crisis? 1. Visit La Chappelle (meet at...) 2. Class discussion a. What are the dimensions of the problem? b. What are the resources? c. What solution(s) have they come up with? SECTION 3: CONFLICTS: CAN EVERYTHING BE SOLVED WITH AN APP? Week X: Conflicts in Global Citizenship Class Discussion: Is there always an elegant solution to problems of global citizenship? Reading: Wright, Matthew, Richard
Johnston, Jack Citrin, and Stuart Soroka (2017). Multiculturalism and Muslim accommodation: Policy and predisposition across three political contexts. Comparative Political Studies 50/1: 102-132. Introduction to situating your project in its field of power/conflicts SECTION 4: RESOURCES FOR IMPLEMENTATION Week XI: Resources Reading: Ganz, Marshall (2005). Why David Sometimes Wins: Strategic Capacity in Social Movements. In: Messick, David M., and Roderick M. Kramer (eds). The Psychology of Leadership: New Perspectives and Research. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 209-240. a. Brainstorming b. Leadership, Organization, and Strategy Presentations on resources: Group work and presentations on 3 potential resources and how they could be accessed, mobilized, or harnessed. Week XII: Work Session Group meetings with student tutors Assignment: email before and after.
SECTION 5: CRAFTING SOLUTIONS Week XIII: Continuation of situating your project in its field of power/conflicts/ resources Group work on conflicts in their area (individual worksheet) Group activity: Debate (opposing stances) in front of the class Week XIV: Thinking towards a solution Group Assignment Due: Two examples of other organizations or individuals that are doing something comparable. First Session: Bring a well-designed solution and discuss trade-offs. Second Session: Transferring experience, applying to problems of citizenship. Week XV: Meetings Scheduled meetings with Professors to confirm implementation plan. Week XVII: Final exam period: 15h30-18h00 Group display or practicum of prepared projects.
D-LAB STUDENT GROUPS & READINGS Group 1: Citizenship for sale ◦Should Citizenship be for Sale? -A. Shachar and R. Bauböck (eds) ◦Selling Visas and Citizenship: Policy Questions from the Global Boom in Investor Immigration -M. Sumption and K. Hooper ◦Commercializing Citizenship in Crisis EU: The Case of Immigranat Investor Programmes. -O. Parker Group 2: Migration ◦Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders -J. Carens ◦Why Do States Extend Rights to Immigrants? -R. Koopmans and I. Michalowski Group 3: Citizens Across Borders ◦A Comparative Analysis of Diaspora Policies -F. Ragazzi
◦Migrant Political Participation -Migration Policy Group Group 4: Feeling Global? ◦The Rise of the Global Citizen? -Barclays ◦At Home in Two Countries: The Past and Future of Dual Citizenship -P. Spiro ◦The Particularism of Cosmopolitanism -C. Goetze Group 5: Taxation ◦Global Taxes and International Taxation: Mirage and Reality -R. Bird ◦An Economy for the 1%: How Privilege and Power in the Economy Drive Extreme Inequality and How This Can Be Stopped -OXFAM ◦Double Taxation, Multiple Citizenship, and Global Inequality -A. Tanasoca
ON C AM P U S
25
A RESOUNDING YES
FROM AN AUP SENIOR Senior Hannah Johnson is combining her love of research with her love of all things medieval to write a philological study.
Comparative Literature student Hannah Johnson reads Victor Hugo
Senior Hannah Johnson is combining her love of research with her love of all things medieval to write a philological study of Symphoniae by Hildegard von Bingen, an abbess who led a convent in the 11th century, and who was also one of the pope’s most trusted advisors, a musical and lyrical composer, a medical expert and a mystic. Indeed, it seems fitting that Johnson should be completing her degree at AUP with
& Translators (CWT), a Writing Bridge Teaching Assistant and even a research assistant for a Library of Congress project led by her mentor Professor Roy Rosenstein – each commitment contributing in a unique way to her growth as a student, scholar and global explorer.
a study of someone as diverse and multitalented as she. Johnson is a Comparative Literature major with a double minor in Latin and Medieval Studies, a Latin tutor, a writing tutor, an assistant for The Center for Writers
new explorations in writing, translation and the areas linking these two activities. “They involve me in the editing process. At first, I shadowed Dan. He was always asking me questions about the process, about what I
At the CWT, Johnson works closely with Distinguished Professor Daniel Gunn on the Cahiers Series, a series that makes available
understood and my opinions on why an editor or writer chose one form of expression or the other.” Because of the quality of Johnson’s work and the maximum effort she put in, she was able to understand rapidly the process of editing the Cahiers: subsequently, on the next volumes, Gunn delegated even more responsibility to her, letting her take on the first and second round of proofs. In addition to her editorial duties, Johnson is also responsible for managing the Center’s social media accounts and doing administrative work, all of which contribute to her understanding of how a piece of writing comes to be polished and ready for publication. Despite her time-intensive work for the CWT and her senior thesis, Johnson also tutors in the AUP Writing Lab, an experience that challenges her in a way she isn’t challenged in the class-room: “Being a tutor is difficult in a way that being a student isn’t. I am always trying to make someone else’s writing the best it can be.” Johnson sees how her experience as a tutor strengthens the editorial skills that she is honing in the CWT and welcomes this challenge in preparation for the very real possibility of being a graduate assistant or teaching students of her own after she finishes her undergraduate degree. One of the more surprising lessons from her
experiences as a tutor and editor has been the impact of both on her own writing. As she tutors others, she is also becoming more critical of her own writing and research, discovering ways to tighten her own writing and identifying places where there are gaps in her own research. The desire for self-improvement and upping her game lurks just beneath the surface in Johnson’s narrative of her own development. She is continually searching for ways to make herself a better writer, thinker, scholar and researcher. This is one of the primary reasons she learned German, an initiative she pursued outside the classroom on her time off. German is a language she is intensely curious about, in part because of her interest in medieval literature. Her new-found command of German was one of the reasons she was approached by Professor Roy Rosenstein to work as a research assistant for the Library of Congress Project sponsored by the Global Liberal Arts Alliance. Rosenstein needed a group of assistants capable in German to help him with his own research and Johnson was a perfect fit. For two weeks in July, she worked with Rosenstein’s small team, delving into the archives of the Library of Congress in Washington DC to learn about the de-Nazification of Heidelberg University after World War II.
While she is writing her senior thesis on Symphoniae by Hildegard von Bingen and using her German to pore over scholarly texts not yet translated into English, Johnson is also studying her options for graduate school. “I want to be a Medieval Latinist,” she says, suggesting that she might also add Anglo-Saxon or Old Norse to her existing linguistic repertoire of English, French, German, Spanish and Latin. As she considers graduate schools in Germany, Ireland and England, Johnson thinks a lot about her love for both teaching and researching and how much the hands-on experiences she has had at AUP have helped prepare her for that future. “Just say ‘yes’ to anything that sounds remotely interesting or catches your attention,” she says. “That’s how I got to do everything that I’m doing. It’s all because two years ago a professor asked me: ‘Do you want to do this one thing that might be cool?’ And I said: ‘Yes.’” Johnson smiles broadly when describing von Bingen and enumerating her subject’s diverse talents. Although she admires her wholeheartedly, she quips, unlike von Bingen she does not intend to take up the 10-string psaltery!
ON C AM P U S
27
THE CONSUMMATE
ECONOMIST One of AUP’s beloved professors reflects on his teaching influences and discusses his future scholarship.
Professor Emeritus Farhad Nomani is a dedicated scholar and teacher whose passion for his chosen subject, economics, is evident to all who are lucky enough to cross paths with him. Nomani is known by generations of former students for the humanity of his teaching, the care and the concern that has always characterized his support of students, and the political engagement that led him to focus on labor economics. Nomani is quick to deflect credit for his approach to several of his own mentors: he sees his growth as a student and subsequently as a scholar, and particularly his development as a teacher, as rooted in the labor economics he studies as modeled by the professors who taught it to him. 28
AU P M AGAZ I NE
While an undergraduate at the University of Tulsa, Nomani was drawn to emulate professors he admired for their “democratic, friendly relationships” with their students, such as Professor Phillip L. Howell, the economics teacher who first inspired Nomani to switch tracks from engineering to economics. His interest – not only in economics as a field of study, but his desire to teach – intensified over the course of his graduate work at the University of Illinois-Urbana. At Illinois, Nomani studied with the neo-Keynesian economist, Don Patinkin, as well as with the institutional political economist, Peter Schiller, both of whom had a profound impact on how he would conduct himself as a teacher. Alongside these two professors,
the scholars John Hicks (Nobel Laureate, Economics) and Maurice Dobb (Professor of Economics, Cambridge University) also proved pivotal in his growth. Nomani got to know Hicks and Dobb early in his career while he was in Tehran. “Their modesty, their ability to listen to a younger and less experienced colleague like me, and to engage in discussions with patience and interest were illuminating,” Nomani explains. In 1973, Nomani hosted Hicks while the latter was in Tehran. A year later, Nomani met Dobb and became a translator of his works into Persian. They talked for long hours in Dobb’s home in Cambridge. “His deep knowledge of political economy, his political engagement and his kind, humane personality fascinated me,” Nomani
says. His contact with these two “giants in economics” capped his transformative education. As formative as his professors and scholars in the field were to his teaching style, it was the global events and movements of the 1960s, which Nomani experienced alongside the economic writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Bernard Shaw, and Paul Sweezy, that would eventually dictate what kind of economist Nomani would become. The turbulence of the ’60s swept across the globe, including in Tehran where, over the next decade, it eventually contributed to the clash of forces that brought on the Islamist Cultural Revolution and had an impact on Nomani’s own choices. In 1979, after being forced out of Iran during the Revolution – essentially having escaped overland as a political refugee at a moment when all universities were shut down for two years and all progressive and nonreligious professors were banned from teaching – Nomani eventually arrived in Paris in 1983. The next year he joined AUP’s Economics Department where he has taught continuously for thirty years, a beloved member of the faculty, until his recent retirement.
has the added benefit of being in a city that attracts professors and researchers from a variety of diverse fields and countries. This element gives rise to a more demanding academic environment that benefits not only the faculty, but also students in general, particularly highly motivated students holding a vast number of nationalities. “These aspects,” Nomani reflects, “enticed me to reflect on not only the art and style of teaching in different, complex situations, but also to dedicate more time to democratic faculty governance, research, publication and improving my own teaching ability.” His insistence on the importance of values in academic study is something readily apparent when reviewing Nomani’s lengthy career. For example, in his first year of full-time teaching at AUP, the Economics Department was tasked with becoming a larger entity with more diversified courses and a more focused sense of the kind of teaching it wanted to promote. The transformation of the department attracted many students at AUP to major or minor in economics. “We have always hoped for and tried to implement a teaching philosophy that would best introduce all our economic students to both the field of economics and the ethical imperatives of living in an unjust and complex world.”
Nomani describes teaching as one of the least alienating of professions. This phenomenon, Nomani explains, is particularly pertinent in a small liberal arts institution such as AUP, which
This last point remains Nomani’s primary concern as both a teacher and a social scientist: in what ways can the subject of economics serve as a window on the world? How can we use it
to better understand our fellow human beings, while also becoming more nuanced thinkers? These questions have compelled his growth as a scholar, and are evident in his published research, which includes: The Secular Miracle: Religion, Politics and Economic Policy in Iran and Islamic Economic Systems (both co-authored with AUP professor and longtime colleague Ali Rahnema), as well as Islam and the Everyday World: Public Policy Dilemmas and Class and Labor in Iran: Did the Revolution Matter? (both co-authored with Professor Sohrab Behdad, Denison University). Even in retirement, Nomani still feels galvanized by these questions. As he finds himself with more time to read, he is returning to Marx’s methodology, to world mythology, and steeping himself in the politics of current events and engaged music and literature. “In a way, my implicit – and sometimes explicit – objective in the area of research and reflection has always been the study of the underlying reasons of economic inequality in human history, focusing primarily on Iranian society. However, since my departure from Iran and because of the unfulfilled ideals of the Iranian Revolution, my concern has shifted to the study of how to maintain a stable and sustainable democratic society.” Nomani remains committed to the hope that interdisciplinary scholarly exchange and engaged teaching will catalyze concrete social change – a mission to which AUP has subscribed since its founding. ON C AM P U S
29
FE ATU RE 30 The Quai d’Orsay, Building for the Future 38 A Decade of Success
30
AU P M AGAZ I NE
THE QUAI d’ORSAY
BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE
A stunning glass-roofed atrium will connect the Quai d’Orsay and Combes buildings
It is the start of spring semester, January 2019. Imagine you are walking through the Combes Student Life Center. You pass the bustle in the Amex and walk through a colorful new art installation in the Fine Arts Gallery, arriving at the new campus “living room.” Above you, a glass ceiling frames a lush hanging garden, while around you are cozy chairs and plush couches, long tables and counters where you can plug in your computer. A group of students sits around a table, notebooks out; at another table, several students are reviewing a video stream of a lecture on their phones. A professor walks past, giving you a smiling nod. A bookshelf packed with a carefully curated poetry collection catches your eye.
You spot a volume you want to read by your favorite poet, just as a staff member takes out a laptop to help your friend find a resource for a political science paper he’s working on. Looking around the space, you realize this is the perfect spot to chat with friends, exchange ideas with faculty, cram for your midterm, get help on a term paper, polish your CV or even read a poem or two. You have arrived at the atrium connecting Combes to the Quai d’Orsay Student Learning Center, the new heart of AUP’s consolidated campus. Under this beautiful glass-roofed atrium, part of the new physical and intellectual bridge connecting Combes to the Quai d’Orsay Student Learning Center, you have stepped aboard the future of AUP. F E ATU R E
31
OMID & GISEL KORDESTANI CONFERENCE CENTER
32
AU P M AGAZ I NE
At the heart of the Quai d’Orsay Student
to collaboratively design the Quai Learning
students and the services they need, but we
Learning Center is the learning commons – an information hub that has driven much US campus development over the past thirty years. First introduced in the 1990s, a learning commons is a physical space where different services, such as the library and information technology, are located alongside academic advising, career counseling and other services. The co-location of these services creates an overarching resource center for students and faculty. Leaders in the field – acting as anthropologists studying student habits and ways of using academic buildings, always adapting to new advances in technology – have learned which services work well together to enhance student learning and faculty teaching. Adapting these ideas to our own international context, AUP faculty, staff, students, administrators and architects have worked together to chart news ways of supporting student development – both academic and personal – at AUP’s new Quai Learning Commons, which hosts services spreading from the atrium reading room down to the basement and throughout the first four floors of the Quai d’Orsay Student Learning Center.
Commons. Kreuzman came to AUP with direct experience in this area, having led a similar project called APEX at The College of Wooster in Ohio. He arrived soon after AUP’s purchase of the Quai building and immediately went to work with the architects, project planners and the campus community. From the start, the goal was to create an inviting space to house all of AUP’s learning support services in new ways that would push AUP to the forefront of inquiry-based learning. Kreuzman explains: “The idea was a co-location of services so that students could have easier access to all the services they need in one place, which is a very laudable goal. But
are thinking of students holistically from the moment they transition into the University to the beginning of their careers.”
we went beyond that. We began to find interesting ways in which offices would not just be co-located, but could also integrate
AUP took the first steps toward this holistic vision of supporting students in their pursuit of academic, personal and professional
Interim Provost Hank Kreuzman has guided a team of AUP students, staff and faculty
their work. This is a transformational shift in that now we are not just thinking about
growth in the construction of the Combes building, where, alongside the Amex, the
Fully involved in this monumental process of service integration, AUP staff are rethinking the very way in which complementary services can be offered to students to support their development in the best way possible. David Horn, who is coordinating the renovation process, expresses it this way: “Our idea of a learning commons is broader than what you see at other institutions. We had a dream to create a site where we would have student services, life services and learning support all in the same place.”
This is a transformational shift in that now we are not just thinking about students and the services they need, but we are thinking of students holistically from the moment they transition into the University to the beginning of their careers.
F E ATU R E
33
Combes Student Life Center hosts numerous student services, clubs, government and the graduate student lounge. With the Quai Learning Commons soon directly connected to the Student Life Center, AUP will have, in Horn’s words, “a full suite of learning support services,” creating the ideal space for student life and learning at AUP. AUP staff have embraced this holistic vision of student services. Linda Martz, Foundation Program Director and Director of the Advising Center, says: “The reason that we will be melded together in the same center is that it is all about the same process. We want students from the moment they hit the ground to start constructing a narrative that will eventually lead them on to the rest of their lives, through and beyond AUP. If you don’t know where you are going, you don’t know what you can add.” Martz has worked closely with Horn and others to ensure that the transition to the new home in the Quai Learning Commons is smooth and will immediately provide students with the ability to append whatever tools and resources are necessary for their individual growth.
Replacing the old-style library on Montessuy, the new AUP information resources center will spread throughout the basement and first four floors of the Quai d’Orsay Student Learning Center as an integral part of the Quai Learning Commons. Librarians and library resources will be found throughout the Commons, fully accessible to students and faculty to help them navigate the book collection of upwards of 40,000 volumes spread throughout the Commons and the more than 545,000 digital volumes available online. “We have a mission to assist the user with evaluation of information,” says Jorge Sosa, Library Director, “especially in this era of misinformation and information overload – helping him or her to differentiate between the accurate and the fake, and fostering both critical thinking and ethical and civic groundedness.” To better aid in this effort, advancements to the library’s IT system, including a more robust search engine and a cloud-based library management system, have also been implemented in preparation for the library’s vital integration into the Commons. As Sosa says, “the Library has transformed itself to better serve the learning needs of future AUP students.”
One of the primary resources available in the Quai Learning Commons is the digital library designed for the 21st century. 34
AU P M AGAZ I NE
Learning Commons will also allow students and faculty to consult with specialists in the Academic Resource Center (ARC), the Advising, Internships and Careers Center (AIC), and the Teaching and Learning Center (TLC). At the ARC, students can hone their writing, take a training module to learn more about a software program, or discover iSpace, an interactive teaching and tutoring space, as well as four peer-tutoring programs that offer tutoring across nearly all disciplines. In the AIC, students can speak with academic advisors, explore future career paths, take leadership seminars, liaise with staff to find internships that match their profiles, uncover career opportunities, and network with employment prospects; while in the TLC, helmed by Professor Rebekah Rast, faculty meet to discuss and implement pedagogical experiments, creating together a more student-centered learning experience that moves beyond the classroom. Regular visitors to the TLC include faculty conducting workshops and seminars, expert consultants, and events involving international experts. These three centers round out the suite of services easily accessible to our students on the floors that comprise the Quai Learning Commons. Still other forms of learning will take place
Besides bringing together all of the resources accessible in the old AUP Library, the Quai
in the new building. Located above the AIC and the TLC, a mix of smart classrooms,
a media lab, two research centers and a rooftop conference center will extend student learning beyond the Quai Learning Commons. On these floors, students and faculty will interact, collaborate and create digital materials together in the Civic Media Lab, co-located with AUP Student Media (ASM) to form a multimedia space for the entire community; they will also find The George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention – which offers full access to the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive. These spaces will all work to deepen the AUP learning experience, providing purpose-built spaces to enhance the hybrid curriculum—both liberal arts in reach and hands-on in method—that is AUP’s educational signature. Perched atop the Quai d’Orsay Student Learning Center, the Omid and Gisel Kordestani Conference Center will be a space open to all. It will host public lectures and events, house board meetings, and supply additional space for student clubs and rehearsals. During the day, when the space is not reserved, faculty, staff and students will be able to come up for a breath of fresh air and take in the view of the bateaux mouches gliding over the Seine, the
READING ROOM
F E ATU R E
35
golden statues adorning Pont Alexandre III, the glass rooftop of the Grand Palais and the soaring majesty of the Eiffel Tower. In this newly consolidated campus – where a myriad of services is gathered under one roof– AUP will guide its global explorers from the moment they walk through the doors of the University, throughout their journey on campus and beyond, as they launch careers in over 145 countries worldwide. AUP’s architect – Lia Kiladis, an American in Paris who holds degrees in architecture from Yale and MIT – has devised a design program for the Quai building that issues from its Modernist lines and its location by the Seine. Drawing together a 1930s paquebot theme and an array of colors – teal, goldenrod, persimmon and taupe, taken from the palette of Modern artist Sonia Delauney – Kiladis sees the Quai d’Orsay Student Learning Center as the place where an AUP explorer prepares for a lifelong voyage. Anchored to the Combes building by a green hanging garden, this “ship” will be decorated with both navigational signs and compasses leading students on their unique journeys of personal development and intellectual discovery. Looking toward the future of the Quai Learning Commons, Kreuzman sees new combinations and possibilities for 36
AU P M AGAZ I NE
learning in this vessel, beginning in the new glass-covered atrium, where students will discover personal, professional and academic opportunities as yet unknown to campus planners. “Even as intentional and forward-looking as we are, I still expect we’ll have a whole lot of surprises and discover exciting opportunities as students, staff and faculty interact in this new space.” Follow David Horn’s Quai d’Orsay blog with the latest news, developments and photos of our progress, and fresh stories about our community’s embrace of the Quai building’s potential.
www.aup.edu/quai-blog
The views from the rooftop of the Quai d’Orsay
F E ATU R E
37
38
AU P M AGAZ I NE
A DECADE
OF SUCCESS The Sustainable Development Practicum in Auroville, India celebrates its 10th anniversary.
The fundamental thing about an AUP education is breaking out of your own cocoon of satisfaction, of knowledge of the world, and becoming aware there are other ways of understanding the world and being non-judgmental about them. -Professor Waddick Doyle Every winter for the last decade, students in MAGC, AUP’s Master’s in Global Communications, along with students from other programs and a select few undergraduates, have travelled to Auroville, India to get hands-on real-world work experience at local non-profit and grassroots agencies. The Practicum journey follows fall course work in which students study contemporary theory and start projects that extend beyond their mid-December departure date. The moment they board
the plane bound for Pondicherry, the closest airport to Auroville, they are taking their first step toward a world-shifting experience. Over the course of the next four weeks, students, with faculty as their guides, will engage with local communities and work with non-profit organizations, while living in a township defined by multicultural pluralities and economic and ecological sustainability. In Auroville and its environs, students will be tested as they have seldom been tested, forced to overcome seemingly F E ATU R E
39
insurmountable obstacles as they transform and apply the knowledge gained from their studies beyond the walls of the classroom and out into the real world, an unforgettable challenge that will have a lasting impact on their lives. WELCOME TO THE CITY OF DAWN Arrival in India usually occurs just before nightfall. Students and faculty take a bus for the long drive from the Pondicherry Airport to Auroville, where paved roads give way to packed dirt and gravel. Along the way, they stop at a roadside diner and sit down for their first thali plate – a large round plate jammed with different dishes and sauces, savory and sweet all mixed together. After sharing this first meal, they’re excited to see Auroville for the first time and to get to know the NGOs with which they will be working. “We begin that transition where we’re actually realizing so much of what we’ve studied and what we’ve read,” says Professor Charles Talcott, the group’s faculty leader and Chair of the Global Communications Department. Though it might be dark outside, students all sense the shift in energy as they make their way through noisy, often chaotic, Pondicherry to the relative calm of Auroville. 40
AU P M AGAZ I NE
Over the last fifty years, Auroville, “the City of Dawn,” has grown from a small commune to a community of over 2,000 people working to realize the goal of its founder, Mirra Alfassa, and to live the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. In its founder’s words: “Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realize human unity.” Auroville is very much an experimental township that straddles the areas of Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry in South India. Since its inception over 50 years ago, Auroville has maintained a long and mutually supportive relationship with UNESCO. In fact, 124 member countries deposited soil from their home nations in a foundation urn that symbolizes the mingling of all the nations of the world in this special place. While in Auroville, students and faculty live in modestly equipped cabins. They rise early, often taking advantage of the cool mornings to stretch and do a little yoga or take a walk in the newly planted forest. “In fact, one of the most extraordinary things about Auroville is that it was once an entirely barren land,” says Talcott, leader of seven of the ten Practicums. “It wasn’t supporting
ALUMNI STORIES
CRISTINA CASTELLO Graduate Student ’17 The Sustainable Development Practicum in India is actually what stood out to me about AUP when I was first browsing the internet for Master’s programs in Europe that combined communications and international development. This program was unique to find in the heart of Europe. I made my decision to apply to and attend AUP because of its unique program and the unique opportunities it offered to travel and be engaged in practicums and cultural program study trips.
much vegetation, but it has been worked by all these people to make the land productive and sustain life. Our students get to see firsthand how this labor has made it a sustainable environment.” In Auroville, students experience what a living breathing model of sustainability can be, surrounded by this new-growth forest, confronting and exploring the daily challenges and successes of this model. A SUSTAINABLE EXPERIENCE Sustainability is the guiding star of the entire Sustainable Development Practicum. AUP is committed to the social partners it has collaborated with for ten consecutive years. Over the last decade, AUP has become copartners in development in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry and continued to champion causes that are meaningful to villagers and to AUP global citizens alike. As Laurent Sauerwein ‘62, an early alumnus of AUP and one of the founders of the Practicum, puts it: “The Practicum was conceived from the start as an intense, sometimes trying, always fruitful experience. Today, it is still changing the lives of a few young people’s outlook on the world and, above all, brings help and some form of support to those in need. It 42
AU P M AGAZ I NE
is a wonderful privilege to be able to give something as you learn.” The Sustainable Development Practicum is as much about the ideas of sustainable economics, consumption, meaningful livelihoods and sustaining social relations, as it is about cultural preservation, traditions, heritage and longstanding lifestyle practices that bring a community together. When Sauerwein first pieced together the Practicum, it was these ideals he had in mind. These foundational concepts have remained in place throughout the Practicum as it has continued under the stewardship of Professors Tanya Elder, Charles Talcott and other AUP faculty who have taken it forward.
NGOs we work with and the government of India.” Four weeks a year for the last decade, this relationship has been sustained, nourishing our students in ways that reflect the new growth forest around them. In Auroville, they are rooted in an environment that encourages them to flourish, though they face both exacting intellectual challenges and more mundane everyday obstacles that shape them, making them re-think the world as they know it. THE THEORY BEHIND THE PRACTICE
Every day as they participate in the Practicum, AUP students are confronted with the central question of sustainability: how do we choose to impact our world and our environment? They examine things like their waste production and carbon footprint, but they also discover the positive impact that sustainability can have on an environment, as in the case of the newgrowth forest surrounding them. As Talcott puts it: “This has been a value statement for
The arc of the Practicum is designed so that students begin with traditional academic methods. They attend classes on campus, are assigned readings, produce research papers and consult documentary films. At the beginning of this arc, either faculty or readings provide the information students need to develop their knowledge and begin forming their own ideas. Before the Practicum, students take courses in anthropology and development communications, as well as seminars to learn software programs such as InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator, all tools that are deemed necessary for their
us, part of our ethical charter. We sustain the relationships we have with Auroville, the
upcoming field work in Auroville. “We are using digital instruments and training people
ALUMNI STORIES Students learn about local crafts at an NGO partner
LAMIS ALJASEM Graduate Student ’16 There was a group of people waiting for us with jasmine necklaces when we landed in Chennai. I can still smell the flowers today. It was such a long bus ride to Auroville, but I was excited. We drove through a series of busy villages with these overflowing markets. The first thing I wrote on Facebook was that India reminded me of a market back home in Syria, but ten times bigger. It was clear from the start that the Practicum was something more than just tourism and that it would be a lifechanging experience for me.
in digital production. We’re also giving them experiences they can’t have even through virtual reality,” Professor Waddick Doyle says. Our students “receive this extraordinary experience of taste and knowledge, which they somehow integrate into their being. A knowledge of culture which is born out of experience.” Though rooted in academics, the Sustainable Development Practicum is very much an experiential education. “Our students feel empowered to become leaders of change and feel that they have some sense of agency,” Elder says, “because what they are leading can contribute to social change.” As many liberal arts educators have noted, while we continue to digitize, we must also provide more experiential learning. “We must move towards what people can’t do digitally,” says Doyle. “We must produce experiences, memories, tastes and structures.” Tying together the experiential and the academic allows students to have a deeper, richer understanding of what they are reading on their iPads and watching on YouTube. Their understanding of realworld problems becomes thereby increasingly acute. “For example,” Doyle says, “we have students who have worked in leper colonies, or with orphaned children and psychologically
meet people who have had these profound experiences and develop a consciousness they would never have otherwise. And this allows us to really think about what produces a sustainable world or a sustainable society – psychologically, physically and perhaps even spiritually sustainable.” The arc of the Practicum takes students from engaged, active learning in the classroom, to immersed participatory learning that is bedrock to global awareness and social change. Students come into the field with the competence and skills acquired through their coursework at AUP and some skills they may have gained through their extracurricular activities. Once in the field, they can apply them to realworld cases and observe the immediate impact they have. Talcott sums it up: “You can see that you need the complement of the bookish, the theoretical, the academic, the scholarly, because that kind of intensity allows extraordinary cognitive development, but you also need the handwork.” The Practicum enables these students to be active agents of change. They shift from being consumers of knowledge at the beginning of the arc to producers of knowledge as they proceed through successive challenges to apply what they have learned. Giving back is the last step
disturbed people, and still others have worked on sustainable water recycling. They
in the process and perhaps the ultimate most transformative outcome of all education.
44
AU P M AGAZ I NE
ALUMNI STORIES MIA MARZOTTO Undergraduate Student ’14 Along the road from the airport to Auroville, I remember seeing so many different landscapes, different means of transportation and so much energy – everyone was moving, with a purpose and a smile. Entering Auroville was like piercing into a bubble of quietness, tranquillity and a different sort of
Student Marly Phillips Nichol with children from the local school in Tamil Nadu
energy. The diversity in Auroville was evidenced by the people there. They came from all walks of life, all corners of the world and all cultural backgrounds to live in this one place. Of course, the one sight I will never forget is the Matrimandir, the soul of Auroville.
There’s nothing like spending two or three hours digging in the dirt with a shovel, working with community, laughing together as we’re planting these extraordinary drumstick trees and contributing to this amazing project. That kind of counterpart to academic classroom-based learning has been a life-changing moment for me and for my commitment to teaching and professorship.” – Professor Charles Talcott
The class plants trees to offset their carbon footprint
Lecture and visit to a local recycling facility with the NGO Wasteless
F E ATU R E
47
INTO THE FIELD WITH THE NGOS AND GSOS During their first few days in Auroville, students engage with the different NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and GSOs (grassroots organizations) in and around the community. Professors plan with the NGOs and GSOs prior to embarking on the Practicum to assess the needs these organizations have. The organizations are prepared for the students’ arrival and, after ten years, fully know what they can expect from them and the kinds of expertise AUP students bring with them to the field. Sunaina Mandeen, a co-founder of the Pondy Citizen’s Actions Network (PondyCAN), appreciates what AUP students are able to accomplish over the course of the Practicum. “It’s been wonderful to have help and collaboration from AUP. What is really amazing is the amount of work the students manage to get done in the short time they are here.” In order to begin assessing what they can offer NGOs and GSOs, students attend presentations by PondyCAN and 25 other organizations. Students talk with the heads of these organizations to learn about the 48
AU P M AGAZ I N E
challenges they face and what kinds of support they are looking for. Students spend their first few days visiting the NGO and GSO sites throughout Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, the areas surrounding Auroville. They encounter a range of issues throughout this process – social inequality, lack of educational opportunities, livelihood creation challenges, the near-absence of vocational training, issues of basic sanitation, water conservation and other environmental issues. Using what they have learned about the organizations and what sort of projects they are most interested in pursuing, students then select an organization to work with for the remainder of the Practicum. The idea is to match need with the interest, motivations and skills of the students. The impact of the more than 100 students who have participated in the Practicum is palpable. It has been felt in the communications projects they have completed and the new awareness and funding they have brought to the many NGOs and GSOs operating in and around Auroville. As just one example, Lamis Aljasem G ’16 decided to work with an NGO that nobody had worked with before and where she thought her work could have the biggest impact – Sristi
Village, a foundation that creates a space for those with intellectual difficulties and others who have been marginalized in their communities. “They didn’t have anyone from the organization that could really produce something for their donors and their external audiences,” Aljasem said. “This is what I knew I could provide.” For the duration of the Practicum, Aljasem worked in Sristi Village to create a communication plan with the head of the NGO. She then storyboarded, scripted, prepped, shot and produced an information video that Sristi Village could use to tell external audiences about the sort of work they were accomplishing. “The Foundation is still using the video to communicate with current donors, potential donors and even volunteers who are joining them in Sristi to help,” Aljasem says. “We produced this video four years ago and it is still having an impact today.” The impact of the students isn’t only felt in the work they have accomplished with AUP’s NGO and GSO partners, it is also seen in the trees they plant upon arrival. To offset their carbon footprint, at the outset of the Practicum, each student is tasked with planting 120 small moringa trees, fast-growing drought-resistant trees also known as “drumstick” trees. This simple gesture contributes to the continuing
“When we developed the Practicum, we were also thinking about students and their ongoing growth as thinkers, scholars and globally conscientious citizens. In Auroville, the students see that they are part and parcel of a living element in a community. They’re part of a global world that is struggling to advance itself, to preserve what is good and what is true and what is real in the world.“ – Professor Charles Talcott A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE “It’s been five years since I attended the India Practicum,” says Kathleen Buchholz G ’13. “The Practicum not only reinforced my decision to work in international development, but it also contributed to my graduate thesis on energy poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.” Buchholz currently works in Liberia as the Deputy Director of Research and Monitoring for Last Mile Health. She is one of the many graduates of the Practicum who has found the work she accomplished in India
to be powerfully linked with her career. Mia Marzotto ’14, one of the few undergraduates who got to attend the Practicum, also found a future in development after AUP, working to promote human rights as Advocacy Officer for Oxfam. Marzotto says: “The Practicum was a very important stepping stone along my path towards a career in the human rights field and helped me to crystallize my approach: communicating with and listening to the people one aims to help is the essential first step in doing good.” Other students, such as Sam Baird G ’17, haven’t found a direct career link, but have found the Practicum influential in a different way. “It definitely made me a more compassionate and culturally educated person,” Baird says. “That in turn has fueled my desire to continue that education for the rest of my life.” In the year of the tenth anniversary of AUP’s Sustainability Development Practicum in India, the faculty members who lead it are deeply gratified to witness the impact participation has had on their students’ lives. “To see the impact on our graduates’ career choices really is the fulfillment of the commitment to teaching, to development and to the concept of sustainability,” says Talcott. “We have a common dedication
ALUMNI STORIES
growth of the surrounding forest and adds to the year-round quality of life for the people living in the region.
LARA HESKESTAD Graduate Student ’15 The Practicum is a full sensory experience. In the mornings we practiced yoga on the roof of our complex as the sun rose behind the lush trees. The sound of the birds, the smell of the rich red soil and the refreshing sips of a mango lassi to escape the afternoon heat. These are all moments etched in my memory. And then you take this experience and all the lessons learned into a classroom setting and apply them in real practical settings. That is what I loved about the India Practicum. It gave me the opportunity to apply what I learned during the fall semester to important fieldwork happening in Tamil Nadu. I worked with the Life Education Center (LEC), a local organization supporting access to education and vocational skill training for women in rural areas. Beyond an educational center, the LEC was created as a safe space for women to gather, support each other, and sustain a strong sense of community.
to the very idea of human development and of becoming human that is rare and extraordinary.” A common sense of goodwill has remained with the graduates long after their participation in the Practicum, tangled in the roots of the trees they have planted in Auroville, and in the lives they have touched through their work with the numerous nonprofits they have aided. These graduates have dispersed around the world, each of them a lifelong learner in possession of a hands-on, practical sense of applied theoretical knowledge that was hard-won in the field – a pith that nourishes them as they continue to grow. SUPPORTING THEIR PEERS, PAYING IT FORWARD For many students, the India Practicum wouldn’t be possible without financial aid. The Coup de Pouce fund and the Slosberg Travel Grant for graduate students, an annual gift from AUP graduate alumna Karen Slosberg G ’13, have made the India Practicum possible for dozens of students, not to mention all the other Cultural Program study trips that these important sources of funding cover. Christina Castello G ’17 was lucky enough to receive funding to help cover the costs of the Practicum. “The Coup de 50
AU P M AGAZ I N E
Pouce certainly helped, as I knew this was a must-do course for me. It was communicated well to students when submissions would open and awards would be offered. As part of the application process, I submitted my motivation letter for the Practicum, including my career aspirations and passion points, and I was lucky enough to receive funding to use toward the costs of the Practicum.” For the tenth anniversary of the India Practicum, AUP alumnus Michel Simiaut ‘85, General Manager France and Europe South at Jet Airways, offered reduced tickets for the students’ flights to India. This kind gesture was just one more way in which the AUP community is helping our students to explore the world and find ways to give back. “The principal thing the world needs,” reminds Waddick Doyle, “is for us to produce students who can go beyond the limits of their own culture, their own region, and build cooperation and value, producing the new type of value that this world needs – sustainable value.”
ALUMNI STORIES ANNA WIERSMA Graduate Student ’15
Visit to NGO Mohanam Bio-Region Culture and Heritage Centre in Auroville
I worked with the People’s Social Development Foundation (PSDF), a small locally-run NGO that provides microfinance services to local women. I helped them update their website and created a training guide for their staff so that they could maintain the site in the future. I went on to write my Master’s thesis about a rights-based approach to microfinance and undertook fieldwork on the topic with PSDF and another NGO with Auroville ties – Auroville Village Action Group (AVAG). This fieldwork was only possible because of the connections that I had made during the Practicum and it was only financially possible for me thanks to the award of a Slosberg Travel Grant.
ALUMNI STORIES
KARA FERGUSON Graduate Student ’15
SAM BAIRD Graduate Student ’17 WasteLess is an NGO that educates people in India about reducing garbage by teaching them how to purchase the right products, how to dispose of waste properly, as well as how to make money by recycling. They’re an amazing organization, but they had trouble forming an online identity to expand their reach and effectiveness, so I revamped all their platforms, including social media, donor outreach and their website.
Samugam Trust is an NGO that provides education for underprivileged children, as well as protection against child abuse and violence, and it does a lot of other important community work as well. I spent time getting to know the kids they shelter at the Justice Awareness Loyalty for Youth (JALY) Home. It’s a residential home for gypsy, tribal, street and other deprived children. They all receive an education as long as they’re living at the home. There was one girl in particular who sparked my interest. She was maybe 15 years old and didn’t want to go home. She saw more opportunity staying with Samugam Trust. I really connected with her. It was then that I put together the idea of cross-cultural storytelling. We’re all very similar. What connects us is stories. That’s why today I am a digital storyteller, whether I create something that is in language, photos or video. It’s the power of a well-told story that can bind us and draw us together in our shared humanity.
FELICITY FOSTER Graduate Student ’16 Three of us managed to schedule a quick trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and met up with the class in Delhi for the flight home. We were three women and our trusty taxi driver, hired by our hosts. We saw some great artisan workshops local to Agra, toured the Taj Mahal and had the satisfaction of proving that we could be relatively independent travelers. For me, it wasn’t just about ticking the box to say I had visited India, but more that I had seen Auroville and its surrounding communities (futuristic agrarian communism), Pondicherry (former French colonial impact), Delhi (former British colonial impact and present-day poverty and progress), and Agra (a remnant of India’s peak cultural influence in Asia). This trip brought me to places that I had only ever read about and into physical contact with political theory that had been completely unavailable in my “global north” upbringing and experience.
AMY SHAH Graduate Student ’10
JILLSA ARINGDALE Graduate Student ’13 The India Practicum represented the only time I have ever traveled further east than Europe and also the only developing country I have ever visited, so it was eye-opening in many ways. I think that anyone who seeks to learn about the life, culture and perspective of others gains empathy and strengthens their communication skills in a setting like this – all of which are beneficial qualities you can take with you professionally and personally no matter where you go next.
I was transformed by the Practicum. It made me think differently about my career goals. I learned that you really can make an impact, big or small, on local and global issues if you care enough about something. My interest in increasing educational access for students from under-represented backgrounds led me to my current position at Yale University where I work as Associate Director for Student Relations and External Affairs for the Yale Young Global Scholars Program (YYGS). YYGS is a summer academic enrichment and leadership program that brings together outstanding high school students from around the world for intensive twoweek sessions on Yale’s campus in New Haven and at the Yale Center Beijing in China. I work on strategic outreach and marketing financial aid and scholarships to students around the world from all backgrounds. We have welcomed remarkable students from all corners of the globe to our program and I take a lot of pride in having played a major role in that outreach. Education is for all, and my goal is to spread that message!
AIMÉE BETANCOURT Graduate Student ’10 I grew up in Mexico where nobody was recycling 10 or 20 years ago, so I didn’t grow up with ideas of sustainability or being ecologically friendly. Now I’m able to grasp and apply these concepts quickly because I’ve actually lived in a sustainable community while on the Practicum. It was a completely life-changing experience. I’m now an Account Director at Wieden+Kennedy in Amsterdam. I work with brands like Mondelez, ABI InBev and Facebook. We work on global branding platforms. I have to be aware of different cultural trends in many parts of the world. I also work in a very multinational group, with 32 nationalities represented just in my building. Every ounce of my work, whether it is strategic consulting or producing an advertisement, is influenced by this rich environment. As a team, we make sure we bounce ideas off each other while being culturally relevant and sensitive… something I first experienced during the Sustainable Development Practicum in India.
ALUMNI
CARE ERS 54 “BJ” McDuffie: Being the Change 58 Writing at the Intersection: Politics, Art & Culture 60 A Novel Journey: A Word with Writer Caite Dolan-Leach
54
AU P M AGAZ I NE
“BJ” MCDUFFIE:
BEING THE CHANGE “BJ” McDuffie is the quintessential global explorer, transcending political borders to transform communities worldwide.
BJ McDuffie G’09 at the State Department in Washington, DC
The question of developing community – of how to give back, of how to create and nurture a network – has loomed large for BJ McDuffie G ’09. As anyone who follows her on social media can attest, she is a dynamic network builder, a pro at
as a public affairs and recruitment specialist for academic exchange programs in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and, for the past year, as an evaluation and program manager for the TechCamps Program – a
all forms of outreach, a fundraiser, a champion for the Fulbright Program, and a prolific volunteer with more than seven years with the American Red Cross as a regional lead responder and a public affairs lead on their Disaster Action Team. McDuffie’s internationalism and philanthropic passion is evident in everything she accomplishes, although her various interests within the field of community development most fully intersect in TechCamps.
public diplomacy program hosted in the Bureau of International Information Programs. TechCamps are, as she explains, participantdriven workshops connecting technology experts in the private sector with key populations, such as youth, journalists and civil society experts. Thus far, over 60 TechCamps worldwide have gathered participants from over 110 countries and served over 3,200 people. TechCamps are 2-3 day, participant-driven training workshops that explore and apply innovative tech
For the last five years, McDuffie has been working at the US Department of State, first
solutions to global issues. “Each TechCamp is unique,” McDuffie explains, “and includes ALU M N I C AR E E R S
55
ongoing, impact-oriented, follow-on programs to help participants implement their postworkshop projects and stay connected and engaged with each other, their trainers and US Department of State staff.” McDuffie explains that US embassies apply to host a TechCamp based on a vital foreign policy goal for their region. The TechCamps focus on topics such as media and digital literacy, entrepreneurship, transparency, and combatting violent extremist messages, all the while connecting the selected participants with tech trainers and subject matter experts, which always include local facilitators as well as Americans. McDuffie and her team organize these technical trainings, liaising with technology experts (both in the US and abroad), US embassies and competitively selected participants. “The TechCamp alumni and trainers I have met and whose follow-on grants I manage are so inspiring!” she says. The participants in the TechCamps return to their communities to continue the momentum of the project begun with their TechCamp training. They often make immediate impact through their projects, such as online campaigns to encourage youth voter turnout, “fake news” finder apps and databases, and socially-conscious businesses. McDuffie has 56
AU P M AGAZ I NE
found TechCamps exciting to organize and linked with her desire to keep people engaged and motivated while she helps them find new ways to expand their networks beyond their local communities.
$3,000 this year. “I think I’ve always sought out opportunities to be useful and to fight for an underdog, highlight an injustice and seek change,” she says. McDuffie lives and breathes the values to which she subscribes.
These days, McDuffie is deservedly recognized by others as a resource for career development and mentorship, especially for people early on in their careers. “It is important for me to pay it forward and to lift up as many people as I can. Not everyone has the same amount of access to opportunities that I have had, and I am acutely aware of the fact that given the same level of opportunity, many people can be successful. For me, as a woman of color, that drive for representation and to open doors for others is incredibly personal.” McDuffie also believes that inclusion and diversity is integral to any organization’s success, something that motivates her work, not only with TechCamps, but with the numerous NGOs she volunteers for, such as the StreetWise Partners program, an organization that provides mentoring and career coaching to the underemployed, the recently incarcerated, new Americans, refugees and even retirees. Global Kids, a nonprofit that seeks to internationalize urban youth in DC and New York City, is another project in which she has involved many other AUP alumni and already raised more than
Around the world, McDuffie’s impact transcends the politically defined borders of countries. To date, her work has reached from the halls of the White House to conference rooms in Côte d’Ivoire, from an orphanage in India to the ancient Medina of Fez, all of this outreach looping back to AUP, where she attends Global Alumni Weekends and shares her network with others to help them find job and fellowship opportunities. “AUP became a place I can always fondly look back upon,” McDuffie says. “More than just looking back nostalgically, actually, it’s become a place where I know I can always find my tribe.”
TechCamp 2018 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast
ALU M N I C AR E E R S
57
WRITING AT THE INTERSECTION: P O L I T I C S , A R T & C U LT U R E
New York Times Culture Writer Farah Nayeri ’84 shares her story of how she got from AUP to a career interviewing some of the world’s most powerful people and renowned artists.
The NYT Art for Tomorrow conference, Doha, Qatar
Farah Nayeri ’84 is one of the most diverse journalists you will ever meet. She has interviewed some of the world’s most powerful kings and heads of state. She once drove across the desert to spend a month in Baghdad covering the US-led occupation of Iraq. She connected with Hollywood stars at the Cannes Film Festival; and most recently, she has talked with Kehinde Wiley, the artist famous for painting the flower-adorned portrait of former US President Barack Obama now gracing the walls of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Nayeri’s love for journalism is something that has
to become a reporter, this despite the fact that music was a real calling for her. However, it has been these two poles – the desire for a good story and a soulful appreciation of music and the arts – that have guided her along the winding path of her career.
been with her for a long time, stemming back to her childhood when she decided at an early age
Iranian Revolution broke out, the family decided against returning to Iran. Her parents relocated to
In some ways, it seems inevitable that Nayeri’s career in journalism would involve an interest in international politics; after all, both her father and grandfather were diplomats for the Iranian government. Much of Nayeri’s childhood was spent in Cairo, Tehran and Rabat, but when the
Paris so Nayeri’s little sister Goly could continue
on politics and government in Paris, covering the
Internet, she notes, has in part aided the art
her studies in French while her other sister, Nazanine ’83, and Nayeri could continue their studies in English. At AUP, Nayeri studied with Professor Emeritus David W. Pike, Professor Emeritus Paul Godt, as well as Professor Roy Rosenstein and the late Professor Mitchell Strohl, all of whom she found influential. “Paris is such a crossroads,” Nayeri says. “You get all these great minds. The cross-fertilization that happens at AUP is incredible.” Nayeri took this skill outside of the classroom where she pursued her cultural interests and wrote her first published piece for AUP’s long-running student-led university newspaper, The Planet, a precursor to today’s online Peacock Plume. Everything Nayeri accomplished as an AUP undergraduate she credits with influencing what she has done since.
G8 summit and flying with the press pool on the French president’s plane. However, it was while working for Bloomberg that she was relocated to Italy. “I had a deep interest in Italy, so when Bloomberg opened the Rome bureau, I took the opportunity to move there and run the Rome bureau. I really did fall in love with Rome, but then Bloomberg offered me to come to London and be a feature writer, so I couldn’t turn it down.” Nayeri has been based in London since 2001, although her career has taken one last turn and shifted in focus from politics to arts and culture, and from Bloomberg to the New York Times. “Now I’m writing the same sorts of stories, but on a more ambitious scale,” she says.
world, but there is also the question of finances and how artists and gallerists can survive. She explains how small and mid-sized galleries used to support artists and influence aficionados but now that these galleries are disappearing, it has left a vacuum of sorts; Nayeri often ponders who might fill this vacuum. “Where are the masterpieces of tomorrow going to come from?” she asks.
After graduating, Nayeri went to London, received her MA in Journalism from the City University of London, then returned to Paris to fulfill her childhood desire to become a full-time reporter. She was introduced to a correspondent for Time Magazine and began reporting to him as a stringer (freelancer) at only twenty years old. “I couldn’t believe that as my first port of call I was a reporter for Time Magazine. It was a great place for me to start and learn.” After a stint writing for The Wall Street Journal, she joined Bloomberg in 1995 where she reported
Nayeri not only writes about arts and culture, she is also a classically trained pianist and an engaged artist. “Piano is my visceral language,” she says; however, it wasn’t until she reached adulthood that she decided to share her musical gifts with others and to put on two performances, one in London and another in Paris. Nayeri also travels frequently to Jerez de la Frontera, the home of flamenco music, to study flamenco dance, another art form she is passionate about. “As a musician, I was overwhelmed early on by the power of flamenco music.” Nayeri worries that the power we experience through art and artistic expression is in danger of being lost. The
As she questions the future of the art world and reflects on the political landscape around us, often publishing her thoughts as the Culture Writer for the New York Times, Nayeri spends her free time on a new project that brings together art and journalism: a memoir that tells the story of her Iranian family. “I’ve realized that I am ready to share my story and that, perhaps more importantly, my parents are ready to share their story.” Despite her numerous interviews with some of the world’s most famous celebrities and personalities, the interviews she conducts with her parents and family members are some of the most difficult ones she has ever held, given the political tumult that characterized her country’s history during and since her youth. In the course of writing her memoir, perhaps Nayeri will find herself positioned yet again where she has always been: at the intersection of politics, art and culture. ALU M N I C AR E E R S
59
A NOVEL JOURNEY:
A WORD WITH WRITER CAITE DOLAN-LEACH The question driving Dead Letters, the debut novel penned by Caite Dolan-Leach G’10, isn’t the typical “Who dunnit?” – but rather a much more atypical “Did they dunnit?” Caite Dolan-Leach G’10
60
AU P M AGAZ I N E
In her debut novel, Dead Letters, Caite Dolan-Leach G’10 introduces us to Ava Antipova, a heroine running away from her family’s failing vineyard, faced with a romantic betrayal, an unpredictable twin sister, and a destructive family. In France, Ava reinvents herself and starts a new life, complete with a French boyfriend, as she pursues her doctorate and studies Edgar Allen Poe and the OuLiPo movement – a loosely associated group of writers interested in mystery, games and mathematics. Two years later, her twin sister, Zelda, is presumed dead after being burned alive in a horrible fire. Ava returns to her home in Upstate New York for Zelda’s funeral, where she receives a cryptic message, made all the more puzzling by its sender: her recently deceased sister. Dead Letters is an intense, blood-pulsing scavenger hunt through otherwise idyllic wine country, punctuated by seemingly innocuous posts that have been littered across social media. Dolan-Leach’s debut thriller has received rave reviews. Publisher’s Weekly calls it “captivating,” while Kirkus Reviews reports that “Dolan-Leach nimbly entwines the clever mystery of Agatha Christie, the wit of Dorothy Parker, and the inebriated Gothic of Eugene O’Neill.” With such praise, you could be forgiven for thinking she has spent
the years since graduation focused solely on writing her novel. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, after she graduated from AUP, it took Dolan-Leach some time to find her way as a wordsmith. Like most struggling writers, she often found time between odd jobs to write. “I definitely meandered a bit,” she says. “After leaving AUP, I worked as an arts administrator at an arts and social justice non-profit and then as a chef for a little while. Writing was something I always imagined I’d do eventually and then one day it seemed advisable to stop putting it off and start putting words on the page.” Although set on writing, Dolan-Leach didn’t yet know she was going to write suspense. The plot of Dead Letters revealed itself as she was writing. “I knew roughly where to begin and where I was planning to end up, but there are two or three hundred pages to get from the beginning to the end and, for
much of it, I felt like Zelda was running the show and I, like Ava, was just along for the ride, guessing at where she’d take us next.” An accomplished critic and essayist, as well as a successful novelist, Dolan-Leach has published her essays with The Paris Review, The Quarterly Conversation and Music & Literature and has co-translated two novels with her husband, Jan Steyn G ’10. DolanLeach met Steyn while they were at AUP, both enrolled in the Cultural Translation Master’s program. Besides co-translating novels together, Steyn is also her first reader. Dolan-Leach is currently revising her second novel, slated to come out with Random House in early 2019. For those looking to follow in her writerly shoes, she has this to say: “I know it’s tired and hackneyed advice, but read! Read everything! There are lots of details of ‘craft’ that you can hone. Fill your head with good words!”
Writing was something I always imagined I’d do eventually and then one day it seemed advisable to stop putting it off and start putting words on the page.
ALU M N I C AR E E R S
61
CLASS
NOTE S AUP Couples
62
AU P M AGAZ I NE
W E ’ L L A LWAY S H AV E PA R I S
THE LOVE STORIES OF AUP For AUP alumni, the University is a place of cherished memories – of lively classroom debate, of happy hour at the Amex, of discovering Paris as a young person starting out. But for some in our community, the University represents more, as it is also the place where they met their life partners.
MARIA & PIERRE BACH Maria Bach ’11 (International Economics and Applied Mathematics) and Pierre Bach ’13 (Economics and Entrepreneurship) met at AUP in the fall of 2009 in a statistics class where they learned that textbooks can, in fact, be romantic. “Dr. Ruth Corran assigned homework to the class. Maria hadn’t purchased the incredibly expensive textbook. Pierre, always prepared for life’s difficult situations, had diligently purchased the textbook. Little did we know, we had each made the best decision of our lives,” the couple
and we labored over probabilities and degrees of freedom. How romantic! Three months later, we kissed and have been inseparable ever since.” The couple married on the small Swedish island of Ven in August 2016. Today they are based temporarily between London and Paris. Pierre works in a small London-based consultancy specializing in forest products. As of this spring, Maria is back at AUP – this time as a professor teaching two classes in the department of her major, “Principles of Macroeconomics” and her “all-time favorite economics class,”
says. It was the textbook that brought them together, but it was the culinary skills of French native Pierre that paved the way for romance.
“Development Economics,” previously taught by her mentor Dr. Ali Rahnema. Maria aims to finish her PhD in International Political Economy
“We got together over lunch. Pierre prepared a salad, Maria came with a back-up sandwich
at King’s College London this summer, and Pierre plans to join her in Paris in August. C L AS S N OTE S
63
ALLISON HENZE COLEON & LUCAS COLEON The story of Allison Henze Coleon ’10 (Global Communications) and Lucas Coleon ’09 (Finance) started some years after their student days. Allison, who grew up in the US, stayed in Paris after graduation and did marketing and public relations for a shoe brand. Meanwhile Lucas, who grew up in Paris, transferred to the Stern School of Business at NYU and was hired by a French private equity firm based in New York. They didn’t meet until Allison moved back to NY several years after graduation when a mutual AUP connection suggested she practice her French with Lucas. “Although we didn’t know each other at AUP, it became quite clear that we had common experiences, memories and friends from our respective years there. Soon after our first meeting, we became inseparable.” In 2016, the couple were married at Allison’s parents’ house in Connecticut in the presence of 180 guests from all over the world. “Like many other AUPers, we had a vast family of friends who had spread out across the globe. From our years at AUP, we developed a love for travel and felt at home anywhere in the world, which is undoubtedly why after our wedding we took a mini-moon and two honeymoons to Asia.” Allison and Lucas still live in New York. Allison is now studying interior design at Parsons and Lucas continues to work in finance. “We are both grateful that the unique experience that is AUP formed such a strong bond between us and that we were able to share it with each other years afterwards and thousands of miles away from Paris.”
64
AU P M AGAZ I NE
MITCH & ZACH CONQUER Mitch Conquer ’07 (International Affairs) and Zack Conquer ’07 (Comparative Literature) met at AUP in 2006. “We knew each other through mutual friends, but we really got to know each other in German class in 2006. Danke, Herr Schroter!” Mitch says. After graduating, they moved to Shanghai where Mitch worked as a sales manager for Southeast Asia, Korea and Mongolia for a technology company, and where Zack helped found the Kung Fu Komedy Club, which was mainland China’s first standup comedy venue. The adventurous couple married in Shanghai in 2013 in a small ceremony surrounded by friends, then had another ceremony in the US. “We wanted to have the wedding in my hometown of Warren, but gay marriage wasn’t yet legal in Pennsylvania, so we had to cross the state border and have the actual ceremony in Erlandson Overview Park, New York.” They are now based back in the US where Mitch works as a software engineer and Zack as Director of Operations for a family-run company. “After living in Shanghai for almost seven years we started thinking about our next moves and decided to relocate to San Francisco where my brother and his wife live. We now work for his company, Go Nimbly, a revenue operations consultancy for SaaS companies.”
C L AS S N OTE S
65
JOUMANA & SEBASTIAN ORDELHEIDE Joumana Ordelheide ’04 (International Communications) and Sebastian Ordelheide ’07 (International Communications / International Politics) met at fall orientation in 2003. Sebastian had just arrived in Paris and Joumana was a member of the Student Government Association. Sebastian was from Germany and Joumana from Oman—you might say a typical AUP couple. Both Joumana and Sebastian worked at AUP after graduating, Sebastian in Communications and Joumana in Admissions. The couple got married in the 7th arrondissement mairie, right across from the golden dome of the Invalides and the AUP campus. They celebrated with family and friends in a mansion in Villennes-sur-Seine. Today Joumana runs her own educational consulting company and Sebastian works in communications at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). “We still greatly appreciate Paris and the quality of life it offers and since the birth of our son we have decided to continue to call the city home for the foreseeable future.”
66
AU P M AGAZ I NE
ALEXANDRA & JÖRN CLOPPENBURG Alexandra Cloppenburg ’94 (International Business Administration) and Jörn Cloppenburg ’95 (Political Science) met at AUP in the fall of 1992 at a party organized by the University. “I was a student advisor during orientation and had already been at AUP for a year,” Alexandra says. “Jörn came with his roommate, Jesper, to meet new students as he was just starting at AUP.” After graduating, Jörn completed an MBA at École National des Ponts et Chaussées while Alexandra started working at IBM. The couple moved to Düsseldorf in 1997 and have since spent stints living in Germany and Paris, where the couple married in 1998. In 2013, Jörn started working for the Ranger Group. Now he is Managing Director for France and Switzerland. His work shuttles him between Paris and Düsseldorf. Their son Matthias was born in 1998, followed by little sisters Mia in 2001 and Emma in 2006. Life has come full circle for the Cloppenburgs as Matthias enrolled at AUP in 2017 where he is studying International and Comparative Politics. “AUP was the stepping stone in our relationship, where it all started, and now it’s even more special because after these 20 years our son Matthias is following in both of our footsteps by attending AUP – that’s pretty special to us as a family!”
C L AS S N OTE S
67
SANDRA & THIERRY SMADJA Sandra Smadja ’86 (International Relations) and Thierry Smadja ’85 (Business Administration) met on a staircase in the Bosquet building in the mid80s. “I was flying down to the Amex after my class registration as a senior. Sandra was going up for her class registration as a junior, freshly transferred from Miami University,” Thierry says. “I instantly fell for this gorgeously sophisticated, French-looking, Americanspeaking transfer from Florida. Love (and ACP academic regulation) left me no choice but to take a no-credit class in French to get to know Sandra.” The Smadjas have been together even since. They married in Paris in 1988 before embarking on a lifelong journey around the world. They’ve lived in Pittsburgh, Paris, Brussels, and Singapore, and now call Geneva their home. “Along this ‘AUP global adventure,’ we managed to raise three adorable kids,” Thierry says. “Now they are grown-up and have started families of their own.” Today Sandra runs a highly creative ethnic jewelry design business, while Thierry runs a mergers and acquisitions shop, both with strong Euro-Asia influences that they have maintained after their years in Southeast Asia.
68
AU P M AGAZ I NE
PETER & RENÉE FLADE Peter Flade ’80 (International Relations) and Renée Flade ’80 (European Cultural Studies) first met at what was then The American College in Paris (ACP) in the late ’70s. In the fall of 1977 Renée was sharing a house with two Dutch students in Versailles. She had just transferred from Fleming College of Florence while Peter had been studying at the American College of Barcelona. “I was rather smitten by Renée but she didn’t really ‘see’ me until the second semester,” Peter says. “We moved in together in the spring of 1978 and lived on rue Chardon Lagache in the 16th. There were a lot of ACPers there. Our neighbor was Mr. Bardot, my French teacher.” The pair graduated in 1980 and moved to Barcelona after Renée spotted an importexport job for Peter in the International Herald Tribune. “I wrote them a letter – these were pre-Internet days! – and the owner wrote back inviting me for an interview,” Peter says. “I took the Talgo train down, got the job based on a three-month trial basis and I now own the company. My father-in-law, who hails from Denver, said to Renée: ‘I send you to study in Italy, then you go to Paris, meet a Swede born in Greece and end up moving to Spain. This is more than I bargained for!’” They have lived in Barcelona ever since, marrying in 1983. Their daughter, Alexandra, was born in 1994. “Our relationship in the early days was rather tumultuous,” Peter says. “We are both headstrong and quite different (she is an Aries and I’m a Virgo), so our friends made bets on how long we would last. I seem to recall that one month was the longest they thought we’d make it. That was 39 years ago – presque rien.” C L AS S N OTE S
69
GIVE & TAKE 70 Alumni Reward Student Excellence
74 AUP Ascending
A LU M N I R E WA R D
STUDENT EXCELLENCE AUP alumni support future generations through generous grants and awards that enable academic journeys in the classroom and beyond.
Sin-ming Shaw ’65 Award for Excellence recipient Audrey Michels ’16
70
AU P M AGAZ I NE
Amongst AUP’s most generous donors are alumni passionate about making extraordinary things possible for current students. Not only do the University’s alumni give to funds, such as the Coup de Pouce, which underwrites student participation in study trips, but they have also worked with the Office of Outreach and Advancement to create individualized sources of funding precisely tailored to their own passion for and investment in higher education. Today, the well-established Slosberg Travel Grant and Sin-ming Shaw ’65 Award for Excellence are two of the most prestigious sources of funding for AUP’s global explorers, each serving a unique purpose. THE SIN-MING SHAW ’65 AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE This award is conferred each year on a graduating senior for an outstanding final paper or project that meets the award criteria for academic rigor and creativity. A select committee composed of AUP faculty members reads through each submission,
debates the merits of each paper and project, and chooses the awardee accordingly. The intention is to inspire students to think across disciplines and to combine creativity and academic rigor in their work. AUP alumnus Sin-ming Shaw ’65, a former member of AUP’s Board of Trustees and a recipient of the 2002 Alumni Award for Distinguished Service, endowed this award carrying his name in 1997. Many generations of outstanding scholars have benefitted in the decades since, receiving at Commencement the most prestigious academic award offered to a graduating AUP senior. Audrey Michels, the 2016 award recipient, says: “Applying for the Sin-ming Shaw award was a culmination of my three years at AUP and a chance to put my best and most passionate work in front of a committee of people I respect and admire.” Michels’ winning senior thesis, “A Lost Generation of Lost Boys,” overseen by Professor Geoffrey Gilbert, is a moving exploration of what we lose when we cease to play with language. The thesis examined children’s fiction – such
as Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, and Alice in Wonderland – alongside the difficult experimental modernist writing of James Joyce, where Michels finds a single question: If we can’t ever get back to the ‘home’ of childhood, can we make a home in language? Michels appreciated the opportunity to share her work with the committee and to be considered for this prestigious award alongside a group of her peers. RECENT SIN-MING SHAW ’65 AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE RECIPIENTS • Kendra Mills ’17 – “Three Contradictions of Women’s Rights in Rwanda: Redefining Identity, Power, and Elitism” (2017) • Audrey Michels ’16 – “A Lost Generation of Lost Boys” (2016) • Amanda Skaar ’16 – “The Malagasy Sovereign Rating” (2016) • Jerusalem Parsons ’15 – “I & I: Irigaray, Writing, and Female Identity” (2015)
THE SLOSBERG TRAVEL GRANT & THE SIN-MING SHAW ’65 AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE G I V E & TAK E
71
THE SLOSBERG TRAVEL GRANT This program was established for AUP graduate students through the Margaret Gada Slosberg Charitable Foundation, established by alumna Karen Slosberg G’13 in her mother’s name. Karen Slosberg’s own research as a graduate student focused on Bahrain, and her subsequent work has kept social activism foremost in mind; she therefore wanted to give back to graduate students who succeeded her at AUP by supporting their efforts to work abroad in similar fashion. Consequently, the Foundation aims to foster high-level graduate research and activism in the field of social justice, offering travel grants to graduate students whose research is
72
AU P M AGAZ I NE
conducted across cultural or national borders and that incorporates a hands-on humanitarian component. Since its creation in 2011, numerous graduate students have conducted field and scholarly research with a focus on social justice, human rights, humanitarian relief and international development. All recipients attribute to the Grant their capacity to travel for the purposes of carrying out the field work, compiling the data, and conducting the interviews without which they could not have completed their Master’s theses. AUP graduate students from all programs are eligible to apply for funding to cover the costs of a volunteer or research project with an NGO
or civil society organization in the developing world, in an emerging economy, or in vulnerable communities in post-industrial societies. Students serve as on-location volunteers or as participant observers on locations with a local organization for a period of one to six months. Most recently the Slosberg Travel Grant Program has helped students carry out Master’s-level projects in Belize, India, Turkey, South Africa and Zambia. One of the grant’s most recent recipients, Viviana Alvarado Pacheco G’17, collaborated with the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center (CCCCC) in Belize, an NGO that coordinates the Caribbean region’s response to climate change and works on effective solutions and
projects to stabilize, and ultimately reverse, the environmental impact of climate change and global warning. Viviana used her field research as a proxy for the possible effects of climate change on small island states. RECENT SLOSBERG TRAVEL GRANT RECIPIENTS
• Elyse Elder G’17 – Community Learning as The Best Weapon to Fight Poverty in South Africa and Zambia • Rachel Fallon G’17 – Pathways to Equity and Opportunity by Focusing on the Intersection of Arts and Social Justice with Bronx-Based NGO Dream Yard
• Viviana Alvarado Pacheco G’17 – Volunteer at the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center, Belize
•Faith Toran G’17 – Waste Management with WasteLess in Tamil Nadu, India
• Dana Dadoush G’17 – Sustainable Management of Relief in Syria’s War Zone: Volunteer with CanaTurk Academic and Research Development in Gaziantep, Turkey
Both of these alumni-awarded sources of funding are invaluable to AUP students as they develop their potential as active learners, researchers and scholars. Awards endowed or
donated by alumni recognize the best work and future potential of graduating seniors and support their efforts to attend graduate school and get excellent jobs. Faculty serving on the selection committees for the awards express deep satisfaction at the experience of reading the finest work produced by our graduating class. “Faculty volunteer to be part of the Sin-ming Shaw jury because it’s always such a pleasure,” says Professor Linda Martz. “We have the opportunity to read the best of student writing and the most interesting and original projects from across the disciplines. Discussions among jury members are lively and allow us to think about what we truly value as an academic community.”
Faith Toran G’17 travels to Tamil Nadu and Auroville in India to improve waste practices
G I V E & TAK E
73
AUP ASCENDING
O U R F I R S T CO M P R E H E N S I V E C A M PA I G N Launched in May 2017
The most significant capital campaign in the history of AUP is well underway, with cash and pledges now totalling over €13 million.
€26 MILLION
CAMPUS
For Campus, Centers & Community
€18 million
The €26 million we will raise will support the consolidation of our campus, our multidisciplinary centers and our diverse community of faculty and students. These investments will allow us to increase the relevance and depth of our academic offerings and to support the needs and aspirations of our global explorer students.
In 2015, we launched an ambitious plan to fully consolidate the AUP campus, securing our home in the 7th arrondissement. Following the renovation of the Combes Student Life Center later that year, we began negotiations to purchase 69 Quai d’Orsay, located immediately behind Combes on the banks of the Seine. The purchase was completed in August 2017 and construction is now in full noisy, thrilling swing for this final project in the campus development plan. A stunning glass atrium will join the Quai building to the Combes Student Life Center, creating a distinguished,
74
AU P M AGAZ I NE
integrated campus center with eight floors dedicated to teaching, learning, writing and research, where cultures will convene and minds will meet, all topped by a beautiful conference center overlooking the Seine. Delighted faculty and students have enjoyed an early peek at the developing space, climbing to the top level where floor-to-ceiling windows offer a panoramic view stretching over the Seine and across the rooftops of Paris to the elevation of Montmartre in the distance. The Quai building is located a few short steps
By early 2019, AUP’s dream of a consolidated campus will have come true. A conjoined Student Life and Learning Center will form the heart of our new campus on the Seine, fully renovated and inhabited by the faculty and students for whom it was purposefully built. Surrounding them will be all the trained support staff needed to accompany their learning. We are already thinking of the Quai d’Orsay Building as a 1930s ocean liner moored on the Seine, symbolizing our students’ personal and intellectual journeys at AUP. It will be painted in colors taken from High Modernist paintings, and it will be filled with everything a global explorer needs to voyage successfully. We are halfway to our €26 million goal to finance this gift of a building. Please contact me if you would like to learn more about the new Student Life and Learning Center or about opportunities to support the campaign. Celeste Schenck President of The American University of Paris
from the American Church in Paris, where our University began as ACP in 1962. We are proud that this new consolidated campus will honor our heritage while providing dynamic learning spaces appropriate for our 21stcentury curriculum and demographic diversity. The Quai will be open to our students and faculty for the Spring Semester in 2019. To mark this significant moment in the history of AUP, we will hold a public celebration in our beautiful conference center overlooking the Seine – stay tuned for more details. G I V E & TAK E
75
CENTERS €4 million The generosity of the AUP community will support the innovative, faculty-mentored research of our interdisciplinary, cross-curricular centers, each designed to break down boundaries between disciplines and cultures to address the big questions of our times. The Center for Critical Democracy Studies convenes important researchers and public policy experts on democracy from across the globe, to discuss contemporary challenges
such as Brexit and the changing landscape of global media and information. In May 2018, The George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights, and Conflict Prevention – created to sponsor research to facilitate a deeper understanding of the causes and consequences of genocide and mass violence – hosts Words that Kill, a conference convening academics from around the world to re-examine questions of hate speech and freedom, propaganda and identity discourses. The Joy and Edward Frieman Center for Environmental Science continues its innovative climate change
CAMPAIGN GOAL
€ 26,000,000 TO RAISE
€ 12,400,000 RAISED
€ 13,600,000
PROGRESS & NAMING OPPORTUNITIES While we have reached the halfway mark in AUP Ascending, we still seek nearly €13 Million in new commitments to meet our ambitious goals. Lead donors will be recognized in spaces across the campus and named endowed funds. There are still many opportunities to support Campus, Centers and Community and to be publicly recognized for your support. Special initiatives are underway for members of our Founding Classes and graduates of the 1980s. Please join us to assure our success and the lasting impact of the global AUP community. For more information, please visit aup.edu/campaign or contact Mary McLean Evans, our Vice President for Presidential Initiatives, mevans@aup.edu.
THANK YOU! 76
AU P M AGAZ I NE
research, involving students in significant experiments with the opportunity to coauthor papers for publication. Meanwhile, in this edition of the AUP Magazine, you can read about the ten-year anniversary of The Center for Writers and Translators, which last year celebrated the publication of the award-winning final volume of The Letters of Samuel Beckett, co-edited by center director, Professor Dan Gunn. The Civic Media Lab, directed by Professor Waddick Doyle, works in conjunction with all our centers to foster student-faculty collaboration on civicallyengaged content creation.
COMMUNITY €4 million The third pillar of AUP Ascending – Community – represents our investment in the people of AUP. Plurality of cultures, nationalities and thinking is in AUP’s DNA, and socio-economic diversity is at the heart of our vision. Your support allows us to offer AUP Scholar Awards, which cover more than three quarters of the tuition fees of financially challenged students who demonstrate excellent academic promise and a global outlook. Our Professors of Promise Initiative
recognizes and supports our most talented faculty members. To build and maintain our global community, it is essential that we provide financial support to deserving students and that we fund exceptional faculty research and pedagogy. We cherish our beginnings; we are proud of where we are today and ambitious for our bright future continuing to educate world citizens to transcend the narrow bounds of nationalism.
COME BACK TO AUP If you are visiting Paris, let us reintroduce you to AUP by including a campus tour in your itinerary. Please contact alumni@aup.edu to learn more. G I V E & TAK E
77
G TO IFT AU S P
Cumulative Giving from 2012-08 to 2018-04 Thank you for your loyal support. We proudly acknowledge the following contributors, each of whom made generous gifts above €500 to AUP between August 2012 and April 2018. All gifts, whatever their size, are transformative for our small institution. Although we were unable to include all gifts on these pages, we remain grateful for the steadfast support of all alumni, parents and friends.
1,000,000 & above Omid & Gisel Kordestani ’96 The George & Irina Schaeffer Foundation The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation 500,000 - 999,999 Anonymous Trustee Anonymous Trustee 100,000 - 499,999 Anonymous Alumnus in Memory of Thamer Salman ’98 Anonymous Parent Anonymous Trustee Anonymous Trustee Euan & Angelica Baird Elizabeth Ballantine & Paul Leavitt Andrew Batinovich ’80 Samantha & Nabil Chartouni Franklin Craig ’81 Peter R. de Castro ’68 Christina & Pierre de Labouchere (Christina Sandel ’86) Christoph Endrös ’82 The Edward & Joy Frieman Family Trust Marc Groothaert ’68 Achim P. Kluber ’77 The Alfred & Jane Ross Foundation Craig R. & Dorothy Stapleton 50,000 - 99,000 Anonymous Alumna Anonymous Friend Anonymous Trustee
78
AU P M AGAZ I NE
Kostia H. Belkin ’86 Elliott Burdette ’70 Marsha Chandler Doris & Edward Daughney Judith Hermanson Ogilvie ’65 Danny Kaye & Sylvia Fine Kaye Foundation David T. McGovern PRIPARE Barbara M. Reno & E. Ray Stewart Mahvash & Farrok Yazdi 25,000 - 49,999 The Center for the Study of International Communications The Charles Delmar Foundation Joseph Dickerson ’00 Marie Donnelly The Florence Gould Foundation Lee & Berna Huebner Gil Kemp Susan H. & Josef K. Ruth ’65 Sin-ming Shaw ’65 Miriam Twaalfhoven ’81 R.T. Vanderbilt Trust ’95 Angela Vallot & James Basker 15,000 - 24,999 Martin S. Avidan ’80 Tania & Stephane Connery George Elder & Jo Ann Engelhardt Gretchen Handwerger Joey Horn Mr. & Mrs. John E. Klein Chas A. Miller III ’82 Jean-Marc Quach ’82
Pierre Sauvagnat ’83 Jacques Setton ’66 Daniel J. Socolow Maryland Swensen ’63 Peggy Tierney ’92 Susan Tolson Laurence Vagassky ’95 & Thomas Prey ’95 10,000 - 14,999 Anonymous Friend The Arent Charitable Foundation Jorn ’95 & Alexandra ’94 Cloppenburg Ronald Freeman Lancôme International Russell V. Lee ’63 Boris Nedev ’97 Jeanne Phillips Shaunna Prissert ’96 Anna Sandel Mark Sandel ’89 Celeste M. Schenck Lizbeth Schiff ’66 Edie White Wiltsee ’67 5,000 - 9,999 Hind H. Albahar Faris AlSaady ’07 D. Grant G. Calder ’92 Sean Casey ’04 Bryan Cave LLP & Joseph Smallhover Elizabeth Craig Jeff F. Durgee ’92 Madeleine Fabre Lillian Greene-Chamberlain, Ph.D. &
John Chamberlain ’81 Bassel S. Haidar ’92 William G. Jacobi Cynthia & John Junkin Perla Karney ’65 Peggy Montgomery ’75 The Pamela J. Newman Foundation Leslie Reed ’80 The Jerome Robbins Foundation, Inc. Susan Rushing & Jim Windolf Rita F. Salzman The San Francisco Foundation Valerie Shea The Tides Foundation 1,000 - 4,999 Anonymous Alumna Anonymous Alumna Anonymous Alumnus Anonymous Alumnus Acadomia John M. Adler ’88 Christine Allen ’96 Alphaprim & Hélène Pellerin AL Reception Andriveau Thomas Associes Arnie Arifin Association des Amis de Vaux-le-Vicomte Emmanuel Barat Manuel & Anne Benetreau Meryem Benghalem ’10 Ron Bissell James Bittermann Slim Bouker ’94 Constance & Dominique Borde
Rabih Bourji Bodie N. Bristol Andy Budgell Capital Guidance Château de Myrat Château Pontet-Canet Château Prieuré Lichine Dianne Cheseldine ’66 Patrick Clevenger ’93 Allison Coleon ’10 Lucas Coleon ’09 Gabriella Biello Coroneos ’64 Carol J. Dabbs ’68 Edward Delany ’91 Gail DeNicola Victor De Witt ’05 Emmanuel Di Donna ’92 Domaine Ponsot Barry L. Douglass ’64 Ian Edwards Fred Einbinder Gina Elardo Haldun Ersanli ’82 Mary McLean Evans Sharon Faccinto ’87 Peter Christenson Flade ’80 & Renée Satterfield-Flade ’80 The French-American Foundation Elan D. Garonzik ’70 Jean K. Gunnell ’66 Sabrina Guttman ’95 Paul & Dagmar Hannon Dennis James Healey ’63 Thomas Horgan ’79 William Jackson Humphreys ’66 IGF & Maxime Laurent Trevor Iles Katherine & Thomas Ingold Arthur ’64 & Tamea ’64 Isham
Patricia Day Jamison John Jassy ’68 Jet Airways & Michel Simiaut ’85 Ghassan & Gisele Khoory Carey Kluttz G’11 Monteser (Tessa) Wardle Kohn ’64 Mary Jo & Hank Kreuzman James H. Landon Luke Laumann ’05 Leader Opticom Amy Leeds-Brag Christine Leeuwis-Chahbasi ’81 & Frederick Leeuwis ’82 Phillippe & Patricia Lemoine Juliane Lenzner Melgaard ’99 Marie & Harley Lippman Jonas Ljunggren ’98 Jill Royce Loomis ’82 Jane B. MacKinnon Alice Maguire G’10 Alix Marduel & Tom Lockard Silver Miller ’68 Malinda Mitchell ’64 Michael Dickey Morgan ’85 Chuck Muckenfuss Alice Mullins Naiade Services Karen Newman ’67 Cyrille Niedzielski Samuel H. Okoshken Joumana ’04 & Sebastian ’07 Ordelheide Maria Jose Fernandez Osburn Cemal Parla ’81 Grant Plemons ’64 Dirk Poschl ’93 Quimdis & Jean-François Quarré Ole Rollag ’95 Jacqueline Routier ’94
Benjamin H. Rowbotham ’00 Lois A. Rudy ’68 Michael Sandler ’68 Jill Kathryn Sargent ’67 Kenneth Saunders ’93 Samar Sayegh G’08 Gyneth Schenck Eric & Elizabeth Schwartz Andrew Seid ’71 Leon M. Selig Lane ’72 & Randi Sharman Hong-Tsun Simon ’88 Michael K. & Carol Simpson Robert & Susan Sloan Arne Sondhi ’83 Douglas Sonntag ’74 Speaking Agency Karim Teymourtache ’83 Ashley ’98 & Yasushi ’98 Tomita Joël Vallat Sandra Van Mell ’63 Latanya Waweru ’09 500 - 999 Anonymous Alumna Jeffrey Ascherman ’83 Eleanor Ashford G’10 Arian Alikhani ’92 Eric & Cheryl Baranes Suzanne H. Barker G’11 Brenda Bertholf Amanda Crider Sykes Elizabeth Dudley ’66 Christophe Durand-Ruel ’81 Anne Marie Farache ’82 Reid Feldman Sarah Finnigan ’11 Bonnie Freedman ’85 Odila Galer-Noel ’82
Suzanne Halasz ’85 HAR Contract Jorge Helft Sonia Huyghe G’09 Inwood Hôtels Jill Jordan Ward Just Elizabeth Karcher ’84 Tommy Karlsson Robert M. Kaye Kristina J. Keenan ’08 Annalee Langham ’01 Mark Linvill ’81 Nancy Machiah Peregrine McCroskey-Olander ’06 / G’08 Richard Peyster Berine Pharaon ’97 Karuna Phillips ’07 Liam Purdon ’70 Jonathan Randal Royal Rodgers David Rubin Hilda Santo Tomas Shelley S. Saxton ’81 Stephen K. Scher Helen Tange Natalija Vysniauskaite ’98 Karen Marie Wellford ’64
Your gift is very important to us. If your name has been inadvertently omitted or incorrectly spelled please contact advancement@aup.edu
AUPGLOBAL AUP Global is your portal to all the resources and services you need to connect to the AUP community with no fuss. Join today to see how you can connect with classmates, find out about AUP happenings near and far, and let the AUP community know when you are traveling. You can also find and share job and internship opportunities, tell the worldwide AUP community about your latest projects and business ventures and even (if you’re brave) browse through your old yearbook. Logging on is as easy as registering with your current email address. We can’t wait to see you on AUP Global!
JOIN YOUR GLOBAL ALUMNI COMMUNITY
global.aup.edu For questions and additional information, please contact the Alumni Affairs Office at alumni@aup.edu