Each year, the College of Education sponsors a Gallery Walk where graduate students present their current research activities through posters. Visitors walk through the hall where the posters are hung, pausing in front of those that spark their interest to ask questions and talk with the students who are there to explain their research. In April 2017, several dozen posters provided a window into the wide variety of research being carried out by graduate students in the College.

Among the presenters were two international education students whose posters reported on research based on fieldwork in other countries.

Javid Mussawy presented his work on the development of quality assurance and accreditation for higher education institutions in Afghanistan. Javid’s research interest developed during his previous employment with an ongoing, USAID-funded project managed by CIE. The project is engaged in a five-year effort to develop the capacity of 11 public universities in Afghanistan. Javid is a doctoral student who currently has a graduate assistantship working with the campus-based staff supporting the project. He hopes his research will contribute to understanding the challenges of implementing a Western quality assurance model in his home country.

A second student in international education, Nolizwe Mhlaba, presented research conducted for her Master’s capstone project. Her study is based on fieldwork carried out in Burkina Faso, West Africa. The research is a case study of Save the Children's Youth in Action program that seeks to develop basic literacy, numeracy, and financial literacy skills in youth, while also providing opportunities for apprenticeships and training in starting their own small-scale enterprises. The findings will be used to inform the design of future programs and to address issues of sustainability of local entrepreneurial activity in low financial resource contexts.