Robert J. Miltz
miltz@educ.umass.edu
Professor Emeritus
Professional Interests: 
Non-formal education, teacher education

 

Ph.D., Stanford University, 1971​

 

We recently heard from Bob Miltz with an update on what he has been doing since his official retirement from CIE.

 

Since my retirement going on 5 years now, all of my time has not been spent building around the house and playing golf with George Urch and Ash Hartwell! During the first couple years of retirement  I spent considerable time working with the CIE graduate students on the dissertation committees that I chaired.  It was a successful time as 18 of our very talented people completed their dissertations.  

 

Then Fredi Munger and I worked together in Washington to develop a program to prevent child trafficking and the end result was a quite significant project in Cambodia.  This past summer I had the opportunity to actually see that project in action when I did an assessment for USAID in Cambodia.  The assessment focused on youth, labor and the job market.  We were attempting to look for ways that the labor market could meet the needs of  the rapidly growing youth population in Cambodia (almost 60% of the population is under 24 years of age).  Quite a challenge but we did come up with a number of recommendations.  The trip also gave me the opportunity to return to Cambodia and see the changes that have taken place since our CIE project which ran from 2001 to 2005.  While there have been a number of changes many issues remain the same, mainly the issues of land mines, continuing poverty and malnutrition.  One positive side was seeing the effort of reducing child trafficking being taken seriously and many organizations focusing on this issue.  One of the leaders in this field is World Education with a very successful project being headed by our own David Kahler.  

 

So I continue to enjoy retirement doing a little bit of everything, enjoying the grandchildren and bumping into CIE members not only around town but also on the various travels that Linda and I have been enjoying.  Linda and I send our greetings to you all and you never know  we may give you a call when we are in your neck of the woods. [October 2006]

 

As many of you know, 30 years ago I came to the University to be one of the coordinators for the teacher education programs at the School of Education. International Education was only of a passing interest at that time as my hands were clearly full coordinating 21 separate teacher education programs as well as directing the microteaching clinic. In the early 70's I received an offer from UNESCO to spend two years in Nigeria basically to help reconstruct Biafra at the end of that civil war (I've since had the suspicion that this offer was planted by a CIE member in a subversive move to get me to switch allegiances within the school of education). It was in Nigeria that I developed my interest in rural development and related fields of materials development (out of necessity as we had to make our own teaching aids out of locally available materials) and training (after all, you need to find ways to use the materials, in this case mostly in health and agricultural training).

 

Upon my return I found myself spending 50% of my time with teacher training and 50% with CIE. Apparently this was not enough for died-in-the-wool CIE'ers as I soon received another offer from UNESCO to spend two years in Lesotho helping to build educational programs that reached into the community. This experience allowed me to develop my interests in project management and the use of technology in development.

 

In the end, of course, I joined CIE full-time and for the past 20 years I have spent time working on projects in Somalia, Swaziland, Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines. I have also had the most enjoyable task of working with all of our students here at CIE exploring issues of nonformal education, training, rural development, materials development and technology (hey, sometimes even technology works; you are reading this on the web page are you not?). Most rewarding of all is watching all of the CIE members grow into leaders in their field and looking forward to continuing this relationship for many years into the future.