The Graduate School at UMass Amherst, supports greater diversity and inclusion in non-STEM fields by offering summer fellowships for graduate students working toward their doctoral dissertation.

The Graduate School also offers competitive Predissertation Grants.to give early career graduate students the opportunity to evaluate the feasibility of planned dissertation research, generate pilot data, or establish the necessary networks to carry out planned dissertation research.

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

Michael Acosta received a Fulbright-Clinton Fellowship in Spring 2017 to work with the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in Kosovo for the coming year. His work will focus the challenges faced in integrating minority groups such as ethnic Serbs, Roma, Kosovar-Egyptians, and Ashkali into the public school system.

Karla Sarr brought students from her class on the Design and Delivery of International Education to visit CIE. Thirteen students in the Master’s program at the School for International Training (SIT) in Vermont, were at UMass for the day.  After visiting the International Programs Office, they came to Montague House to discuss two CIE field projects and talk about managing funded projects.

CIE welcomed Ritesh Shah from the University of Auckland and the research team investigating the implementation of the new Accelerated Education principles developed by the inter-agency Accelerated Education Working Group (AEWG), at a Tuesday Dialogue in February 2017. The presentation was facilitated by CIE faculty member Ash Hartwell of the USAID Education in Crisis and Conflict Network (ECCN).

During January 2017, CIE second year Master’s student Kayla Boisvert and doctoral student Jenn Flemming conducted research for the inter-agency Accelerated Education Working Group (AEWG), looking at implementation of the AEWG’s 10 key principles for accelerated education programs (AEPs).

Michael Acosta spent a year in Jordan on a Boren Fellowship during which he studied Arabic, carried out a research project with teachers on Syrian refugee students and worked with a group of American high school students studying Arabic in a summer program.

Eunice Kua worked to help develop mother tongue literacy programs among Darfur refugees in eastern Chad prior to coming to CIE. She reflects on her experience and the issues it raised.

Sayed Ahmad Javid Mussawy spent the summer working to develop quality enhancement and accreditation procedures with the Ministry of Higher Education in Afghanistan.

Betsy Vegso worked with Peace Corps in Moldova during the summer where she reviewed program and training functions and developed recommendations related to program management.