My Ph.D. program at the College of Education is in International education and development with a focus on education policies, administration, and research. My dissertation “Integrating Traditional Values and Local Knowledge in the Formal Educational System in Senegal” discusses the issue of culturally relevant education in Senegal through incorporation of more local values and knowledge along with a greater community engagement. In addition, my studies included valuable courses relevant to the field of training, evaluation, monitoring, project planning and research, education and culture, and education in emergency settings.

During my doctoral program I worked from 2013-16 as a graduate assistant on a project to evaluate Vas-Y-Fille!, a girls’ education project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. My responsibilities included working on questionnaires, collecting data in the field, training local data collectors in qualitative methods, supervising the training of local teachers in gender sensitive teaching, transcribing and coding files in Nvivo, and helping to write the reports and translating them into French.  I also supervised and evaluated the training of village women in savings and loans and small project development. During this period I made presentations at various professional conferences on the evaluation results from this project.

While studying at CIE in the College of Education, I also taught French in the Languages, Literatures, and Cultures department at UMass, Amherst and pursued a master's in French and Francophone Studies with a focus on African and Caribbean literature and culture.

I have developed considerable expertise in research, educational theories, management, monitoring, and evaluation of educational projects as well as second language acquisition and francophone studies. I graduated with Ph.D. in Education and a Master’s in French and Francophone Studies in May 2020.

Before coming to CIE, I worked as a teacher in middle/high schools where I became more aware of how wealth and traditional cultural values are interconnected in determining success and failure in schools in Senegal. [4-20]

Email:  diamemaguette@yahoo.fr