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Credit: David Michael Howarth
Michael Lang and Jainaba Kah of the
public policy and administration
department at Rutgers-Camden are
committed to bringing an global
dimension to their discipline.
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Before Dana Olds arrived in Senegal in 2002, the Khar Kane high school in Gossas had 500 students, three computers and one printer. Now they have more than 50 machines.
“I continued to work with the school once I got back to the states, and I was able to facilitate getting them 20 more computers through an American nonprofit,” said Olds, a 2004 graduate of Rutgers-Camden's masters in public administration (MPA) program in the International Public Service and Development (IPSD) and Peace Corps Masters International (MI) program. Olds spent two years in Senegal as part of the program, which began in 1987 as a partnership between the Peace Corps and Rutgers, the first such program in the country. Since its inception, more than 40 colleges and universities have adopted the MI program. The Rutgers program combines graduate study in public policy and administration, with the unique Peace Corps experience of spending two years in a developing country.
Olds had always thought about joining the Peace Corps after college. She majored in international relations and Japanese at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. In her junior year, she heard about a program at Rutgers-Camden that would allow her to go overseas with the Peace Corps and earn a master’s degree in public administration at the same time.
“From that time, I knew I would do the program,” Olds said. “When applying to graduate school, I only applied to the Rutgers program.” Olds now works as an associate for a global consulting firm in Washington, D.C.
The IPSD/MI program has graduated more than 150 students in the last 19 years. They have served on almost all continents and in over 30 countries. IPSD/MI graduates have gone on to careers at the State Department, U.S. Foreign Service, international NGOs, and state and local governments.
The IPSD/MI program marked a transition in the type of volunteer the Peace Corps sends abroad and the focus of their work during the two-year expedition. Volunteers – typically straight out of college – had done mostly educational and agricultural work from the time President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order in 1961 forming the Corps.
But Peace Corps director Loret Ruppe, who led the program throughout the 1980s, brought a more professional orientation to volunteer activities. As developing countries matured and faced more complex problems, such as economic involvement with the World Trade Organization, the work demanded graduates with more advanced skills.
“The Peace Corps was looking for highly trained volunteers,” said Jainaba M.L. Kah, a former World Bank employee and now an assistant professor of public policy and administration and coordinator of the IPSD/MI track since 2001. “Host countries are asking for volunteers with skills in project identification and design, project evaluation, grant writing, information and communication technologies, conflict resolution and negotiation, and community development”
Professor Michael Lang, chair of the department of public policy and administration and a former Peace Corps volunteer in Panama, designed the Rutgers IPSD/MI program and has played a pivotal role in bringing an international focus to an academic program typically known for its local emphasis. Most Peace Corps students, however, are required to have some experience in local communities before heading abroad.
“As part of their work here, the students do a yearlong internship in Camden to give them a flavor of what they will be working with,” Lang said. Lang, who is retiring this year, hopes the MPA program will continue to expand the Rutgers-Peace Corps partnership via a new initiative: the Peace Corps Fellows/USA Program is aimed at returning Peace Corps volunteers seeking to continue their postgraduate education in the program’s new Education Leadership track while interning at Rutgers’ LEAP Academy Charter School in Camden.
Each year, 10 to 12 students are admitted to the 42-credit concentration in IPSD. The students are drawn from some of the top colleges around the country. The first year is spent in intensive course study; students take 33 graduate credits during the academic year they are on campus. Courses include International Community Development, Nongovernmental Organization Leadership and Management, International Development Administration, International Economic Development and Introduction to Public Budgeting and Finance. The final nine credits are completed while on overseas assignment via an online course; students complete a final research paper based on their placement using educational skills they learned while on campus.
In addition to helping the high school acquire more computers and teaching local nonprofit workers computer skills, Olds also helped women in a small town of about 11,000 make their businesses more marketable and make strides toward obtaining formal credit lines. While the men of Gossas, where Olds’ served, largely work in farming, the women run small businesses like selling vegetables and African cloth in the market, sewing, hairdressing and managing small food stands.
“The majority of loans in my town were women pooling their money together, with the average loan being about $20 or $30,” Olds said. “It doesn’t go very far beyond buying products, selling them, paying back loans and reinvesting that money. It doesn’t allow them to grow their business.
“By the time I left, the government of Senegal had put a lot of money into the town. With an NGO, people were beginning to get fairly large loans – some were even over $1,000,” Olds said. “I am looking forward to going back to see the results of these loans.”
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