Session VII. Women Leaders and InnovatorsCo-chair: Joy Phumaphi, Vice President, Human Development Network, World Bank Presenter: Saeeda Asadullah Khan, Vice Chancellor, Fatima Jinnah Women's University-Rawalpindi (saeedaasadullah@hotmail.com; fjwuvc@comsats.net.pk) Title: Partnership for Women in Science, Technology and Engineering Presenter: Roy J.Nirschel, President,RogerWilliamsUniversity Title:The Initiative to Educate Afghan Women Presenter: Barbara Waugh, Hewlett Packard (Africa and the Middle East Programs) (barbara.waugh@hp.com) Title: Cross-Boundary Leadership Rapporteur: William Lawrence, U.S. Department of State (LawrenceWA@State.gov ) Note-Taker: Claire Williams, AAAS Science Policy Fellow, U.S. Department of State (Williams@State.gov ) “Education is the liberation of the human spirit” offered Richard Brodhead, president of Duke University at our session’s close. This came forth after so many in our session had voiced surprise at the quality of success stories presented not only by our speakers but by our attendees. What follows here is the opening preamble from our co-chairs followed by a few of the success stories. Co-chair Joy Phumphapi opened the session with “We at the World Bank strive for inclusive development. Women too need health, security - and access to education. Educated women serve public, private and civil society well so we must be sustained in our efforts to protect women.” To this end, she mentioned that the World Bank had hosted a forum on country-specific policy instruments for education and the proceedings are now being published in a new book entitled “Science, Technology and Innovation”. Her co-chair Richard Brodhead added “More than a booming economy, we strive for the evolution of systems that provide necessities of life. We have so many societal problems that require trained intelligence to gain leverage, to advance. How can our universities supply the needs?” He noted that this question harked back to start of the American public education movement in the 1840s. At the center of this movement was Horace Mann who justified public education using a little known excerpt from economist Adam Smith…”intelligence is the most important asset of developing nations.” He went on to say that Horace Mann’s statement applies to women because the world needs all the intelligence that it can get. Dr. Brodhead went on to mention several examples. “Today Duke engineering is partnering with a women’s college in Saudi Arabia. We have a nursing program providing long-distance education for Nicaragua and Honduras.” But then he added that “Duke’s central concern is Africa where 24% of the world’s health burden falls to only 3% of the world’s health care workers.” With this, our co-chairs introduced the speakers. First to speak was Dr. Saeeda Asadullah Khan, vice chancellor of Fatima Jinnah Womens University (FJWU). She noted that Pakistan has six women-only universities now. Nationwide, women make up 65% of college enrollment in all of Pakistan’s universities. FJWU started in Dec 1998 with 350 students and it has now grown to 4000. Computer science and environmental sciences are among the majors that are offered at FJWU. She noted that the real success story was that employment is 51% for our graduates, but that “employment is even higher for computer science where it is 65%, for environmental sciences where it is 55% and software engineering where it is 73%.” She then added that “we at FJWU are expanding into lifelong learning and e-learning. A virtual university is being created here”. Our next speaker was Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, President of Spelman College located in Atlanta GA. Dr. Spelman began “My message has already been given by previous speakers. First, the head of Aga Khan Foundation urges us to ‘educate your daughters first’. We then hear from India’s leaders that we do not have enough liberal arts education to shape our future leaders. And finally we hear that education moves cultural change across generations. Dr. Tatum went on to say that for Spelman College, all of these messages apply. She illustrated this starting with the history of the college “The college was founded 127 years ago right after slavery ended. Its founders were two missionaries who thought educated women would raise educated children. The records state the Spelman College started with ‘ten women and one girl’ but today it has 2200 students, women only and it is solely undergraduate.” Dr. Tatum concluded by saying “This speaks to the unfinished agenda of women’s education and this was a theme that she carried forward in her next example. Beverly Tatum noted that she had participated in a Bellagio conference composed of ten leaders from women’s colleges worldwide. She found it paradoxical that the U.S. once had 300 women’s college but that now there are only 60 and that at the same time we in the US are seeing such a decline that the opposite trend is emerging from other parts of the world. New women’s colleges are starting up in other countries. Consider that Saudi Arabia has started Effat College for critical thinking in the liberal arts. And now there is the Asian University for Women started in Bangladesh. Dr. Tatum from Spelman College went on to say “We must make the choice to change the world, to think critically and to seek international exposure in shaping our future women leaders” then she offered the final story as a closing message. During the civil rights years, a full-page manifesto appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. It was signed by student leaders from the six historically black colleges and universities in the Atlanta area. Few today know that Martin Luther King got involved only later and that he mentioned this manifesto in his speeches. One of the six student leaders was Rosalind Pope and her ideas for the manifesto came from a trip to France where she saw how freely people could move, act and speak. She returned home determined to bring change and she did. A similar experience occurred more recently. Spelman sent two students to Dubai Women’s College to look through the lens of Islamic culture. One of these Spelman students was profoundly affected by her experience and now she is going to study in Freetown South Africa. She, like Rosalind Pope, found her voice only after international experience. Dr. Tatum concluded again, that “we must attend to the unfinished business of women’s education.” Our next speaker was Dr. Roy Nirschel, president of Roger Williams University located in Rhode Island. He noted in his opening that he works at a college which is only 50 years old, underfunded and struggling and that we started our international work on the day after 9/11.” Dr. Nirchel mentioned that it was on this day “when my wife saw women in veils in Afghanistan and she wanted to help.” But how? He answered that they could send money but there was no place to send money. He then continued “we started the Afghan women’s scholarship program with six women and today the program has 48 spread across several colleges and universities. We select on merit and discourage those who are privileged, wealth or keen to immigrate. Each student signs a pact to return and to repay the scholarship through her own deeds within Afghanistan. Every winter the scholars travel to DC and here they acquire a sense of civic obligation and they bond with each other. They have given back in interesting ways not only to their home country but also to our campus. Laura Bush has given our commencement after she saw us on the Today Show.” The presence of the Afghan scholars on campus has been profound for the university’s community. He noted that “our faculty now has an international presence – 14% of our faculty come from other places and we offer Mandarin and Arabic language courses. And it does not stop there. Even now our faculty are searching for new links in new countries – we had five study abroad programs and today we have 43. Our endowment has risen from 30 million to 100 million dollars.” We have done this without private funds although now the State Dept has contributed with a partnership grant.” So Dr. Nirschel’s message is that we can have global competencies for any size campus, no matter how small or how large. His experience was to start a women’s initiative but he learned that this could galvanize a campus. Dr. Nirschel from Roger Williams University then closed with the statement that “If you build it, they will come.” Discussion: (Nigeria): “We do need a policy for girls to stay in school longer. We need more women on faculty so perhaps we need to support more women in their doctoral studies. We must find the money for women to stay in school.” One word – surprise – could describe our session but Dr. Brodhead put this so much more eloquently. As the world’s educators, it is true that we do have the unfinished agenda for women’s education to attend to and we must lend our collective knowledge to heal to the breach. But in the end, education itself that is the liberation of the human spirit. |
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