WLTIE: The Summer School Experience
Gunjan Dhakal joins the WLTIE program from Nepal. Gunjan is pursuing her graduate degree at Oregon State University, through which she participated in the 2010 International Comparative Rural Policy Studies Summer Institute.
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Oregon State University hosted the International Comparative Rural Policy Studies (ICRPS) Summer Institute in 2010. ICRPS is a dynamic consortium of 11 institutions and numerous fellows from across Canada, Europe, and the United States. It is considered to be an advanced program to enhance policy formulation and analysis in the rural context. The program calls itself the first of its kind to enable students to examine and compare the role of rural policy in different cultural, political, and administrative environments. This is a two-week international summer institute designed for graduate students and mid-career professionals on comparative rural policy perspectives, particularly focused on developed countries. The venue for this institute rotates every summer and it was held in Oregon this year from June 19 to July 5, 2010.
As the program was organized by our school, some of us were lucky to be enrolled. This was thanks to Professor Brent Steel, who helped us in getting the approval from our sponsor, USAID, who wanted us to focus on economics. We are supposed to focus our graduate studies in economics as per our scholarship under the Women’s Leadership Training in Economics program, funded by USAID. This is a bit challenging as we have been enrolled in an interdisciplinary course, a Master’s in Public Policy (MPP). It is by no means possible to focus everything on economics while being enrolled in this program because of its nature. However, MPP is a great program providing the overall social, political and economic background and the context that is relevant in the current world and especially back in Nepal.
ICRPS Summer Institute was a kind of crash course wherein there were lots of things to be said and heard within a limited period of time. It was appealing to see how all the participants were getting to know one another better through group works, analysis, briefs, meetings, and best of all the field trips. Despite the hectic schedules and hot summer, field trips were the most eagerly awaited programs on our list. It was commendable that our organizers, Professor Brent Steel and Professor Denise Lach, focused more on practical knowledge and less on in-class lectures. Be it a restaurant or the van or the walk, we would debrief at the end of every trip. It was an intensive summer school, connecting faculty and international students in a dedicated and mutual learning environment.
Being one among participants from 15(+) different countries and getting to know their perspectives as an individual or as a country was intriguing. It was a wonderful experience getting to know the views from people sharing different background and cultures. I was there with an intelligent group of folks, who were trying to take home as much information as they could. It was not just the studies, professors, and the field experiences that make ICRPS beautiful, but also the intimacy we developed with each other. The experience of gradual transformation from strangers at the first day to the close friends at the end of our 16th day was enthralling. For most of us in the ICRPS 2010, English was not the first language but we never had language barrier to express our thoughts.
My only point of concern is the way underdeveloped and developing countries were shadowed in this program whose theme is “Rural.” Rural in a developed country looks very urban in comparison to underdeveloped countries, and it would be interesting and stirring at the same time if some of the cases could be discussed openly among the like-minded participants on what kinds of policies would be best suited, provided the circumstances.
The take-home messages from this program (apart from the main theme) were to widen your perspective, respect each other, and develop a friendship that can sustain for the longer term. As somebody said, “In between goals is a thing called life, and that has to be lived and enjoyed.” I enjoyed and had great fun at the ICRPS 2010, apart from getting to the main objective. This is a great platform to build networks, which is one of the objectives of our scholarship. I highly recommend participation in such programs and if I could, I would again participate next year…. Destination: ICRPS, Norway 2011.