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2019 Forum Council Candidates Announced

Posted on by Lindsay McCauslin

The Nominations Committee of The Forum Council is pleased to announce the following slate of candidates for the six open positions in this year’s election:

Institutional Representatives from Forum member institutions and organizations will receive an email with voting information. The deadline to vote in the 2019 election is May 17.

Tracey Bradley, Executive Director, Tennessee Consortium for International Studies

Tracey has been a supporter and innovator in international education for over a decade. Her first experience in education abroad materialized through her bold spirit and belief that all students can and should benefit from a study abroad experience. As an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, Tennessee, she developed and led programs abroad in both South Africa and India. Taking Community College students to live and study in these less available program locations reinforced her dedication to collaborate with others in the state to create study abroad programming that is academically rigorous, financially accessible, and with more diverse locations. To that end, she has served as the Executive Director for the Tennessee Consortium for International Studies (TnCIS) for the past eight years. TnCIS works extensively with most of the state’s 13 community colleges. All of those institutions are involved with education abroad and are offering credit bearing study abroad courses to their students. TnCIS is headquartered at Pellissippi State Community College (PSCC) and the TnCIS office serves as the International Education office for the college. PSCC has become a nationally recognized community college leader in the field of education abroad. In addition to the community colleges of the state, Tennessee State University, a HBCU in Nashville, Tennessee, is also a member of TnCIS.

Tracey has been an active and vocal participant of the Forum on Education Abroad for many years and has had the opportunity to support and lead different initiatives. She previously served on the Annual Conference Selection Committee; was a contributor on the Inclusive Excellence Working Group; and served as the Vice Chair of the Advocacy Committee. She is a current member on the Forum’s Council and of the Community College Working Group. Most recently she served as moderator for the Forum’s Critical Dialogue, Education Abroad at Community Colleges.

Tracey is seeking reelection to the Council, in part, to represent non-traditional institutions and to continue to advocate for inclusion and diversity within the field of international education. If reelected, she would consider it an honor to continue to serve and collaborate with other colleagues in the field

Brian Brubaker, Director of Education Abroad, The Pennsylvania State University

Brian Brubaker has worked in the field of international education for over twenty years. His experience spans several facets of the field including English teacher abroad, corporate international assignment manager, and international student adviser; however, his most in-depth experience is in education abroad. He has engaged in education abroad work at many different types of organizations including Dickinson College, IES Abroad, Arizona State University, and currently, The Pennsylvania State University.

As director of Education Abroad at Penn State, Brian leads a large team in providing student support services and strategic direction for a 24-campus university sending nearly 3000 students abroad each year. Key initiatives on which he’s focusing include: access and inclusion for historically underrepresented students in study abroad, enhanced offerings of high-impact experiential learning abroad, development and assessment of universal learning outcomes, and communication strategies for the entire student life cycle with education abroad. Brian is a Forum Certified Professional as well as a Forum Trained Facilitator who loves leading workshops on the Standards of Good Practice. He has worked on an institutional team conducting and writing a self-assessment for the Forum’s Quality Improvement Program (QUIP) Review and has also served as a QUIP Peer Reviewer. Similarly, Brian has served as an external reviewer for peer institutions, as well as on advisory boards for several international education organizations. For the past three years, Brian has valued being a part of the Forum Council’s dialogue and has especially enjoyed leading the Standards Committee on the development of the new Leading Short-Term Education Abroad Programs piece released in 2017. He currently serves chair of the Ethics Working Group.

In addition to his administrative responsibilities, Brian has taught global marketing courses and co-authored a business case study on organic/fair-trade coffee entrepreneurship in Cameroon. Brian holds an MBA in international management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and has a BA in international studies from Dickinson College. He studied away on an internationally-focused internship program in Washington, DC as well as in Yaoundé, Cameroon as an undergraduate.

Elena D. Corbett, Director of Education Abroad, AMIDEAST

Elena D. Corbett first went to Jordan the summer after her second year of university because she thought she wanted to be an archaeologist. Archaeological field school served instead as the gateway to a personal and professional life dedicated to learning as much as she can about the MENA regions and working hard to be better at Arabic. While a humbling, life-long path, nearly 25 years after that first opportunity to study abroad changed her life, Elena is a passionate advocate for engaging all learners in Middle East area studies and education abroad in the MENA regions. Freed from the tired paradigms and biases that characterize the creation of knowledge about the MENA regions, learning about them and experiencing them firsthand is universally relevant and enriching. Her professional mission is to be the supportive educator, mentor, colleague, and friend to others as have graced her life and made her journey possible. Most recently, she became a founding contributor to the Studying Abroad in the Global South podcast.

Elena is an alumna of Semester at Sea and Middlebury Language Schools, and a graduate of Bucknell University. She is fortunate to have received scholarship support over many years for language study and research, including from the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) and Fulbright-Hays. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where she specialized in modern Middle East history. Among her publications is a book based on her dissertation, Competitive Archaeology in Jordan: Narrating Identity from the Ottomans to the Hashemites. Before it even had the name CLS, Elena was the first CLS program coordinator in Jordan. While a career in traditional academia was ultimately not in the cards, she was faculty at the U.S. Naval Academy and Penn State Behrend, where she developed and implemented faculty-led programs for students to Jordan and Palestine. Before coming to AMIDEAST as Director of Education Abroad, she was Center Director at CIEE in Amman for almost five years.

Education abroad is a second career for Elena that stems logically from her first. The same forces and histories that create the inequities that one has a responsibility to acknowledge and challenge as a practitioner with specialization in the Global South are evident in the core issues with which we must engage as contemporary international educators. For this reason, Elena has enjoyed getting more involved with Forum. Having been back in the States for two years and settled into her role as director of a small, specialized provider, Elena is eager to serve on the Forum Council to be of better service the field and the interests of its many, various stakeholders, while learning alongside a diverse group of collaborative colleagues.

Ryan Dye, Director of Education Abroad, Miami University

Ryan Dye’s first time abroad also was his first time on an airplane. It was his junior year at Notre Dame, and he flew to London for a semester abroad. That experience ignited for Ryan an interest in British and Irish History, which led to a PhD work in that area at Northwestern University that included dissertation research in Liverpool. Ryan was then hired to teach History at St. Ambrose University, a Master’s-level comprehensive institution in Davenport, Iowa.

After serving as a professor at St. Ambrose for seven years, Ryan was asked to be its Director of International Education. What started as a part-time role soon became a full-time job and then a profession. At St. Ambrose, Ryan helped to build a unified Center for International Education, where he oversaw Education Abroad, International Student Services and International Admissions. Working at St. Ambrose gave Ryan a deep understanding for the unique challenges facing international educators at small institutions during an era of declining enrollments, deepening budget cuts and rising nationalism. What Ryan appreciates most from his tenure at St. Ambrose is the importance of building coalitions across campus who buy in to the potential for international education to make a transformative impact on students from all backgrounds.

As international education became Ryan’s profession, he developed a particular interest in Education Abroad because of how important study abroad was in his own life journey. He became a Forum Certified Education Abroad Professional, and currently serves as both a workshop facilitator and an assessor for the certification program. Ryan also is a current member of ISA’s Academic Advisory Board and of Diversity Abroad’s Task Force on Religious Identity.

In February Ryan was named Director of Education Abroad at Miami University, an “original public Ivy” that is about as different from St. Ambrose as he can imagine! Miami is one of the leading senders of undergraduates abroad, and is committed to being one of the top universities in the country for international education. Recently, Miami was recognized for its good work by earning NAFSA’s Simon Award for Campus Internationalization.

Ryan is eager to contribute to the Council’s work in the areas of strategic planning, curriculum, faculty development, conference planning and other areas of need. He believes that his experience in the Midwest—which is often an underrepresented region on major boards—combined with his experiences at both a smaller private institution and an influential public university can offer the Forum Council a unique set of perspectives.

Devin Foxall, Director of Institutional Relations, The School for Field Studies

Devin Foxall’s primary interest is uniting data, statistics, and economic theory to find creative and inclusive ways to minimize the environmental impact of Education Abroad programs. On the Forum Council, he hopes to raise sustainability to the same level of consideration that members provide safety and staffing. The rising college generation prioritizes the environment and perceives climate change as an existential threat. Yet in the recent State of the Field survey, Forum members reported that they lacked the data or knowledge to respond to student concerns over the environmental effects of studying abroad. Devin plans to research, develop, and disseminate the data-driven tools and resources that members need to consider or prepare for the environmental consequences of their programs.

Devin has worked for the last five years for The School for Field Studies, an environmental study abroad organization, and has experience using data to address real world issues. At Johns Hopkins, he conducted graduate level coursework on natural resource conservation, quantitative methods in environmental policy, and the economics of carbon offsets. Working for Mercy Corps in Niger, he analyzed data surrounding strategies for reducing famine caused by climate change. He recently served on the Forum’s Data Committee, helping write and later present at The Forum’s Boston conference the 2017 State of the Field report. He currently serves on the Forum’s HBCU Working Group and presented at the 2019 Forum conference on using a cohort model to improve study abroad diversity.

Devin would bring to the Council a diverse background of experience. He spent five years traveling across the globe, setting foot in 40 countries on five continents, and writing about young people living in conflict and post-conflict countries such as Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iran, Laos, Rwanda, and Somalia. As he wrote in his book, this taught him the value of traveling and meeting people beyond his imagination. He returned to Afghanistan to work with an NGO operating schools for girls in Kabul. This taught him the value of education, and why it is precious. In Niger, he learned that data combined with listening produced tools that could improve peoples’ lives. Devin’s experiences showed him that working together is the best way forward, and that there is joy in giving something back. For these reasons, he is grateful to be considered for the Forum Council.

Maritheresa Frain, Vice President for Academic Affairs, The Institute for Study Abroad (IFSA)

Dr. Maritheresa (MT) Frain has over 25 years of experience in international educational exchanges. She currently serves as the Vice President for Academic Affairs at The Institute for Study Abroad (IFSA). Previously, she was the Director of Study Abroad at the George Washington University and worked at the Council for International Educational Exchanges (CIEE) in senior leadership roles. She has lived/taught in Spain, Portugal, Russia, Greece, and Switzerland. While living in Seville, Spain, she served as the US Department of State’s Consular Agent for Western Andalusia. She earned her Honors BA from The Pennsylvania State University in Foreign Service and International Affairs. MT has a MA and Ph.D. from Georgetown University in Government.

It has been an honor for her to serve on the Forum Council over the past three years. Throughout this time, she has leveraged her experience in the study abroad provider space and higher ed to support projects related to language learning abroad, outcomes/assessment and student academic achievement. She is committed to supporting the new leadership vision at The Forum to ensure it will continue to be THE leader in the space of establishing the highest quality standards in international educational exchanges. With over 25 years’ experience working abroad in program management and development, she is keenly aware of the dynamic field we are working in, and excited about the goal to make learning abroad more accessible to students of under-represented majors and demographics. It would be honor for her to continue to serve on the Council for another term.

MT’s contribution to the diversity of the skills represented on the Council can be found in her background in higher ed administration. Given that she has a doctoral degree, she has been able to leverage her academic credentials and management acumen to work her way up to senior leadership positions in the field of international educational exchanges. She started in the trenches, working abroad in the design and delivery of programs. She has experienced the good, bad and ugly. She knows what it is like to execute on program learning goals with the highest standards of excellence. At the same time, she understands the complexity of relations with host institutions, finding the intersection of shared educational values and working to support those through respectful partnerships. Having lived abroad for most of her professional career, she can easily understand and adapt to different cultural values related to education, duty of care to students, and creating a robust learning environment for our students to thrive in — and have fun! She believes this background makes her an interesting contribution to the different voices currently sitting at the Council table.

Annette Mares-Duran, Faculty-Led International Program Coordinator, University of New Mexico

Annette Mares-Duran is the first Faculty-Led International Program Coordinator in the Global Education Office at The University of New Mexico (UNM), the largest research university in New Mexico with over 26,000 students at the undergraduate and graduate levels at its main campus. New Mexico is a large, mostly rural state with a high proportion of minority, first-generation, and low-income students and UNM is a Hispanic-serving institution with over 43 percent of students identifying as Hispanic. UNM additionally serves a large population of Native American students, many of whom come from one of 24 unique indigenous communities in the state. Annette is representative of the population she serves as she was born and raised in rural New Mexico and is a first-generation college graduate. She understands the challenges underrepresented students face attending college, maintaining family and financial responsibilities, and considering study abroad opportunities. Many of UNM’s students have never traveled domestically, and a substantial number have never traveled internationally. As a result she is deeply committed to ensuring equity and inclusion for all students in study abroad.

Annette is mid-career professional with over six years of experience and spearheaded the centralization and expansion of UNM’s faculty-led programs by stimulating collaboration with faculty, academic units, and administration. She creates and implements policies and procedures, with emphasis on study abroad health and safety, to develop and support over 40 group study abroad programs annually to destinations all over the world. Currently, two-thirds of the students studying abroad at UNM are doing so as part of faculty-led programs, and the participation rate in overall study abroad has increased by over 80 percent to about 900 students in the last five years. Through targeted program development, support, and outreach, Annette has played a key role in moving UNM’s vision to double the number of students studying abroad by 2020. As a group leader herself, Annette leads groups to Ecuador and Peru. She currently serves as the co-chair of the campus-wide health and safety committee and additionally serves on the Academic Affairs Study Abroad Allocaions Committee. Her work as a Gilman campus advisor has assisted many students with seeking additional support to make their study abroad aspirations possible.

Prior to this role, she coordinated international exchange programs with institutions in Latin America and Spain.

Annette received her MA in Language Literacy & Sociocultural Studies, and her BS in Education, at UNM. As a student, she was the studied abroad in Spain and Nicaragua before serving as a Student Affairs Intern at Casa Xalteva in Nicaragua. In her free time she enjoys listening to podcasts, spending time with family, designing jewelry, and eating bean burritos!

Annette is a fiercely dedicated proponent of international education and is eager to actively serve in a position that allows her to network with like-minded colleagues, exchange innovations and ideas, and contribute to greater understanding in the field around best practices in stimulating participation of underrepresented students in study abroad programming.

Jonathan (Yoni) Kaplan, Vice Provost, Rothberg International School, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Jonathan brings 40 years of experience in international education to the Forum Council. Born in rural Illinois and raised in university towns in the United States and Canada where his father taught as a professor of music, Jonathan grew up in a very multi-cultural atmosphere. After moving to Israel, Kaplan studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, ultimately completing a PhD in modern history. As a researcher and teacher, he developed curricula to help students from diverse backgrounds, both local and international, to gain an understanding of the complexities of the peoples and religions of the Middle East. As Director of Semester Programs, Freshman Programs and later Director of Undergraduate Studies, Jonathan managed larger programs serving hundreds of students from around the world. Partnerships were created with other academic institutions in Jerusalem to encourage Music, Dance and Fine Arts students to study at the Hebrew University. For the past 4 years, Dr. Kaplan has served as the Vice Provost and Chief Administrative Officer of the Rothberg International School, which now hosts some 2,400 students annually, from over 70 countries around the world and attends to the welfare of another 1,000 students and international fellows throughout the university.

In his executive position, Jonathan has been involved in program development, outreach, public relations, finances, and emergency management. He has tried to solidify connections with American universities and has guided the school toward increased activity within the Forum, taking a share in sponsorships, presenting in several conferences and serving as a member of the 2017 conference committee. Kaplan has also taken a central role in Diversity Abroad, serving as a member of the 2018 conference committee and most recently as a member of the review team for the organization’s new AIDE Roadmap. Jonathan is especially committed to helping diversity students gain an international education and has succeeded in raising considerable funds for diversity scholarships. Last year he visited a number of HBCUs and MSIs in an attempt to encourage more students to take advantage of these opportunities to gain an international experience. This year saw the first fruits of this labor with a number of minority students joining both summer and semester programs. Kaplan is also a participant in the EU-funded project “WILLIAM” to develop strategies for “internationalization at home,” along with several European and Israeli institutions of higher education.

Jonathan brings to the table a unique combination: familiarity with American students, experience in running international academic programs and involvement in building university-wide strategies to enhance campus internationalization and the integration of international students into the social and academic fabric of the entire university. Kaplan will also put at the council’s disposal his vast experience in security matters and student welfare – gained in a country where the concern for security is ever present.

Jonathan would also like to contribute to the strengthening of an international perspective in the Forum’s work. As North American universities take an increasingly active role in their students’ study abroad experiences – academically and

administratively – there is a greater need to understand and define the connection between home universities and those institutions that host students abroad. There may be a need for alignment in areas such as Title IX, diversity and inclusion, student safety and academic reporting. This could include services for institutions abroad that seek to better understand the needs of North American schools and wish to comply with their expectations through easily accessible training sessions. Beyond this exists the need for institutions outside the US to set standards that meet their own special needs and constraints.

Joy Phaphouvaninh, Director of Illinois Abroad and Global Exchange, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Joy is a committed education abroad professional with over a decade of experience in both urban public and land-grant higher education institutions, including six years at the City University of New York (CUNY) system and currently at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as Director of Illinois Abroad and Global Exchange. As a mid-career leader, Joy is eager to serve the Forum through critical discussions and active participation with colleagues in the field, and would bring both curiosity and administrative and strategic insight to the Forum Council.

At CUNY, she focused intensely on the development of foundational education abroad policy and procedures to impact risk management and safety abroad and faculty-led programs. Joy also managed a total of over $1.2 million in study abroad scholarships to support high-financial need students from New York City. At Illinois, she currently leads the campus-wide study abroad office and serves on the university study abroad policy committee to develop impactful practices that are aligned with Forum Standards. In 2016, Joy was selected to participate in the University of Illinois Emerging Women Leaders program. She also actively participates in the Big Ten Academic Alliance study abroad directors’ group.

As a first-generation Laotian-American woman, Joy is passionate about ensuring that all students have the opportunities for education abroad. Joy conducted fieldwork on minority religious experiences and studied Telugu in Hyderabad, India as an undergraduate at Kenyon College. She then worked for several years in the refugee and immigrant service field, and completed her Master’s degree in sustainable development from the SIT Graduate Institute. Her range of cross-cultural experiences informs her deep appreciation for the complexity of global human movement, including student mobility.

Her commitment to diversity, access, and inclusion is evidenced through past service on the Benjamin Gilman scholarship panel and most recently on the conference selection committee for 2019 CIEE conference, which is focused on increasing diversity. Under her leadership, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign joined the Diversity Abroad network as an institutional member.

A lifelong learner, Joy is pursuing a Ph.D. in Educational Policy, Organization, and Leadership while informally studying Italian in her free time. Joy also recently participated in an EAIE spotlight seminar series on refugees and will co-facilitate a faculty led service-learning program to Greece this summer on the refugee crisis.

Uttiyo Raychaudhuri, Executive Director, Office of Global Learning, Cornell University

Uttiyo Raychaudhuri is the first Executive Director for the new Office of Global Learning at Cornell University which brings together two groups that support students, faculty and colleges in international learning: Cornell Abroad and International Students and Scholars Office. He has worked in the capacity of faculty and administrator at large public land-grant Universities (UGA and Clemson before Cornell) and has actively engaged in international education for over 18 years. His leadership in education abroad has been recognized twice for the institutions (2012 & 2014) with the IIE Heiskell Award for Best Practices and Innovation in International Education.

Uttiyo is an entrepreneurial academic who intricately understands the nimble frameworks and the business and educational environment (including the challenges and opportunities) of leading international programs at institutions of higher education. His work and campus leadership and research promote global citizenship, environmental justice, and international engagement. An area of strength is Uttiyo’s work in identifying the critical need for curricular integration of education abroad that incorporates global learning. Among the key highlights of his international education career has been related to access and inclusion of educational opportunities. At land-grant institutions he has worked to remove the barriers such as resource allocations, especially cost of studying abroad and the challenges of navigating foreign cultures. Uttiyo has advanced global initiatives including the Universities’ roles being re-envisioned as incubators of economic development through international connections and re-energized with integration across all university verticals. He has directed education abroad programs on every continent (including Antarctica) and his interdisciplinary interests have ranged from architecture to natural resource management, and have combined a multicultural upbringing from India to America allowing myriad experiences and learning opportunities.

Uttiyo is a member of leading professional organizations and has presented his research and practice widely including at The Forum, NAFSA, CIEE and other national/international conferences. He has been actively engaged with the Forum for Education abroad for over a decade and has been a council member for the last 3 years including being the vice-chair of the curriculum committee, member of the faculty development sub-group and a member of other key groups such as the

Forum Curriculum Award working group. Uttiyo is eager to continue his engagement with the council and is seeking your support for his re-election.