Elon professor receives Fulbright Award, will travel to Tajikistan
by Marlena Chertock
In mid-September, an Elon Education professor will travel to Tajikistan to help train teachers for a month. Associate professor Bird Stasz was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for this program.
Stasz has specialized knowledge for education in Tajikistan, she said. She has been traveling to the country since 2002, working with other projects and non-governmental organizations, such as USAID or the Soros Foundation.
“Fulbright … looks to match up projects and people,” Stasz said. “I applied to be on the specialist roster (for Fulbright) and I went through that application. And then colleagues in Tajikistan have a project that they want help with and they have to submit that to Fulbright. And then Fulbright agrees to awarding it. I’m a good match for them. I had knowledge in that area.”
Stasz said Fulbright could have “definitely awarded this to someone else.”
Fulbright programs usually require international exchanges, Stasz said. The specialist program that Stasz will be working on is designed for people with particular skill sets; in Stasz’s case the skill set is teacher education.
“Their schools need a lot of stuff,” Stasz said. “Their schools are modest in comparison to U.S. schools. Whenever I show pictures of U.S. schools (to people in Tajikistan), everybody who ever sees them just shakes their head and says, ‘Look at all those learning materials.’”
The southern part of Tajikistan borders Afghanistan and there is a real desire not to have the country experience extremism, Stasz said.
“Coming to terms with an educational system that pulls people together is one way to offset those kinds of problems,” she said.
Assistant professor of Education Mark Enfield said Stasz is passionate about improving education opportunities for people in Central Asia.
“This award will contribute to her being able to pursue this passion,” he said. “Dr. Stasz is committed to helping schools and teachers reform their practice. Having people committed to improving education there will support a stable and secure future for people of the region and also the world.”
Stasz will be working at the university-level. She will be mentoring teachers, working with formative and summative assessments, consulting with administrators on faculty-development, supporting student teachers, developing coaching and support programs, visiting other teacher-training institutions, lecturing at the undergraduate and graduate levels, participating in and leading seminars and workshops, conducting needs-assessments, developing educational materials and helping professors write manuals and syllabi and develop materials that can be used nationally.
Stasz does not speak the Tajik language, which has seven dialects, so she will be using interpreters, she said.
“I’m there as a resource,” she said. “I’m not driving this bus.”
Elon has its own Guest Fulbright Scholar. Kamol Jiyankhodjaev, originally from Uzbekistan, has been in the U.S. since Feb. 1 and will leave Nov. 30. He is involved in a 10-month Fulbright research program. Stasz is one of his U.S. hosts.
Jiyankhodjaev is researching education management issues “and in particular Management of Change in (the) education sector,” he said.
Jiyankhodjaev is also involved in research with Columbia University.
Stasz’s program gives her and those she’ll be working with a more open structure than a donor-driven project.
“It gives us a lot more flexibility of having to do what we can and can’t do,” she said.
The first time Stasz traveled to Tajikistan to work with USAID was “completely by accident,” she said.
A USAID worker in Tajikistan called and asked her to come to the country to help with a faltering project. She went to help and has been back several times.
“I just fell in love with that part of the world,” Stasz said. “It’s incredibly interesting. It’s incredibly complicated.”
Stasz said she believes that area of the world is going to be the crossroads of religion, energy and cultural identity for the 21 century. Tajikistan has to rebuild after a very violent civil war, Stasz said.
“It’s a fascinating part of the world with a lot of potential for growth, I think,” Stasz said.
Fulbright programs offer a chance for growth.
Stasz called Fulbright programs genuine exchanges. Fulbright creates a space with equal opportunities, a space for real conversation to happen between East and West, she said.
“There’s no real hierarchy here,” she said. “Everybody comes to the table with something. They’re coming with a skill set and between the two of us we’ll see what we can come up with.”
Stasz said she and the Tajikistan people have ideas.
“Let’s work together, get to do some problem-solving about big educational problems,” she said. “It’s what we all should be doing.”