Vermont Tops Index Measuring Local Food Availability

By on May 16, 2012 in Brattleboro Vermont, Details on the Master Degrees, Sustainable Development degree (all posts)

Vermont was recently ranked first among the fifty US states by Strolling of the Heifers in their 2012 Locavore Index. Based in Brattleboro, Vermont, Strolling of the Heifers is a nonprofit organization that works to save farms in New England. According to the organization’s website, the Index is “an indicator of how states compare in their commitment to raising and eating locally grown food.”

The Locavore Index uses data from the USDA, US Census Bureau, and other government sources to measure the per-capita presence of farmers markets and community-supported agricultural enterprises (CSAs) in each US state. According to this year’s Index data, Vermont has 42 farmers markets and CSAs for every 100,000 people living in the state, well ahead of the Index’s runner-up, Iowa, which has 24.

Vermont’s high ranking reflects both a demand from Vermonters for locally grown food and the availability of local food in the state. As Strolling of the Heifers reports, former Vermont secretary of agriculture Roger Allbee believes it reflects even more than that: “Vermont’s position at the top of the Index shows the strength of Vermont’s commitment to innovation and entrepreneurship in local agriculture,” Allbee says.

Consumer interest in eating locally grown food, also known as locavorism, has been increasing since 2005 according to Strolling’s website. Proponents of locavorism say eating locally grown foods is healthier and more environmentally responsible and encourages local job creation and diversification of local agriculture.

Learn more about Strolling of the Heifers’ annual parade and celebration of local agriculture here.

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SIT Student Reflects on Intercultural Communications Course in Turkey

By on April 27, 2012 in Details on the Master Degrees, Field-based degrees and courses, Intercultural Service, Leadership & Management degree (all posts)

by Ian Hefele

In January 2012, 22 SIT students (who are American) convened in Istanbul, Turkey for SIT’s field-based Intercultural Communications course taught by Professor Linda Gobbo. We spent a week in Istanbul doing community service, touring the city, and learning Turkish. Of course, we drank buckets of tea. Week two was spent in a rural village about five hours driving distance from Istanbul. Here is our video about our experience.

One night in Yenice, as the village was called, some American students and their Turkish families converged on my host family’s home. I lived with the mayor of Yenice, so there was room to host. My host mother was excited to have visitors, and she instantly went into a cooking frenzy. The best china was brought out. A tablecloth was presented, the tea was boiled, and the snacks kept coming. We were immediately allowed to sit in the sitting room (most Turkish households which can afford it have one), and the snacks kept coming. Tavla (Backgammon) was pulled out and we were taught how to play. Much hilarity ensued when we quickly learned we did not play up to Turkish standards. The tea glasses were refilled before they were even finished, and the snacks kept coming. We played until about 1:00 AM, and only after I insisted we should get some rest did the snacks stop coming.

Later, my host sisters said this was the best night they had in Yenice for quite some time. They were so happy we visited. I could only fall sleep after we all became Facebook friends. Is this a technological way to extend the hospitality across the continents?

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SIT Spring Photo Contest

By on April 27, 2012 in Alumni/Life after SIT, Student Life

Calling all SIT graduate students and alumni!

The time has arrived for our Spring Photo Contest. Please send us your favorite photos from your experience with SIT. All photos are welcomed—on-campus experiences, practicum sites, or whatever inspired you along the way. Now is a great time to reminisce about your SIT experience while looking back at your old photos.
Photos should be submitted into any of three categories: Experiential, Extraordinary, or Viewer’s Choice (our public voting category). The winning photographer from each category will receive $200 to give to an SIT-approved charity of his or her choice.

For all contest information and to submit your photos, visit our online form. The deadline for submissions is June 1, 2012. Good luck!

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Tajiki Student at SIT Presents on International Student Recruitment at NYU Conference

By on April 27, 2012 in Alumni/Life after SIT, International Education degree (all posts), Student Life

by Bakhtiyor Isoev and Heather Beard

SIT MA in International Education student Bakhtiyor Isoev delivered a presentation at the 7th Annual International Education Conference held on March 29–30, 2012, at New York University in New York City. His presentation was titled “Strategic International Education Lens: Recruiting, Selecting, Training, and Retaining the Right Students and Scholars.” An international student from Tajikistan, Isoev is also a Fulbright Foreign Student Program Fellow (2011–2013).

Entitled “Advancing Global Education in Austere Times,” the conference was organized by the International Education department at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.

In his presentation, Isoev addressed various strategies for recruiting, selecting, training, and retaining strategic students and scholars for US government–funded exchange programs, such as the Edmund S. Muskie Graduate Fellowship Program, the Fulbright Program, the Global Undergraduate Exchange Program, and the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program, and other exchange programs available for citizens of Tajikistan. He also argued that Central Asia—in particular Tajikistan—is of strategic importance to the US government and its development assistance programs because of the region’s geographic location.

The conference was attended by graduate students completing master’s degrees and PhDs in the United States within the fields of education, both comparative education and international and global education.

Topics presented by other attendees included:

• “Active Participation in International Development Education Programming,” presented by Daniel Munier, New York University;
• “Internationalizing US community colleges—Where are we now and how can we move forward?” presented by Chenyu Wang, University of Maryland; and
• “Madrasa Aliya—Encompassing religion and modernity in higher education,” presented by Mika Abdullaeva, an SIT alumna from Uzbekistan currently studying at University of Massachusetts.

Isoev is currently completing a master’s degree in international education at SIT, where he is learning how to design, deliver, and evaluate international educational exchange and training programs. He says, “I envision myself somewhere at the Ministry of Education in Tajikistan at some point in my career, and I am taking each and every opportunity to have a meaningful Fulbright experience in the US, which is helping me reach the career goals SIT is preparing me to meet.”

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SIT Alumna Recognized in Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World”

By on April 23, 2012 in Alumni/Life after SIT, Conflict Transformation degree (all posts), Intercultural Service, Leadership & Management degree (all posts)

An alumna of SIT’s MA in Intercultural Service, Leadership, and Management program, Anjali Gopalan, was recently recognized in Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World.”

Gopalan, 54, has worked to advance the rights of gays and transgendered individuals in India with the Naz Foundation, a New Delhi-based NGO working on HIV/AIDS and sexual health. Gopalan successfully petitioned the courts to eliminate a British-era law against sodomy. She also runs a home for HIV-positive orphans.

Anjali Gopalan

Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, writes in Time, “I met Gopalan in 1995, when I was researching a new disease whose name was spoken only in whispers in India. At the time, doctors and nurses in some Delhi hospitals would not touch people infected with HIV. Gopalan not only touched them; she took them into her home and danced with them. She escorted me to the hidden places where gays and lesbians met: in Nehru Park on Sunday evenings and at a party where men arrived garbed as Bollywood heroines from the 1950s and ’60s. It was a threatened world, and Gopalan had returned home from Brooklyn to protect it. Gopalan has brought about a revolution in the status of sexual minorities in India — and has done so joyously, dancing.”

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