Lecturer in Education Anita Charles. (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

Having both a longstanding interest in India and a winter 2016 sabbatical on the horizon, Anita Charles was thinking hard about a way to mesh the interest with the opportunity.

A lecturer on the education faculty and the director of secondary teacher education at �ֲ���ý, Charles wanted to learn more about two aspects of childhood education in India. First, policies and practices pertaining to children with special needs; second, the role of digital technology, particularly how it aligns with literacy education.

​She’ll get that chance next year after receiving a
Fulbright–Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award, ​which will ​allow her to work in India from January to April 2016.​

Here’s how the award came about. As Charles was pondering her sabbatical options, she met a professor of education from India who was working at Maine’s Thomas College as a Fulbright Scholar. Deepika Papneja, an assistant professor of education at Lady Shri Ram College for Women in New Delhi, was a scholar in residence at Thomas from 2013 to 2014.

“It was as if the stars aligned,” Charles says. “We talked about her experience, what she was doing, and where she was from.” Soon thereafter, when Charles learned of a Fulbright scholarship opportunity from �ֲ���ý’ external grants office (aka the Office of Sponsored Programs and Research Compliance), Papneja agreed to arrange a letter of invitation from Lady Shri Ram in support of Charles’ Fulbright application.

“The process happened very quickly, from meeting Deepika, to learning about the Fulbright options, to applying,” Charles says. The application was approved and she received a Fulbright–Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award. (Read more about Fulbright grants awarded to �ֲ���ý people in 2015).

Charles will teach courses in education, child development, and language acquisition at Lady Shri Ram, a unit of the University of Delhi. This first-hand experience with Indian approaches to elementary education, she hopes, will add a cross-cultural dimension to her understanding of literacy and special education.

“They’re interested in possible curriculum development that I might be able to lend my expertise toward,” Charles notes. “And they’ve mentioned my participating in interdisciplinary forums, seminars, and local outreach programs.”

When Charles came to �ֲ���ý in 2004, she brought classroom teaching experience ranging from first grade to adult education, and including 10 years of teaching high school English. In India, she says, “I’m eager to do observations and get some sense of how India approaches public education. And I’ll be working with students who are going into teaching field, so I’m looking at what they’re doing.

‘It’s going to be really exciting to just embed myself in India’s culture and learn about their educational structures.’

“I go in with no preconceived ideas, other than the fact that I believe that they commit, in many ways, to some things that we do in this country — in terms of wanting to incorporate technology and wanting to have policies that benefit special-needs kids.”

But Charles’ interest in India is personal as well as professional. She and her husband, Chris Gelder, adopted three of their five children from India, and two of the three —daughters Devki Gelder, 16, and Malvika Gelder, 14 — will accompany Charles on her sabbatical in the land of their birth.

“I hope that it brings them a new understanding of their own cultural heritage,” she says.

Charles is especially excited about working at a women’s college in India, a nation with attitudes about gender that are quite different from those in the U.S. “I would like to believe that Lady Shri Ram is an environment of empowerment for women — for their voices, for their presence, for their education, for their futures.”

Charles says, “I expect a lot of the experience to be a challenge, in a very good sense of the word. I think it will push me beyond my comfort zone, and give me a new lens through which to look at Indian education as well as to look at our own education systems in this country.

“It’s going to be really exciting to just embed myself in the culture and learn about their educational structures.”

Charles has a bachelor’s degree in French and education from Dartmouth College, and a master’s in education in human development and psychology, with a focus on language and culture, from Harvard. She earned a doctorate from the University of New Hampshire in the area of adolescent literacy.

First-year students Natacha Danon, left, and Olivia Krishnaswami are sharing a Davis Projects for Peace grant for a project in India. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College.

Two first-year students from the Seattle area have received a $10,000 Davis Projects for Peace grant to stimulate economic development and support a rural education initiative in a community in India.

The project devised by Olivia Krishnaswami and Natacha Danon will support humanitarian efforts in the district of Kanchipuram, in the state of Tamil Nadu, by marketing to U.S. customers silk scarves made by local women.

The initiative is one of 100 initiatives supported this year by the program. At age 104, founder and philanthropist Kathryn W. Davis funds the program to encourage college students to undertake innovative, meaningful projects that promote peace in the world.

Krishnaswami and Danon are partnering with the , which supports marginalized people in nearly 200 rural villages in Kanchipuram. RIDE provides “bridge schools” to help move children from labor into education, self-help groups for women and training for entrepreneurial and vocational success, and it also monitors compliance with child labor regulations.

“The people in RIDE have this vision of the community as something stronger than what it is now and they are working to get there,” says Krishnaswami.

How will her and Danon’s project advance the cause of peace? In the most basic sense, peace is the absence of violence, explains Krishnaswami.

“But there’s this greater idea of peace meaning that people in a society are getting what they need — food, water, education. And with this broader sense of peace comes stability, and less likelihood that a community will fall prey to violence.”

Kanchipuram is known for its specialty silk saris, the women’s garments that consist of a single strip of cloth that is wrapped and draped around the body. Many women manufacture the saris at home.

But the sari industry is linked with perpetuating disproportionate levels of poverty for women and children, especially for those from traditionally lower castes. Because gender bias discourages women from working outside the home, factories often look to children as a labor force, keeping them from getting an education and locking them into a future of poorly paying work.

“Exclusion of women from the workforce has led to the rise of child labor as an alternative to boosting family income,” the �ֲ���ý students explain in their Projects for Peace proposal. “With children working rather than attending school, human capital levels stagnate.

“The development of human capital is crucial for a community to uplift itself out of poverty and social inequality.”

The Projects for Peace grant will enable Krishnaswami and Danon to employ RIDE self-help groups to create scarves in the styles of the saris that they already produce. They will market the scarves in the United States, dividing proceeds equally among business expenses (including payment to the scarf makers), product and market development, and funds for RIDE programs.

To distribute the scarves, Krishnaswami and Danon will recruit sales representatives on college and high school campuses, hold benefit concerts and branch out to the retail sector through local businesses in Seattle and Maine — including the restaurant Mother India in Lewiston.

They estimate the project will initially employ more than 100 women and generate $3,300 for RIDE. The short-term goal is to sell 500 scarves by the end of summer 2012, but the project is designed to become sustainable over time.

Overall the project will create employment opportunities for women, utilize preexisting skills in an environmentally conscious way and support the programs of RIDE through funds and awareness.

The project originated with Krishnaswami, who implemented a program to sell canvas bags for RIDE in high school. “I’ve had this dream for a long time. I got so passionate about the idea of it.

“I had the idea that maybe it could grow, but I didn’t know how to do that. So getting this grant has really kick-started it for me.”

Krishnaswami is a double major in politics and women and gender studies. Danon expects to major in politics or anthropology.

The �ֲ���ý Fulbright recipients are: John Atchley, class of 2006, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; Jill Jakimetz, class of 2005, of Veneta, Ore.; Timothy McCall, class of 2008, of Andover, Mass.; Ross Van Horn, class of 2008, of Highland Park, N.J.; and Rebecca Westlake, class of 2007, of Goldens Bridge, N.Y..

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently listed �ֲ���ý College among the educational institutions that produced high numbers of Fulbright grant recipients this year. �ֲ���ý appears in a list of top Fulbright producers in the Oct. 19 print edition of the Chronicle.

(Although five �ֲ���ý alumni received awards for 2009-10, the list credits the college with three recipients. According to a spokeswoman for the Institute for International Education, which administers the Fulbright program, the list supplied to the Chronicle was based on an information snapshot that did not include all recipients.)

Atchley, whose work as a Fulbright Fellow was in the same issue of the Chronicle, received a Fulbright-Jawaharlal Nehru Scholarship to study India’s Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) highway development project. The project is designed to connect India’s four largest cities, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai, with more than 3,000 miles of four- and six-lane expressways.

Focusing on the portion of the highway project that stretches through Uttar Pradesh and Bitar, areas known for high levels of illiteracy and poor governance, Atchley is examining the project’s success in promoting inclusive economic development.

“Measuring the impact of the GQ project in these states presents an extreme test for the idea of inclusive growth that’s promoted by the government,” Atchley says. “I plan to examine the success of this stretch of the GQ in promoting inclusive, equitable growth, and recommend new policies that can enhance these nascent efforts.”

Atchley, who says that his semester abroad in Dharamsala, Tibet, while in his junior year of �ֲ���ý influenced his decision to study India, left a job as chief of staff for Communications and Intergovernmental Affairs at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection to undertake his Fulbright-Nehru project. The Fulbright-Nehru grants are distinctive in the Fulbright program because they receive matching funds from the Indian government.

Fulbright research fellowship recipients include Jakimetz, who is undertaking environmental studies research in the Netherlands and Ireland, and Van Horn, who is studying agro-energy in rural communities in Brazil.

Westlake embarked on an English Teaching Assistantship in Madrid, Spain. After graduation from �ֲ���ý, she completed a two-year placement with Teach for America, a nonprofit organization that recruits college graduates and places them in low-performing school districts. In Madrid, she works in a bilingual program with adolescent students.

“The Fulbright in Madrid allows me to gain a global perspective on urban education as well as a greater perspective on the problems that face the American public education system,” says Westlake.

McCall also received an English Teaching Assistantship, and is completing his Fulbright in Germany.

Fulbright recipients come from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and from more than 250 U.S. institutions, representing a diverse cross-section of American higher education. About 1,250 U.S. Student Program grants are awarded each year.

— Becca Chacko ’10

In Thailand, the death of a loved one is never a sad occasion. In the Buddhist tradition, family members celebrate the life of the deceased. As a guest at a cremation ceremony, I saw female friends and relatives throw rice and flowers in beautifully made bamboo baskets on the funeral pyre. Considered the mother of life, rice is placed with the body as an offering to aid with passage into the next life. — Anna Yalouris ’09

“Your job has been outsourced to India.” I shouldn’t have been surprised — though a week earlier, at our insurance company’s Holiday Concert Celebration, the CEO had trumpeted our “three-times-the-industry growth rate” over hot hors d’oeuvres and good tidings.

Pittsburgh steel. New England textiles. American information technology. Is the last going the way of the others — overseas? Apparently. The communications revolution could mean another surge of job losses in the coming decades — maybe 40 million — according to former Federal Reserve vice chairman Alan Blinder. Is it too late to stem the tide? It is for me.

After the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, I scratched my way back into IT as a contractor. Then, on Feb. 20, 2006, I landed a full-time position. Terra firma, I thought. But signs of trouble came in May when my boss breezily mentioned the new “off-shoring” initiative. It was a good thing, he said, that would rid us of “repetitive” functions and free us to “strut our stuff.”

Soon after, the CIO had his quarterly meet-and-greet with new hires. It was a feel-good fest, so I felt like the skunk at a garden party by mentioning the off-shoring. One woman mentioned breathlessly that she’d never worked at a company where everyone held doors open for each other. Yes, everyone agreed, it was so!

So we embraced the off-shoring. What choice was there? Soon we were meeting regularly with our Indian partners in “hand-off” sessions. We (the “native team”) demonstrated, step-by-step, the “Wave 1” tasks, those to be transitioned first.

I worked with Praveen. Though I was leery of the off-shoring process (the condo hunt was on hold), I couldn’t help but like him. He managed to use my first name in every sentence in an unaffected way. “Yes, I understand, Bob!” It was like sitting with Dale Carnegie, who noted that “a man’s name is to him the sweetest and most important sound.” Akhilesh and Pavan spoke the same.

One day, Praveen proudly clicked up a Web site showing HITEC City, the self-contained technology city in Hyderabad, India, to which Praveen would soon be returning — after absorbing the “Wave 2” tasks. And it was breathtaking, rising like Emerald City out of Oz. The first structure at HITEC city was the 10-story Cyber Towers about a decade ago. Then came Cyber Gateway and Cyber Pearl. Now there are 29 IT parks at HITEC City.

As I feverishly trained Praveen and Akhilesh to meet tight turnover deadlines, they in turn passed my “brain dumps,” bucket-brigade style, across two oceans to Maitreyee back in Hyderabad. Things moved swiftly, and soon I was tapped dry. The day Praveen flew home was awkward. “Goodbye, Bob.”

A week after the Holiday Celebration at Mechanics Hall in Worcester — built in 1857 to support manufacturing workers — the CIO gathered us to review the budget. It was true, he said, it’s been a “terrific year.” Fourth quarter is looking good. ROI is double-digit. We are exceeding plan, he said.

But the company was moving into “softer” markets. A lot of business is in slumping Michigan, and we over-invested in technology in 2006. Storm clouds are gathering. Yes, he admitted, the timing could have been better on last week’s $2 million corporate gift to restore the downtown theater, but we’re “committed to the community.” His voice choked when he announced 53 layoffs, more than 10 percent of the American IT staff.

Back at our desks, everyone was white-knuckling it. When my phone rang, I was directed up the escalator into a plush office and the door was shut. “Is this for my new promotion?” I joked lamely. No one laughed.

What happened next was a blur. Outsourcing. Changing directions. Not performance related. My manager didn’t use the word “expendable,” but it’s all I could think of.

The sharply dressed woman from the Office of Talent Management went over the “Separation Agreement,” typed on letterhead, addressed personally (“Dear Robert”), and listing 22 bulleted items. As she moved down the list, my throat caught momentarily. Just then, pugilist-philosopher Mike Tyson’s words after his last bout raced through my head. “I’ll take my beating like a man.” I didn’t want them to see me cry.

Oh, they held the door open for me on the way out.

By Bob Muldoon ’81 Illustration by Marty Braun

Bob Muldoon lives in Andover, Mass.

Featuring the college gamelan orchestra and a Cambodian music and dance troupe, this year’s World Music Weekend at �ֲ���ý College takes place Friday and Saturday, March 24 and 25, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. Titled “The Ramayana in Southeast Asia,” the weekend explores adaptations of the ancient, seminal epic from India titled “Ramayana.”

The Cambodian Classics Ensemble, a Washington, D.C.-based performance group, offers a dance demonstration and workshop at 1:30 p.m. Friday. At 8 p.m., the ensemble performs scenes from the “Raemker,” the Cambodian adaptation of the Hindu epic. A pre-concert lecture takes place at 7:30 p.m.

At 4 p.m. Saturday, the college gamelan orchestra, �ֲ���ý dancers and guest artists perform “The Abduction of Sita,” an episode from an Indonesian version of “Ramayana.”

All events take place in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St., and are open to the public at no cost. The festival is sponsored by the Freeman Foundation. For more information, please call 207-786-6135 or 207-753-6968.

The 2,000-year-old “Ramayana” is a long, complex tale exploring the conflict between good and evil. Its numerous plot twists include a dynastic struggle, a hero’s exile, the kidnapping of his wife and a grand-scale battle between demons and gods.

Though of Indian origin, “it’s a cultural icon for all of South and Southeast Asia,” says Gina Fatone, assistant professor of music and the program’s organizer. “It’s amazing how one epic poem can travel and have many different variants.”

The “Ramayana,” she says, is “often referred to as a story that has become indigenized everywhere it has gone. The characters’ names sometimes change and details of the performance sometimes change, but the core elements of the story remain the same.”

The Cambodian Classics Ensemble consists of professional musicians and dancers, most of whom came from Cambodia since the mid-1970s in response to civil strife there. Its members include music director Chum Ngek, a National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellow who has mastered more than 20 instruments and diverse traditional genres.

Performing with the ensemble is Sok Sokheun, a Cambodian dancer living in Portland.

Directed by Fatone, the �ֲ���ý Gamelan Mawar Makar (“Blossom of Inspiration”) plays music from West and Central Java, in Indonesia. “Gamelan” refers to a traditional Indonesian percussion orchestra composed mainly of tuned gongs, metal-keyed instruments and drums, and sometimes featuring voice and stringed instruments.

Joining the gamelan for the Saturday performance are Undang Sumarna and dancer Ben Arcangel. Sumarna, a longtime mentor to Fatone and an Indonesian master drummer, has taught gamelan at the University of California, Santa Cruz, for nearly three decades. He is serving as guest director of the gamelan during a weeklong residency at �ֲ���ý, sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Also a Mellon Learning Associate, Ben Arcangel is a Filipino-American dancer expert in Indonesian dance. A performer and graduate student based in San Francisco, he will coach and perform with the �ֲ���ý dancers.

Sagaree Sengupta, a member of the Asian studies faculty at �ֲ���ý, gives an introductory talk for the Saturday program.

A recent adviser to the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, and University Professor at Columbia University, Jagdish Bhagwati will give a lecture titled, Globalization: Why It Has a Human Face, at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 31, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave., �ֲ���ý College.

Sponsored by the �ֲ���ý College Lecture Committee, and co-sponsored by the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, the �ֲ���ý College economics department and the �ֲ���ý Economics Society, the talk is open to the public free of charge.

A senior fellow in international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and recognized by his peers in economics as a leading trade expert, Bhagwati is the author of the recent book In Defense of Globalization (Oxford University Press, 2004). The volume addresses many of the criticisms often directed at economic globalization. The process, he argues, “has a human face, but we need to make that face more agreeable.” The author’s “charming cosmopolitanism will allay fears of critics convinced that economists are incapable of appreciating non-economic values,” wrote New York Times Book Review critic Daniel W. Drezner.

In the book, Bhagwati defines the oft-contested meaning of globalization: “Economic globalization constitutes integration of national economies into the international economy through trade, direct foreign investment (by corporations and multinationals), short-term capital flows, international flows of workers and humanity generally, and flows of technology.”

One of three in a series of �ֲ���ý College-sponsored speakers who deal in matters that are both provocative and serious, Bhagwati’s presentation raises numerous questions for thoughtful observers, says lecture committee member Michael Sargent, assistant professor of psychology.

Is globalization inevitable? Is it desirable? What should governments do, if anything, about it? As an adviser to the UN, the WTO and Human Rights Watch Asia, Bhagwati has come to conclusions that many will find surprising, says Sargent. For example, he argues that global outsourcing of jobs is not a major cause of job loss in the United States, an argument he presents in a piece provocatively titled, “Why Your Job Isn’t Moving to Bangalore.” He has also proposed – contrary to critics’ claims – that globalization may benefit women in developing countries.

“The lecture committee thought that having him to �ֲ���ý to discuss ideas such as these would make for a healthy debate, and on a topic of broad interest and timeliness,” Sargent says. “What better diversion from the rigors of our own ‘March Madness’ could there be?”

The author of more than 50 volumes and 300 articles, Bhagwati is a native of India. He attended Cambridge University where he graduated in 1956. He continued his studies at MIT and Oxford, returning to India in 1961 as professor of economics at the Indian Statistical Institute, and then as professor of international trade at the Delhi School of Economics. He returned to MIT in 1968, leaving it 12 years later as the Ford Professor of Economics to join Columbia.

Three members of the �ֲ���ý College faculty have been awarded institutional Phillips Fellowships to support a full year’s leave at full pay for the pursuit of significant scholarship, new research or the development of new courses or pedagogical approaches.
Funded by a college endowment established through a bequest of �ֲ���ý’ fourth president, the late Charles F. Phillips, and his wife, Evelyn M. Phillips, the fellowships honor excellence among faculty.

This year’s Phillips Faculty Fellows are Pamela Baker, of Auburn, professor of biology and a member of the college’s class of 1970; J. Dykstra Eusden, of South Paris, professor of geology and a member of the class of 1980; and Rebecca Herzig, of Lewiston, associate professor of women and gender studies.

Baker has been invited by the Maulana Azad Dental College, in India, to work with its faculty on incorporating student research into the basic science curriculum. Such a change will require new approaches to education, specifically a shift to a more investigative approach rather than rote memorization of facts — a shift already embraced at �ֲ���ý, where inquiry-based science teaching and learning are standard practice.

Baker will also study strategies from Indian public health education that can help her integrate a health literacy perspective into her teaching at �ֲ���ý. Focusing on oral diseases and HIV/AIDS, she will investigate factors influencing how public health initiatives put scientific responses to disease into practice. A key part of the project is to promote cooperation between science educators in India and the United States.

Eusden’s project involves field study and three-dimensional modeling of active faults on New Zealand’s South Island. He will evaluate the structural geology, fault motions, earthquake hazard potential and landscape development in the Marlborough Fault Zone, an active plate-tectonic setting. The study area is part of the Seaward Kaikoura and Amuri Mountain Ranges, which are currently experiencing rapid uplift.

Based at Canterbury University, Eusden will conduct field research in fall 2005. Geodynamic modeling at the University of Maine will take place the following winter, and in spring 2006 he will return to New Zealand to finish fieldwork and examine regions where modeling and field-based interpretations are at odds.

With the support of her fellowship, Herzig aims to complete a book tentatively titled The Technological Animal: Hair Removal and the Making of Modern America. The project is intended, first, to bring an empirical, historical perspective to recent theoretical debates about the nature of sexual difference, by illuminating some of the mundane practices used to maintain the appearance of sexual dimorphism.

Second, Herzig seeks to elucidate the growth of these practices as indicating larger historical trends — in fact, to use the history of hair removal as a window through which to examine America’s political transformation from the Colonial era to the present.

Phillips Fellowship leaves typically take place away from �ֲ���ý, so that recipients can interact with leading scholars in their fields. The fellowship includes support for the replacement of the faculty recipient, as well as travel expenses to research venues. Two or three of the fellowships are awarded to faculty annually.

The Phillips bequest also supports Phillips Student Fellowships, which afford students the opportunity to undertake research in international and other culturally distinct settings.

Cristin McKnight, of Los Angeles, is the second �ֲ���ý College graduate to receive a 2004-05 grant for postgraduate research from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program.

McKnight, a 2002 �ֲ���ý graduate and art history major, arrived in India in August and will stay through May 2005, researching traditional “kalamkari” textiles in the country’s south. Michael Roberts, who graduated this year from �ֲ���ý, received a Fulbright to research traditional music in Mongolia.

McKnight will pursue a comprehensive study of contemporary kalamkari fabrics. The Fulbright award covers her travel costs and affords a monthly stipend during her stay. She is dividing her time between the city of Bangalore and a small town, Sri Kalahasti, that is a center of traditional kalamkari work.

In the Hindi-Urdu languages, McKnight explains, “kalamkari” means “pen work” and refers to a traditional technique of painting fabric with dye and, specifically, to wall-hangings with mythological or religious themes made from such cloth.

“I’m examining the way older traditions and techniques have informed contemporary practice of the art,” McKnight writes in an e-mail from Bangalore. “I’m particularly interested in the way women have positioned themselves in the production and exchange of kalamkari cloth and Indian textiles in general.”

McKnight first studied in India during the spring semester of her junior year at �ֲ���ý. Visiting Jaipur, in the north, she studied traditional hand block-printing and investigated social issues involving the sari, the traditional dress.

McKnight hopes to establish a career involving some combination of curating, teaching and textile design, with the focus on Indian fabrics and art. Since graduation, she has done gallery and museum work in Los Angeles while studying fabric design and Hindi language.

At �ֲ���ý, she worked in the theater department costume shop with the late of South Portland, an assistant professor of theater and highly respected theatrical designer.

“She opened my eyes to the many different ways that fabric can be used and appreciated,” McKnight writes. “Ellen was an incredible mentor for me, and we shared a passionate love for fabric.”

“The �ֲ���ý family really does extend around the world,” adds McKnight, noting that her circle in Bangalore includes the mother of a friend from the college.

The Fulbright Program, established in 1946, is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. This year’s U.S. Fulbright students were selected from among more than 5,000 applicants. Coming from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, recipients are drawn from a diverse cross-section of American higher education representing more than 250 U.S. institutions.