2011 SFS Dean's Leadership Fund Report

Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service Georgetown University

Dean’s Leadership Fund Annual Report 2011

Dean’s Leadership Fund 2011

Friends and supporters, Writing near the end of 2011, I look back on a remarkable year of accomplishment and forward momentum. Our students had access to more learning experiences, our faculty were able to undertake more research and our programs were able to provide more outreach and context because of you. Your contributions to the Dean’s Leadership Fund are of paramount importance in our efforts to provide excellence in education and to remain a top-ranked school of international affairs.

The School of Foreign Service has an ambitious agenda for 2012. The first students to pursue our new Master of Arts in Asian Studies and Master of Arts in Global Human Development will enroll in the fall, and much work lies ahead in preparing for their arrival. Even as we embark on new endeavors, though, our commitments to undergraduate education and to innovative research have never been more important.

The center of the university’s philanthropic activity in the coming year will be For Generations to Come: The Campaign for Georgetown. The goals of the School of Foreign Service within that campaign are aligned with promoting excellence in teaching and research, attracting the best students and professors and supporting experiential learning in its many forms.

The Dean’s Leadership Fund is distinct and its mission is to cultivate the capacity to achieve these goals at the program and initiative level. The Fund provides the flexibility to enable SFS to remain nimble in challenging times. By giving to the Dean’s Leadership Fund, you are ensuring that this School plays a vital role in educating generations to come.

You will see in this report of our activities that over the past year, we have achieved much with your contributions. I promise you that we will do the same and more in 2012. I am sincerely grateful for your support.

With warm regards,

Carol Lancaster Dean, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service

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Contents

Greetings from Dean Carol Lancaster

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Two New Graduate Programs

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Cultivating Capacity to Sustain Academic Excellence

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Cultivating Capacity to Serve Our Students

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Cultivating Capacity to Support Experiential Learning

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Grants from the Dean’s Leadership Fund enabled SFS students to travel to these countries and others in 2011. To learn more, turn to page 10.

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Dean’s Leadership Fund 2011

Two New Graduate Programs Two new graduate degree programs—the M.A. in Asian Studies and the M.A. in Global Human Development—invited students to apply by a January deadline and plan to enroll inaugural classes in September 2012. It would have been impossible to stand up these two degrees without the Dean’s Leadership Fund.

Master of Arts in Asian Studies The M.A. in Asian Studies (MASIA) is designed to provide students with an opportunity to study the dynamics of Asia. Students will discover a unique postgraduate experience whether they seek regional expertise, functional training or disciplinary study in preparation for a doctoral degree.

Students will have the opportunity to study core disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences as they relate to Asia. Students can also specialize in at least one and potentially two areas of functional or regional concentraton.

This innovative balance of traditional area studies and functional training will offer students a package of scholarly expertise and substantive skills that will enhance the intellectual value and the marketability of their degree, whether they pursue employment or a Ph.D. after the M.A.

More on Asia: As part of a university initiative to

expand outreach to India, the Asian Studies Program and Dean Lancaster are partnering with the Mortara Center for International Studies to bring distinguished scholars of India to campus during the 2011–2012 academic year. Lectures in 2011 in the Global India Series focused on foreign direct investment and inequality and on hierarchy and caste. In October, Georgetown hosted a U.S.–India Higher Education Summit; U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered opening remarks. An agreement between Georgetown and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations to create a new Chair of Indian Culture and Society at the university was announced on the Hilltop by Nirupama Menon Rao, ambassador of India to the United States.

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Georgetown continues to focus on China. The Master of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) program is leading SFS efforts to strengthen alumni and programmatic ties. Georgetown has expansive relations and an ambitious set of trial initiatives that reflect China’s growing importance.

Master of Arts in Global Human Development The M.A. in Global Human Development will prepare graduates to become innovators, problem-solvers, change-makers and leaders in the practice of development. It is designed to prepare future development practitioners for lives of change and lives as change agents in this dynamic and important field.

The degree will provide core courses in the economic, social, political and cultural elements of global development. It provides courses in the basic skills of development practice, including program and project design, monitoring and evaluation, budgeting, accounting/finance and program management. It will introduce students to technology and innovation through coursework and an “innovation lab.”

The program will give students the opportunity to develop a regional or sectorial specialization and will provide students with a wealth of practical development experience, including a summer field project with a public, private or not-for-profit development organization. Finally, the program familiarizes students with current issues in development theory, policy and practice, drawing on the extensive resources available at Georgetown University and in Washington, D.C.

To give, visit sfs.georgetown.edu/giving Nirupama Menon Rao, Ambassador of India to the U.S.

Abbie Taylor (left) pursued a summer internship in Jordan

More on International Development: Reducing

poverty and promoting growth and development in poor countries are among the major challenges and opportunities in the world of the 21st century. Standing up the M.A. in Global Human Development is only one of Dean Lancaster’s efforts to draw additional focus to this area. In 2011, the Dean’s Leadership Fund supported overseas student experiences relating specifically to the developing world (see page 10). The Fund also provides support for leadership of the International Development undergraduate (BSFS) certificate program now headed

by Professor Raj Desai. Georgetown as an institution is drawing on the strength of the School of Foreign Service to enhance global human development offerings university-wide; Dean Lancaster is also participating in a cross-campus global health committee chaired by Amb. Mark Dybul.

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Dean’s Leadership Fund 2011

Cultivating Capacity to Sustain Academic Excellence Academic excellence is at the heart of the School of Foreign Service. Our faculty are talented scholars who bring real-world experience and a culture of public service into the classroom. Support from the Dean’s Leadership Fund enables faculty to offer students extraordinary opportunities through a rigorous and innovative curriculum.

Science, Technology and International Affairs STIA’s cutting-edge curriculum focuses on global health, the environment, energy, security and technology. The fund supports the research of STIA Associate Professor Carl J. Dahlman, who joined Georgetown in 2005 after more than 25 years of service at the World Bank. His newest book is The World under Pressure: How China and India Are Influencing the Global Economy and Environment, published by Stanford University press in late 2011.

Professor Dahlman is currently conducting research on the global innovation system toward providing a broad perspective on the forces shaping competition and cooperation across nations and agents including governments, transnational corporations and universities.

STIA is the only one of the seven BSFS majors with a programmatic component—a series of lectures, conferences and other endeavors that would not exist without the vital support of the Dean’s Leadership Fund.

Institute for the Study of Diplomacy With a host of visiting global leaders, ISD international affairs experts broaden and deepen the robust academic environment of the School of Foreign Service. In addition, ISD associates engage in research, outreach and classroom teaching, for which support of the Dean’s Leadership Fund is vital. Courses taught in 2011 covered such topics as complex diplomatic emergencies,

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To give, visit sfs.georgetown.edu/giving STIA Associate Professor Carl Dahlman

African Studies Director Scott Taylor

perspectives on U.S. diplomacy in an “era of engagement,” military peacebuilding, military intelligence and the impact of global terror on diplomacy.

African Studies Program The Dean’s Leadership Fund provides critical support to the African Studies Program. Undergraduates who wish to integrate study of the continent into their majors may do so through the undergraduate certificate. Each year, about 20 students receive the African Studies Certificate by taking a number of courses from various disciplines and writing a thesis or participating in a capstone course.

“We seek to provide students with ways to deepen their understanding of the African continent—its history, politics, economy and, most importantly, its people.

Students pursue classroom experiences and study overseas. We are able to give students these opportunities through the generosity of our donors,” says African Studies Program Director Scott Taylor.

A highlight is GAIN, the Georgetown Africa Interest Network. Now in its fourth year, GAIN brings together the various Africa-related groups on campus. Africafocused research, teaching and programming are widely available at Georgetown. With a plethora of departments, programs, centers and schools, communication about activities had relied largely on personal ties and informal communication. GAIN has served to institutionalize these “pan-Georgetown” linkages.

Institute for the Study of Diplomacy Director Paula Newberg

Faculty Support and Research Grants The Dean’s Leadership Fund supports leadership and visiting faculty for several programs, including the Asian Studies Program, the Program for Jewish Civilization, the International Development Certificate and SFS’ language programs. In addition, each year, the Fund provides faculty with research grants, supporting scholarship on a wide range of topics.

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Dean’s Leadership Fund 2011

Cultivating Capacity to Serve Our Students SFS attracts exceptional students to the Hilltop and provides them with a rigorous education. We also prepare them for life after graduation. The Dean’s Leadership Fund allocates resources to promote career development for students in SFS’ eight master’s degree programs. The Fund also supports Dean Lancaster’s Women’s Leadership Initiative, through which women graduate students gain valuable skills and insight.

Career Development The SFS Graduate Career Development Center serves students and alumni by providing key services. These include individual career advising, targeted job search skills workshops, a regular Career Bulletin with career related information, access to targeted employers through information/industry sessions and site visits and access to Symplicity—a database that has featured more than 21,000 job and internship postings since its launch in January 2009.

Over the past year, the Graduate Career Development Center worked to help Hoyas gain a footing in an uncertain economic environment by holding workshops, reaching out to new employers and engaging alumni in the search of new opportunities for students.

Career services include case interview prep sessions

Interested employers from the private sector have included Investment Technology Group, JP Morgan, Dean & Company, Dalberg, Frontier Strategy Group, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), McKinsey, Oxford Analytica, Kroll and PFC Energy. Hiring in the private sector is up slightly, particularly in consulting firms with large federal practices such as Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte, BAE and Avascent.

Public-sector hiring is steady. Agencies that recruited students in 2011 included the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, as the intelligence community taps into the graduate SFS talent pool.

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The State Department, USAID, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy and the Department of the Treasury have also continued efforts to recruit students for internships and job opportunities.

Lancaster launched the SFS Women’s Leadership Initiative to provide graduate women of the School of Foreign Service with additional opportunities for development of their leadership skills.

The nonprofit sector is still being affected by adverse economic circumstances but continues to hire from the School of Foreign Service. Think tanks and policy organizations regularly employ graduate SFS students because of their well-honed research, analytical and problem-solving skills.

At the heart of the Women’s Leadership Initiative is Georgetown Women in International Affairs (GWIA), a dynamic, student-run organization established in 2010. GWIA’s governing council is organized around three key pillars: leadership skills, networking and community service.

Private Sector Connections: The Graduate Career

Highlights from GWIA’s inaugural year included a two-day leadership training workshop, which focused on practical skills and tools for success in leadership, personal branding and professionalism, led by Ted Hoff (F’77). The year also featured a networking tea with a group of distinguished women leaders including Paula Dobriansky of Thomson Reuters, Amb. Elizabeth Jones of APCO Worldwide, Nisha Desai of USAID, Jan Piercy of ShoreBank and Sarah Margon of the Center for American Progress. A high point of the fall was an intimate talk with Ana Palacio, who was the first woman to serve as Foreign Affairs Minister of Spain.

Development Center has continued to reach out to employers in the private sector. As one example, the Center worked with Deloitte to create a “mentor” program that links Deloitte consultants with interested students in order to make them more competitive in the application process. Four students participated over the summer and ten in the fall. In addition, Deloitte held office hours for interested students, a diversity event to encourage candidacy and a case primer session where students could practice for case interviews.

Nonproliferation Graduate Fellowship Program: One public sector program that continues to seek SFS talent is the Nonproliferation Graduate Fellowship Program. Selectees work within the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation on programs designed to detect, prevent and reverse the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction while mitigating the risks from nuclear operations. Since 2006, a total of 14 Georgetown graduate students have been selected. After “graduating” from the program, six were hired for full-time positions with the NNSA, one is working for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one is doing work supporting the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), one has joined the U.S. Foreign Service and one is in the private sector. Four Georgetown students served as 2011 Fellows.

SFS Women’s Leadership Initiative Despite large gains in the status of professional women in the public, private and non-profit sectors, women continue to experience challenges in reaching positions of leadership. To address these challenges, Dean

Paula Dobriansky leads a GWIA discussion

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Dean’s Leadership Fund 2011

Cultivating Capacity to Support Experiential Learning The SFS commitment to a theory-meets-practice education requires opportunities for students to learn outside the classroom. Often, this takes the form of internships and study abroad. On the Hilltop, it includes new undergraduate fellowships and the School’s signature student activity, the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs.

Overseas Internships Maegen Smith can’t just name one experience she would have missed out on without the support of the Dean’s Leadership Fund—she can name half a dozen or more.

“Editor, writer, researcher, mediator, consular section observer, delegation control officer and Foreign Service Officer” were among the roles Smith (MALAS’12) explored during her summer as an intern in the Environment, Science, Technology, and Health section of U.S. Embassy Brasília.

Smith was charged with preparing the section’s monthly newsletter and found herself escorting a delegation from Peru one week, preparing reports for Washington the next. She honed her language skills as she worked in both Portuguese and Spanish.

Maegen Smith interned at U.S. Embassy Brasília

“My co-workers challenged me every day by tasking me with diplomatic notes, document translation, cables or the organization of diplomatic meetings regarding the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development,” Smith says. “The internship gave me the opportunity to test-drive the career and understand the structure of the State Department.”

More than 70 undergraduate and graduate students were awarded SFS grants for summer internships. In most cases, the internship was unpaid, but the student pursuing it needed money to travel to and from the site. The Dean’s Leadership Fund was the sole source of support for these grants.

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Smith says she is more focused as a result of the internship—advancing her study of Portuguese, applying for the Presidential Management Fellowship and attending class with renewed excitement. “Because of the financial support I received from donors benefitting students with unpaid internships, I not only gained professional experience… I also learned about myself,” Smith says.

Georgetown Journal of International Affairs The student-run Georgetown Journal is distributed to retail outlets throughout the country and to subscribers around the world. It is also unique among SFS student activities because graduate and undergraduate students work closely together to produce the Journal.

Experience earned on the staff ranges from editing and design layout to business management and marketing.

“I have interviewed two high-ranking ambassadors and a former head of state—and I have worked with dozens of intelligent and talented undergraduate and graduate students from SFS,” says Michael McKeon

(MAGES’11). “Working the Journal has been a great experience overall and a very worthwhile way to spend my time at Georgetown.” Themes for the 2011 editions were “Espionage Exposed” and “Resilience,” and students collaborated with Georgetown’s Institute for Law, Science, and Global Security and the Atlantic Council to produce a special issue, “International Engagement on Cyber.”

Mortara Undergraduate Research Fellowships The Dean’s Leadership Fund is supporting the establishment of a new program aimed at connecting first-year students with world-class research opportunities. SFS and the Mortara Center for International Studies are inviting jointly engaged and motivated freshmen to pursue Mortara Undergraduate Research Fellowships. A select group of the finest students will have the opportunity to partner with professors as research-assistants and co-authors on complex research projects throughout their undergraduate career.

By empowering students as generators, not just consumers, of knowledge, we believe that Mortara Undergraduate Research Fellows will emerge from the program with the in-depth skills and training to tackle a range of issues in foreign affairs.

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T

he Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS), founded in 1919, is a premier school of international affairs. At Georgetown University’s Washington, D.C. and Qatar campuses, SFS provides a rigorous education combining theory and practice and instills the values of service.

To learn how you can support the mission of the School of Foreign Service, contact: Richard Jacobs Senior Director of Development School of Foreign Service Georgetown University 202/687-7088 rj224@georgetown.edu sfs.georgetown.edu/giving

SFS embodies the values and spirit of Georgetown University. A Catholic and Jesuit, student-centered research university, Georgetown educates women and men to be reflective lifelong learners, to be responsible and active participants in civic life and to live generously in service to others. For more information about Georgetown University, visit georgetown.edu.

SFS Dean’s Office – December 2011

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