Tag Archives: Social Change

Until Africa chats again!

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Noel-Mbise

For the final webisode of Africa Chatter for the Spring term we present to you Noel Mbise, a fulbright student from Tanzania, who has worked diligently in the IEP and MBA programs to reenter the field of resource management in Tanzania with renewed energy. His experience is unique and his voice and tone are reassuring. In the interview, we shared insights regarding the environment, travel to and from places within the continent of Africa, the community aspect of African cultures, how IEP issues are in fact everyone’s issues, and how healthy debate is fostered at the Institute. He was a magnificent person to interview and a wonderful panelist for the discussion following the African Nations Club screening of Delicious Peace Grows in a Ugandan Coffee bean. As special send-off, he is also graduating this Spring term, so congratulations to him!

Enjoy the podcast and post your reflections of MIIS Radio to help it grow over the summer months!

Peace,

Radio Heads

Nukhet Kardam on MIIS Radio!

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Welcome back Pro Bytes on MIIS Radio, and welcome to the program Nukhet Kardam, one of my favorite professors on campus! She’s fun, dynamic, interesting, friendly, inviting, and brilliantly insightful. All of these awesome qualities made for a very free-flowing interview, wherein we were able to talk about the fluidity of identity, gender mainstreaming, and conveying messages via varying mediums.

Nukhet and I first met last term when I dropped into her office to ask about contacts in my field of interest, but that was just the tip our iceberg together. I had the pleasure of taking the Communicating Social Change workshop this spring with Nukhet and two of her colleagues from Middlebury – John Elder and Andrea Olsen. By the time we had finished the two-weekend workshop I had confidently found my radio voice and had had plenty of practice with both public and recorded conversations. I could even go so far as to say that the course helped to give me a fresh start here at MIIS Radio. The interview was long and beautiful, making it difficult to cut, so enjoy the extended version.

Pro Bytes: Jeff Dayton-Johnson

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On Tuesday, April 1st I had the pleasure of interviewing Jeff Dayton-Johnson, Program Chair for the IPS department and IPS/MPA professor. Jeff is a MIIS gem! Well known not just in his department, but around campus as well for comfortably stopping on the street to have a chat with a colleague or to arrange coffee with a student. He worked formerly as a university professor in Canada and then at the OECD, where the bulk of his economics knowledge derives from. But it’s Jeff’s well rounded personality that made him such a pleasure to interview. His dry wit and respectful demeanor turned our fall semester Policy Analysis classroom into an engaging place to work learn and it transferred seamlessly into our podcast.

To be honest though, it’s Jeff’s hobbies and skills that make him really interesting and impressive. Jeff runs a radio station in the midnight hours out of Santa Cruz called All About Jazz and his love for music extends into much of who he is on campus. In addition to the radio show, Jeff is infamous for his podcast lecture series, wherein each segment is produced using sampled clips from his favorite musics, of which there are many, and they feature some of the most eclectic pieces you’ve ever heard, ranging from Kendrick Lamar to Dave Brubeck. Jeff’s even guest deejays for MIIS events, including the Open Mic Nights hosted in the DLC occasionally! Give the man credit for being involved in student life.

Enjoy the clip!

 

Africa Chatter: Pilot Webisode

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“Listen, reflect, share.”

Welcome to Africa Chatter. This segment is dedicated to reproducing the voices of the African Nations Club (ANC) for the sake of everyone in the MIIS community. This is a way for the ANC to spread its message, reassure the community that we are open to everyone, update the community on its proceedings, and educate people on what truly affects students interculturally.

In the pilot webisode we hear from ANC members Jessica Yoo, Josefina Lara, and Jarod Hightower-Mills. This particular conversation occurred before spring break, so most of our examples and references were from the J-Term trips to Peru and Rwanda and events and sentiments from the Fall term. Our discussion revolved around developmental enlightenment, specializing in exotic peoples, the relativity of the struggle, competitive voluntourism, the implication of development workers in the problems they intend to solve, and our peculiar intimacy with colonization.

Enjoy the clip and feel free to attend upcoming Let’s talk Africa gatherings.

Pro Bytes: Fusun Akarsu

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In this segment of Pro Bytes we explore the fascinating world of Fusun Akarsu, visiting professor from the Bogazici University of Turkey. After having flown half way across the world to our tiny planet of California to teach and research intercultural communications at the Institute, Fusun settled comfortably into our MIIS community as a research mentor. Of course she teaches much more than intercultural research, but it’s her approach to teaching and learning that makes her unique. Her teaching style, though she admits is not as direct as MIIS students may be accustomed to, has been cultivated by working in tandem with brilliantly self-driven students in an environment known to be very fluid and evolving.

As a self-proclaimed student-of-life herself, she brings a very insightful yet curious demeanor to the classroom. Add in a touch of free spirit and plenty of cheerleading and she made for a rewarding classroom experience in my first term. And so, I simply had to pick her brain about her teaching style and understanding of the world – and the results might make you rethink your time here at MIIS! Click the embedded link below to listen in.

Enjoy!

The Sustainability Cast: Organizational Sustainability for Social Change Embracing Complexity for Mission Sustainability

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Organizational “sustainability” is a term frequently associated with moments of crisis in the lives of development organizations – moments which threaten an organization’s ability to operate and be “sustainable” over time.  Alfredo Ortiz’s spring 2012 Organizational Sustainability class worked with two youth arts organizations to explore how organizations can hold different definitions of sustainability and how those definitions shape their work.

In this 17-minute final podcast, class members explore the more complicated issues of sustainability they uncovered during semester long action research projects.  Through interviews with team members, discussions of topics covered in class sessions, and creative recreations of class discoveries, the podcast presents the ups and downs, confusions and triumphs of the two teams’ experiences along with the lessons they learned on the way.  Follow along to the podcast on their class website for more information!

Steven Gorelick on The Economics of Happiness

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I conducted an informational interview in preparation for the Economics of Happiness Conference, which took place in Berkeley in March 2012. Listen for his thoughts on how our globalized capitalist system and constructed social norms impact our lives in profound ways.

Steven Gorelick is the US Program Director for the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC), and teaches Economics and the Environment at Sterling College, in Craftsbury, Vermont. He is the co-director of the documentary film The Economics of Happiness (ISEC, 2011), author of Small is Beautiful, Big is Subsidized (ISEC, 1998), and co-author of Bringing the Food Economy Home: Local Alternatives to Global Agribusiness (Kumarian Press, 2002). He lives with his wife and two children on a small organic farm in South Walden, Vermont.

Winona LaDuke speaks at CSUMB

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CSU Monterey Bay hosted an evening with activist and writer Winona LaDuke on the topic Environmental Justice from an Indigenous Perspective. LaDuke is a member of the Mississippi Band Anishanaabekwe who lives and works on the White Earth Reservations in Northern Minnesota and the executive director of Honor the Earth, a native-lead organization concerned with the environmental movement. A forerunner in speaking out for environmental action, social justice and indigenous rights, her sixth book, The Militarization of Indian Country, released last April, addresses issues such as affronts taken when Osama Bin Laden was revealed as target “Geronimo”, and the United States’ uranium mining in the Grand Canyon in the wake of possible nuclear contamination in Japan. Her talk focused on American Indian economic and environmental concerns.