Communications

Pablo Mezquita (top), Guldana Khamzina, Ayumi Kawano, and Gin Wang, all students in the Intensive English program at the Monterey Institute.

Four students in the Intensive ESL program at the Monterey Institute are taking a broad view of language learning by volunteering to teach beginner courses in their native languages at the same time they are working to improve their own English language skills.

“I believe that it will be very helpful to us in our studies,” says Pablo Mezquita from Spain, who enrolled in the Intensive ESL program to prepare for a graduate degree program in international business law in the United States. He, along with Ayumi Kawano of Japan, Gin Wang of Taiwan, and Guldana Khamzina of Kazakhstan, have volunteered to be a part of the B.U.I.L.D (Beyond YoUrself in Language Development) student club on campus and offer free language lessons in their native Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and Russian.

Ayumi has aspirations to become a language teacher and would love to enroll in the Teaching a Foreign Language program at MIIS. She thinks she might imitate some of the techniques her English teachers use in her Japanese class. Guldana would like to study international policy, preferably at MIIS, but Gin has not quite made up her mind about what direction to take her studies. Fluency in English at a high level is an important factor in each of their future career dreams.

The four have varied opinions about the mild coastal weather in Monterey, but all agree that it is an exceptionally good place to make new friends. The language classes and participation in student club activities they say, is a great way to meet even more people.

All B.U.I.L.D. classes are listed on the Monterey Institute events calendar.

Participants in this spring’s water innovation challenge gather in the Digital Learning Commons’ Design Space to work on this wicked problem.

As our motto, to “be the solution,” indicates, a Monterey Institute degree involves much more than classroom theory. Monterey Institute students have numerous opportunities via immersive learning experiences to develop their professional skills by completing fieldwork and working on real-life issues as part of their class assignments. This spring semester, a group of faculty and staff from across the Institute has launched an innovation challenge for teams of students willing to tackle a true wicked problem.

The challenge, Nor Any Drop to Drink? – Securing the Future of Monterey County’s Fresh Water Supply, involves participating in a series of stakeholder conversations and workshops and working with teams to come up with solutions to a problem that is at once very local and yet global in its wickedness. As Professor Kent Glenzer of the Development Practice and Policy program says, it serves three main purposes: “First, it promotes interdisciplinary work among students, and stretches them to look across degree silos. Complex problems don’t lend themselves to single-discipline solutions. Second, it gives students a real-world laboratory for trying out what they are learning in the classroom. And third, it allows students to engage with local stakeholders – the powerful and the excluded – and forces them to find solutions that are acceptable by many. And it’s a great networking opportunity to boot!”

Ten teams have risen to the challenge and started to interact with stakeholders and experts. They have been tasked with coming up with ideas that are:

• sustainable across future generations
• progessive regarding economic growth
• affordable,
• socially,economically and politically just, and
• compelling to local stakeholders

A panel of external judges will select winners in late April. The team with the idea deemed best by the judges will receive a monetary award of $2,500.

Aaron Ebner (center, MPA ’11), co-founder of the Andean Alliance for Sustainable Development, with MIIS students in Peru

Twenty-five Monterey Institute students are taking part in a year-long development practicum experience that includes a fall semester course on policy analysis and project design, a research trip to Peru in January, and a spring semester course focused on data analysis and crafting a final report. Five MIIS professors took an introductory policy analysis course and turned it into an optional year-long immersive learning opportunity. Students have the option to enroll in a Peru-focused policy class in the fall, design a research project, conduct in-field research as part of a winter-term practicum in Peru, and then follow up by working with the information and data collected as part of a seminar in the spring, all while they are learning the tools of data analysis.

Linking faculty research, alumni activities, and students’ desire for practical learning experiences, this is a true MIIS community collaboration. It started with Professors Robert McCleery and Philip Murphy, who have been working on research on the links between poverty and isolation, and grew through connections with the Andean Alliance for Sustainable Development, a non-profit co-founded by alumni Aaron Ebner (MPA ’11) and Adam Stieglitz (MPA ’11) that is working on community development projects in the isolated Sacred Valley of Peru.

Professor Jeff Dayton-Johnson and his team of 25 International Policy Studies and Master of Public Administration students looked at several dimensions of connectivity as it relates to a poor rural economy like that of Andean Peru. That included roads, telecommunications, connectivity to public services like health care and education, and connectivity via language (while the national language of Peru is Spanish, Quechua is the language spoken by most of the people in the study area).

Five students—Mario Guzmán-Soria, Josefina Lara, Luz Vázquez Ramos, Ximena Ospina, and Rafael Hernández—presented a preliminary report on major themes and initial findings to local authorities in Calca before returning to Monterey. Says Professor Dayton-Johnson about the experience: “This student-organized and delivered presentation in Calca effectively breaks down the barriers between the classroom and the real world of development practice. Our students took advantage of this opportunity to share initial findings from a field research project they had designed and carried out, to respond to policy makers’ questions, and to strengthen the relationship between MIIS and this region of Peru. I’m very proud of them and look forward to building on their work with another group of students next J-Term!”

Hult Prize competition teammates Natalie Cox, Amitay Flores, Maria Kovell, and Amy Ross.

The Hult Prize is described as “the world’s largest student competition and start-up platform for social good.” This year, more than 10,000 teams from 350 universities in 150 countries sent in proposals focusing on the 250 million slum dwellers suffering from chronic diseases. In January, a team consisting of five MIIS students, Amanda Boyek (MAIPS ’14), Natalie Cox (MPA ’14), Amitay Flores (MAIPS ’14), Maria Kovell (MPA ’14), and Amy Ross (MPA ’14) got word that they had advanced to the regional finals in San Francisco.

The MIIS team’s proposal is centered around improving youth nutrition and they are now hard at work preparing for the next stage which will take place on March 7 and 8 in San Francisco. “The Hult Prize competition is a unique opportunity to fully develop our ideas into a feasible plan for action,” says Natalie Cox, “and also a chance to see perspectives from students around the world.” Other regional finals will be held in Boston, London, Dubai, Shanghai and Sao Paulo at the same time. One winning team from each host city will move into a summer business incubator, with the final round hosted by the Clinton Global Initiative at its annual meeting in September of this year.

“We are very proud of the Monterey Institute team,” says President Sunder Ramaswamy. “The Hult Prize competition challenges them to put into practice many of the concepts and techniques they have been learning here, and we are delighted to have them represent MIIS in the regional finals.”

James Shirreff (MBA/MAIEP ’14), John Foss (MBA ’13), Mary Vargo (MBA ’14) (holding check) and Morgan Rogge (MBA/MAIEP ’14) (next to Mary) with the judging panel and their award at Davos.

Four Monterey Institute MBA students traveled to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January to compete in the final round of the international Business for a Better World competition, sponsored by Corporate Knights and the Schulich School of Business. The MIIS quartet beat out teams from 20 other universities around the world to reach the final three.

Mary Vargo (MBA ’14), Morgan Rogge (MBA/MAIEP ’14), John Foss (MBA ’13), and James Shirreff (MBA/MAIEP ’14) said the experience in Davos was “amazing,” and their presentation was very well received. They were awarded the third place, carrying a $2,000 prize. “The MIIS team was the thought leader in this competition,” says Dean Yuwei Shi of the Institute’s Graduate School of International Policy and Management. “Their work treads convincingly beyond corporate social responsibility and shows an exciting direction to businesses that are looking past the one-, five- or even ten-year horizon. We are very proud of the team’s achievement.”

Vargo and Foss are students in the Institute’s Fisher MBA in International Management program, while Rogge and Shirreff are pursuing the joint degree program combining the MBA with the Master of Arts in International Environmental Policy.