Robert J. Miltz (Ph.D. Stanford University, 1971)) miltz@educ.umass.edu
As many of you know, 30 years ago I came to the University to be one of the
coordinators for the teacher education programs at the School of Education.
International Education was only of a passing interest at that time as my hands
were clearly full coordinating 21 separate teacher education programs as well
as directing the microteaching clinic. In the early 70's I received an offer
from UNESCO to spend two years in Nigeria basically to help reconstruct Biafra
at the end of that civil war (I've since had the suspicion that this offer was
planted by a CIE member in a subversive move to get me to switch allegiances
within the school of education). It was in Nigeria that I developed my interest
in rural development and related fields of materials development (out of necessity
as we had to make our own teaching aids out of locally available materials)
and training (after all, you need to find ways to use the materials, in this
case mostly in health and agricultural training).
Upon my return I found myself spending 50% of my time with teacher training
and 50% with CIE. Apparently this was not enough for died-in-the-wool CIE'ers
as I soon received another offer from UNESCO to spend two years in Lesotho helping
to build educational programs that reached into the community. This experience
allowed me to develop my interests in project management and the use of technology
in development.
In the end, of course, I joined CIE full-time and for the past 20 years I have
spent time working on projects in Somalia, Swaziland, Thailand, Cambodia, and
the Philippines. I have also had the most enjoyable task of working with all
of our students here at CIE exploring issues of nonformal education, training,
rural development, materials development and technology (hey, sometimes even
technology works; you are reading this on the web page are you not?). Most rewarding
of all is watching all of the CIE members grow into leaders in their field and
looking forward to continuing this relationship for many years into the future.