Local Goes Global
Rosemary Ortlieb, the associate dean of international education for Nassau Community College, was listening attentively to a webinar about opportunities for colleges to undertake development projects in the Middle East when she noticed that five sister State University of New York community colleges were among the 40 on the call.
She typed a message in the chat box: “Hey, after this call, why don’t the SUNY colleges convene and we can talk about a possible partnership?” She also posted Nassau’s toll-free conference call number and a PIN.
Five minutes after the webinar ended, Ortlieb and colleagues from the other SUNY community college campuses were on the phone, brainstorming how they could go about winning one of the $60,000 seed grants that was available through Higher Education for Development (HED), an arm of the American Council on Education (ACE) that serves as a conduit for U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and State Department grants. One call led to another. They shared ideas on Google Docs and eventually four—Nassau, Monroe, North Country, and Onondaga Community Colleges—submitted a winning proposal to work with a Beirut, Lebanon, foundation that runs schools and a university that serves students with disabilities and other disadvantages.
They did precisely what experts on development work say is the right strategy for institutions to break into this line of work: find partners, pool resources, and look for ways to collaborate on assignments that may be too daunting for one institution to tackle on its own.
