During the 1998-99 academic year I worked with Barbara Keyes in the Psychology Department to assist theAlbion Public Schools in their efforts to reduce conflict among students and improve the quality of their education. This project was entitled Building Assets in MiddleSchool Girls and was intended to demonstrate the benefits of a closer partnership between the town and the College. In addition to serving as mentors for sixteen middle schoolers, these students used the ethnographic tools that they learned in our seminar to explore the lives and struggles of these youngsters, and were expected to report their findings at professional meetings this spring and summer. These projects reflect Albion College's new emphasis on the value of undergraduate research.
Students spend sixteen weeks living in and traveling throughout Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.
Much of this time is spent in Jerusalem. The take courses in history, politics, sociology, conflict and identity with both Israeli and Palestinian faculty, and get an opportunity to actually live with both Israeli and Palestinian families. The experience is demanding academically, and draws students with a broad range of interests from law and diplomacy, to international relations, religion, peace studies, and more. I will also be on sabbatical during the spring semester of 2001.