Announcements
Three Cups of Tea Panel Discussion - May 21st
University Libraries – May 2009
On the heels of the successful collaboration which brought Three Cups of Tea author Greg Mortenson to Malibu, the Pepperdine University Libraries and One Book, One City Malibu, plan to continue a dialogue about education through a panel discussion on Thursday, May 21st at 6:00 p.m. at Payson Library on the Pepperdine campus.
Hosted by the Pepperdine University Libraries, the panel will feature professors and alumni who conducted research and fieldwork that focused on the impact of education within communities in the Middle East and Nepal. The group will explore issues of education, gender, poverty, altruism, leadership, community engagement, and the influence of these themes within peaceful and terror-ridden countries.
Diana Hiatt-Michael, Professor Emeritus of Education at the Pepperdine Graduate School of Education and Psychology, along with Doctors Mirwais Azizi and Jeff Lee will sit on the panel, as they share their unique experiences working on education initiatives in Nepal, Afghanistan, and Oman.
Diana Hiatt-Michael has worked with masters and doctoral candidates at Pepperdine for nearly 35 years. Her expertise falls in the area of family-school-community partnerships, a subject matter on which she has both written and published. Her accolades include the award-winning Family-School-Community Partnerships Monograph Series published by Information Age. One of the most popular volumes was Promising Practices for Family Involvement Across the Continents. In November of 2006, Hiatt-Michael visited the Sultanate of Oman to discuss family-school-community partnerships.
"The Sultanate of Oman is focusing on education as a means to rapidly change the country from a nomadic-agrarian society to an active participant in contemporary world economics, " says Hiatt-Michael. During her time visiting with top Ministry of Education representatives from six regions of the country, principals, and parents, Hiatt-Michael employed various team-building and leadership exercises to unify the group. The outcome included uniquely crafted School Site Plans, which were enthusiastically created and implemented by each community.
Dr. Mirwais Azizi has over 12 years of local and international teaching, management and executive leadership experience with emphasis on the fields of education, health care and information technology. In December of 2008, he completed his doctoral dissertation on the Leaders of Higher Education in Afghanistan: Leadership Beliefs, and Challenges for the 21st Century. His research evaluated Western, Eastern, Islamic and cultural leadership styles, and he created an educational leadership model for Afghanistan that incorporated these leadership views.
Jeff Lee, an Assistant Professor at Azusa Pacific University in the School of Education, has taught at numerous low-income, Title I schools in Orange County. Additionally, he has worked with the Ministry of Education in Nepal, ProLiteracy, and World Education. As the Vice President of Community Development Network, a US-based non-government organization working in developing countries on education initiatives, Jeff works with technology tele-centers designed for youth in Nepal's rural villages.
The panel discussion is part of the month’s events, featured by the One Book, One City Malibu community reading program. The event is open to the public and is free of charge. For more information, call Amy Hunter at (310) 506-6785.
