It is an especially wonderful time to be an EPE alum! We wanted to congratulate three of our alumni and share their good news with you.
Anissa Radford, one of our MS in Higher Education graduates, recently received the Ken Freedman Outstanding Advisor Award for her work as the academic coordinator in the UK College of Agriculture’s Department of Dietetics and Human Nutrition. You can read more about Radford and the award by clicking HERE.
Doctoral alum Zumrad Kataeva and emeritus professor Alan DeYoung have just published “Gender and the academic profession in contemporary Tajikistan: challenges and opportunities expressed by women who remain” in Central Asia Survey. The abstract is included at the bottom of this post, and you can read the full article HERE.
Finally, it is our pleasure to announce that Shannon Sampson, who graduated from our PhD program and has been serving as the Interim Director of the Evaluation Center, has been appointed to be a clinical assistant professor in EPE. She will also continue her work with the Evaluation Center as its director. Her appointments are effective beginning this August, and we couldn’t be happier to have her officially on board.
Again, kudos to those above and to the rest of our alumni for continuing to inquire, innovate, and inspire. Our department is proud to be represented by you.
ABSTRACT
This article attempts to describe the deleterious impact of higher educational changes affecting female faculty members working in Tajik universities in the post-Soviet era. Over the past two decades, the social and economic position women gained during Soviet times has significantly eroded, bringing enormous challenges to education and higher education access, completion and staffing. The demographic and cultural marginalization of women here has negatively impacted university teaching opportunities and the status of women faculty members. Ethnographic interviews – along with relevant secondary data – reveal that despite various official gender-equity policies announced by the state, female participation issues remain prominent in the university. Our interviewees also report continued difficulty entering higher faculty ranks and leadership positions in university. However, significant numbers of women are still to be found there, and they report a workable compromise between being professional educators and trying to navigate a local culture that is becoming more ‘traditional’.