Master of Arts in Sustainable Development

Faculty

Jeff Unsicker
PhD, MA, Stanford University
BA, University of California, San Diego

Professor
Chair, Sustainable Development
Intercultural Service, Leadership, and Management

Jeff Unsicker completed graduate studies in international development, education, policy analysis, and administration. His research focused on the political economy of foreign aid for adult education, rural development, and Ujamaa socialism in Tanzania. A member of the SIT faculty since 1990, Jeff has also served as academic dean and interim president of SIT Graduate Institute. While at SIT, he co-founded and served as general secretary of a global partnership for educating NGO leaders that has programs in Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, and co-directed a program on leadership for social justice for the Ford Foundation’s International Fellowships Program.
Before joining SIT, Jeff was the coordinator of education and leadership development programs for an advocacy coalition of over 50 community-based organizations in Southern California; faculty director of the International Service and Development degree at an international liberal arts college in northern California; a research associate at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; and a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Botswana. His current teaching and practice are focused on policy analysis and advocacy by grassroots associations, NGOs, and other local, national, and transnational civil society organizations that are working for social change. He has recently done training and consulting for the advocacy divisions of BRAC in Bangladesh, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Oxfam America, and CARE. Jeff has also held various leadership and strategy planning roles in a statewide coalition of citizen, public interest, and environmental organizations that is committed to retiring Vermont's nuclear power reactor and replacing it with safe and green alternatives.
Kanthie Athukorala
EdD, MEd, University of Massachusetts
BEd, National University of Lesotho

Assistant Professor
Sustainable Development
Intercultural Service, Leadership, and Management

Kanthie Athukorala holds a doctorate in international education. A member of the SIT Graduate Institute faculty since 2000, she teaches courses in research methods, theory and practice of sustainable development, and assessment and evaluation. Her teaching experience includes a professorship at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she taught courses on women and economic development, and global feminism. Kanthie also has extensive experience in non-formal and adult education and in gender and development in African contexts.
Charles Curry-Smithson
PhD, MA, The Fielding Institute
MA, Saint Louis University
MRE, MDiv, New York University
BA, Glen Ellyn College

Professor
Sustainable Development
Intercultural Service, Leadership, and Management

Charles Curry-Smithson holds a doctorate in human and organizational systems, as well as four master's degrees in organizational development, sociology, religious education, and theology. A member of the SIT Graduate Institute faculty since 1989, Charlie teaches courses in social change, policy advocacy, leadership and organizations, program planning and project design, and monitoring and evaluation. He also has served as chair of the sustainable development degree and as associate dean of the program in intercultural service, leadership, and management.
Prior to joining the faculty, Charlie worked for more than 20 years as a practitioner in different aspects of development, including community organizing, micro-enterprise development, vocational rehabilitation, political education, civic engagement, and policy advocacy. During that period he worked in five different civil society organizations and in the US Peace Corps. He also established and directed an organization to advocate for a non-interventionist US foreign policy and one supportive of human rights.

Charlie speaks Spanish and has lived and worked in Chile, Venezuela, and Tajikistan. He has also consulted in 15 countries, providing service in needs assessment, program planning, training, capacity building, and program evaluation. His current professional interests revolve around social change, and are partly reflected in the issues he has chosen for his annual policy advocacy course in Washington, DC, including anti-personnel landmines, labor and human rights, the Iraq war, child labor, child soldiers and human trafficking, and global climate change. He is active locally in the Vermont Progressive Party.
Nikoi Kote-Nikoi
PhD, MA, University of Massachusetts
BA, Vassar College

Professor, Sustainable Development
Intercultural Service, Leadership, and Management

Nikoi Kote-Nikoi, who holds a doctorate in economics, has been a member of the SIT Graduate Institute faculty since 1989. He also has served as a policy analyst and director of research at the Institute of Economic Affairs in his native Ghana, and as a visiting professor at the University of Copenhagen, Marlboro College, and the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration. As a development consultant, Nikoi has worked with international businesses and organizations, including the Ford Foundation, the World Bank, and DANIDA. His research and writing explore context-specific theories and practices of development, with a focus on political economy, the economic impact of the AIDS pandemic, employment policy in transitional economies, financialization, and industrial policy for Africa. In addition to teaching courses in economic theory, development economics, policy analysis, and sustainable development, Nikoi has a thriving practice in policy analysis and advocacy in Ghana, where he is the co-founder and chief economist of the Center for Policy Priorities, a public policy research and advocacy institution in Accra. He sits on the boards of the Institute for Training and Development in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the Free-Zone Authority of the Republic of Ghana. His major publications include ‘Beyond the New Orthodoxy: Africa’s Debt and Development Crises in Retrospect’ (Aldershot, UK: Avebury Press, 1996) and the forthcoming ‘Policy-Relevant Macroeconomics: A Critical Introduction to Orthodox Theory, Institutions and Policy' (Prentice-Hall). He also serves as an editor of the Journal of Social Policy and Development Research.
Marla Solomon
EdD, MEd, University of Massachusetts
BA, Northwestern University

Professor, Sustainable Development
Intercultural Service, Leadership, and Management

Marla J. Solomon came to SIT in 1992, and is a professor at the SIT Graduate Institute. She has also served as dean and associate dean. She currently teaches courses in practitioner inquiry, program monitoring and evaluation, leadership and organizations, gender, adult literacy, and development.
Marla provides consultant services in training and institutional capacity-building, research design, and the evaluation of development and other social programs, with a particular focus on evaluation for learning and enhancing program impact. Her clients have included World Education, BRAC, the Ford Foundation’s International Fellows Program Leadership for Social Justice Institute, Trace Foundation, the National Literacy Program of Cape Verde, IC-Net Japan, the Peace Corps, and Planned Parenthood. She has field experience in Mali, Niger, Côte d’Ivoire, Cape Verde, Malawi, Bangladesh, Japan, and the United States.

Marla holds a doctorate in non-formal education and development from the Center for International Education at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Her current research is a multicultural study of women leaders for social justice, for which she was granted a fellowship at the Five Colleges Women’s Studies Research Center at Mount Holyoke College. Her dissertation research was a study of the national women’s organization of the Republic of Cape Verde. Marla’s publications include Leadership for Social Justice Capacity-Building Resource Manual (SIT and Ford Foundation, 2007), “Knowledge to action: Evaluation for learning in a multi-organizational global partnership” in Development and the Learning Organisation (Oxfam Great Britain, 2003), and How Teachers Change: A Study of Professional Development in Adult Education (National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy, 2003). She is fluent in French, Portuguese, and Cape Verdean Kriolu.