IHP Health and Community: Globalization, Culture, and Care (Spring 1)
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| Program Director & Program Manager | |
|---|---|
| Stephanie Polsky | Rose Blake |
| Traveling Faculty | |
|---|---|
| Karen Straight | E. Lee Rosenthal |
| Arielle Ann Smith | |
| Country Coordinators & Facilitators | |
|---|---|
| SherriLynn Colby-Bottel | Carolina Rovetta |
| Jan G. Vermeulen | |
| Trustees Fellow |
|---|
| Sara Bradshaw |
Stephanie Polsky, PhD
Program Director
Health & Community
Over the past decade, Dr. Polsky has designed programming for some of the most prominent liberal arts–based institutions in Britain, including Goldsmiths College, University of London; Winchester School of Art; Camberwell College of the Arts; London College of Communication; the University of Greenwich; and Regent’s College London. She has established a reputation for innovation and consistent quality in conceptualizing new strategies for learning and new approaches to illustrating ideas that enhance existing programming. During her career she has sought out opportunities to express academic and administrative leadership and has served in a variety of roles, including programme coordinator at Winchester School of Art, programme leader at the University of Greenwich, learning circle coordinator at The Scholar Ship, director of recruitment at Drexel University, academic director for the Foundation for International Education in London, and visiting lecturer/programme advisor at Regent’s College London. She is passionate about the benefits of study abroad and sees her position as program director for IHP Health and Community as an opportunity to provide a variety of individuals with a rich and dynamic international context through which to shape their knowledge and experience in an area of crucial importance to humanity in the twenty-first century. Dr. Polsky holds an MA in critical theory from the University of Sussex and a PhD in historical and cultural studies, with a special emphasis on visual cultures, from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Throughout her career she has lectured and published widely in the area of media and cultural studies.
Rose Blake
Program Manager
Health & Community
Rose Blake is in the middle of writing a PhD dissertation in social anthropology. The research for her PhD was conducted in the township of Zwelethemba and focuses on the tensions leading to intergenerational conflict between close female kin (grandmothers, mothers, and granddaughters) around care and domesticity. It focuses in particular on the impacts of HIV/AIDS, the social grant system, and widespread unemployment on these relationships.
Rose holds a master’s degree in medical anthropology from the University of Edinburgh and in the past has conducted research into the experiences of children receiving in-patient chemotherapy at a large provincial children’s hospital in South Africa. She has been involved in coordinating the Cape Town portion of spring and fall Health and Community programs since 2010 and recently also took up the position of program manager for IHP Health and Community.
Karen Straight, PhD
Traveling Faculty
Karen is a sociologist living in Kalispell, Montana. She has an MA and a PhD in sociology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her doctoral research focused on gender and assimilation amongst South Indian immigrants in Portland, Oregon. Karen has 17 years of university level teaching experience. She regularly teaches courses in sociology/anthropology of health, global perspectives on women, comparative cultures, and social movements. Karen’s research interests have focused on Asian immigrants, gender, and the comparative study of religion and politics cross-culturally. Karen has experience working as an applied sociologist with a nonprofit organization servicing Asian immigrants and refugees. In that role, she worked as a grassroots organizer to improve the health, education, and political opportunities of the Asian and Pacific Islander community. Her love for travel began many years ago with two study abroad programs in college. Since then, Karen has traveled extensively in Asia and Latin America; she has completed volunteer work in Ecuador. In addition to teaching, Karen directed a sanctuary for former research animals in rural Wyoming. Running service learning programs for college students at the sanctuary was among her favorite activities. She enjoyed teaching IHP/Comparative Health and Community students in India and China in 2012 and is looking forward to working with a new group of students in 2013.
E. Lee Rosenthal, Ph.D., M.S., M.P.H.
Traveling Faculty
E. Lee Rosenthal is a public health researcher with more than 25 years of experience working on local, regional, and national community health and public health policy initiatives. Her work focuses on promoting the role of community health workers (CHWs), also known as promotores, in advancing access to information and services, and in improving health equity. Among her most notable accomplishments is leading the National Community Health Advisor Study funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a study which has been widely cited for contributing to foundational work in promoting the development of the CHW field in the US. She is currently a research affiliate with the Project on Community Health Worker Policy and Practice housed at the Institute for Health Policy, University of Texas, Houston, School of Public Health. She is also a co-investigator on a multiyear, community-based participatory action research study on heart health and the CHW workforce along the US-Mexico border funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Rosenthal holds a B.A. with honors from the University of Arizona and a M.P.H. from the University of California at Berkeley. She also has an M.S. and Ph.D. from the Public Policy Program at the University of Massachusetts at Boston; her dissertation explored state-level policy alternatives for promoting the sustainability of the CHW workforce.
Arielle Ann Smith, DPhil (PhD)
Traveling Faculty
Arielle is a medical anthropologist and member of Missoula, Montana's vibrant art and electronic music community. Her induction to the field of medical anthropology began at UC Berkeley, where she completed a senior honors thesis on social aspects of human genetics and a research apprenticeship with a faculty member working on sexual education and health. These experiences established an enduring concern for how patients and healthcare practitioners negotiate public health policy and education, standardized medical practices/knowledge, heritage and “tradition,” and sociopolitical change. Arielle further developed these interests, more broadly situated within a political economy of health framework, through doctoral study and teaching at the University of Oxford. Her doctoral dissertation examined the contemporary practice, use, promotion, and legislation of Chinese medicine within Singapore’s exclusively biomedical healthcare system, and was based on two years of fieldwork and travel in Southeast Asia. She has taught anthropology, medical anthropology, and Mandarin Chinese in the United Kingdom at the University of Oxford and the College of Traditional Acupuncture (Warwick), as well as at the University of Montana. She is currently revising her doctoral dissertation for publication as a book.
SherriLynn Colby-Bottel, PhD
Country Coordinator, USA (New Orleans, LA)
SherriLynn is an urban anthropologist and jazz musician living and working in New Orleans, LA. She holds a master's degree in music, as well as a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Virginia. SherriLynn moved to New Orleans just before Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and, with support from the National Science Foundation and the University of Virginia, she has spent the last six years conducting longitudinal research on the recovery of New Orleans and the management of music communities in the city. Her work examines the successes and struggles of rebuilding a city, paying special attention to cultural traditions in urban spaces, local music practices, the economy of heritage tourism, and civic ideologies of community and belonging. SherriLynn's research has brought her in contact with varied facets of the city—from local community radio stations and museums, to youth outreach programs at the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park. SherriLynn has taught undergraduate anthropology courses for the last ten years; she has taught American English language and culture classes to a broad array of learners in Virginia and New Orleans. Since 2011, she has been the country coordinator for the Health and Community spring track originating in New Orleans.
Carolina Rovetta, MA
Country Coordinator: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Carolina Rovetta holds a five-year degree in arts from the University of Buenos Aires and a postgraduate degree in contemporary cinema and theater. She has been working in the field of international education for many years. Ms. Rovetta is in charge of designing academic and immersion programs in Argentina for students and institutions from abroad. Her focus is on the interaction between academic content and cultural sensitivity. She is very interested in arts and culture and works as a cultural facilitator for the city of Buenos Aires. She has written several pedagogical guides on cultural activities in immersion. Ms. Rovetta serves as an academic advisor for American students studying abroad in Argentina. She first began working with IHP in 2005 and helped established the Cities in the 21st Century program in Buenos Aires.
Sara Bradshaw
Trustees’ Fellow
Sara Bradshaw is an international educator whose passion for building healthy communities was ignited in 2008 while helping to launch Waves of Hope, an emergent development organization focused on alleviating poverty through sustainable community engagement. She has served as a teacher, facilitator, and group leader in Argentina and Spain and traveled through more than 30 countries before landing in Vermont to pursue her master’s in international education at SIT Graduate Institute. Her current graduate work is focused on increasing access to international education opportunities for underrepresented groups and designing programming to facilitate citizen diplomacy through international exchange. She has a BA in sociology from Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, and is expected to complete her studies at SIT in November 2012.
Jan G. Vermeulen, MComm
Country Coordinator, South Africa
Jan commenced his career as a human resources practitioner in the private sector and became a business consultant focusing on executive development, change management, mentorship, performance management, M&E, and productivity. Since the early nineties he has worked toward poverty alleviation. He relocated to Bushbuckridge in 1993 where he assisted with the set up of Pfunanani Co-operative and Credit Union. He established the Bushbuckridge Local Business Service Centre (BLBSC) in Acornhoek and Central Business Service Centre (now Libsa) to facilitate, support, and coordinate small business service providers and BDS activities in the Limpopo province. He has been responsible for initiating various innovative income generating projects in that area including: the establishment of a 30 hectare women’s group owned Peppadew farm; a commercial poultry farm (15,000 broiler capacity); a state-of-the-art shade-cloth farm for vegetable production (16 x ¼ hectare units individually owned, each with the capacity of producing 35 tons of tomatoes per growing cycle); and numerous other direct business development support activities during his tenure as BLBSC coordinator. For the last couple of years he has been consulting as a development practitioner and has been involved with a wider range of projects including inter alia research in natural resource business opportunities, income generation for child-headed households due to AIDS, community leadership development, M&E of the transformation program at Wits University, and tourism-based LED at Greater Tzaneen and Letaba municipalities in the Mopani District of Limpopo Province. Jan obtained an M.Comm in 1985 at North-West University. He is registered as a practicing industrial psychologist with the Health Professions Council of South Africa.
Credits: 16
Duration: Spring, 16 weeks
Program Sites:
United States, India, Argentina, South Africa
Prerequisites: None. Coursework in public health, anthropology, biology, or related field recommended.
Spring Option 1 Itinerary
Other Program Options:
Fall Itinerary
Health and Community Spring 2 Itinerary
View Student Evaluations for this program:
About the Evaluations (PDF)
Phone:
888.272.7881 (toll-free in US)
802.258.3212
TTY:
802.258.3388
Fax:
802.258.3296
Mailing Address:
PO Box 676, 1 Kipling Road
Brattleboro, VT 05302 USA