MAR-A-7
MY
POSTPONED OVERTURE TO PROF DAVID SCHWANDT
IN
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT CONSIDERING MY FAILED
HUMAN SCIENCES DISSERTATION COMMITTEES AND THESIS OUTCOME
From: Glenn Geelhoed
To: Internet:schwandt@gwu.edu
Date: 3/7/03 10:40AM
Subject: An introduction through Huda Ayas of the International Medicine
Programs, GWUMC
Dear Prof. Schwandt:
I may have been introduced
to you already through Huda Ayas, in the GWUMC International Medicine Programs
with whom I work closely. She will be
accompanying me and a number of medical students and residents in a medical
mission to the Tibetan Chang/Thang Plateau later this summer.
She, as well as Dr. Skip
Williams, a close colleague of mine and now GWU Provost as well, have spoken
highly of you and your program and have told me that the kind of emphasis you
have fits well with what I do in my position in International Medical
Education.
I have been a graduate
student here at GWU‑‑not perpetually, but nearly‑‑and
have been in the Ph.D. in Human Sciences Program for the past decade. I had completed all the course work with
more than the requirements, and successfully completed the Comps, language, and
writtens, but could never get a thesis committee organized for a dissertation
that satisfied the advisors I sought to enlist. My objective has been in real world application of the multi‑disciplinary
human sciences for human problems world‑wide for which I am positioned
nearly ideally in a global "laboratory" of medical education. I understand that your background, as well,
is in the harder sciences, in physics. The advisors I had in Human Sciences
preferred a purely theoretic library‑based dissertation on post‑modernism,
suggesting I, instead, write on Michel Foucault on Subjectivity. I declined this theoretic dissertation into
what may already be obsolete in terms I prefer of humanitarian
meaningfulness.
Investment of a great deal
of effort in such a thesis would distract from my real‑world work which
was not considered Human Sciences scholarship because of its emphasis on the
application of medical education as a bridge for development of the human
potential I seek to enhance.
I have been attempting to communicate across barriers in
transcultural medical education over technologic, linguistic, geographic,
social, religious‑‑and, above all in importance at this time‑‑economic
boundaries. I may have failed to
convince a series of potential committees of the academic value of this
undertaking, which other organizations may have understood better or valued
more. After I had "timed out"
of the ABD process this fall, I am awarded the "MPhil." this winter
as a consolation for my Human Sciences efforts short of an accepted
dissertation of the several I had written.
It is ironic for me to
consider that the one area in which I have not fulfilled requirements is one
that I would have considered my strong suit, since (as may be detectable
already from this expanding email message, or from my aspirations as recorded
in my Home Page http://home.gwu.edu/~gwg ) I continue to aspire to think
of myself as a writer. I would still like to attempt a doctoral thesis in a
suitable program, and I have been interested by the suggestions I have learned
from Huda Ayas and Skip Williams about the potential of your innovative GSEHD
programs.
I would be delighted to meet
with you and have opportunity to discuss your ideas and any plans I might
consider to see if there may be an appropriate fit.
Thank you for your
consideration,
GWG