06-FEB-B-13
FURTHER
PLANS ON GETTING CURRENT AND AHEAD
IN ELDP
ASSIGNMENTS AND FOR THE THESIS PLAN
Dear Andrea:
Thanks again for getting my detail-derailed process back on track for the Comps, both written and oral for April. I will have our entire Comps Prep team bunked out in my home for the week preceding our April exams for a full-time group period of study and review. We had gone to one of the local Ashburn hotels (Candlewood Suites, where we had spent the February night of the blizzard during the last ELDP weekend) and discovered that a full week reservation was still at the rate of $180 per night for those coming from out of town, as the others all would be. I can certainly spare them that expense, even if we all bus over to Ashburn in one vehicle if the library resources might be needed for a day of that week. Otherwise we have huge mounds of already printed-out reference material which has killed quite a few trees in being copied for each of us, already too much primary and secondary reference material to be read, let alone further research being done, for each of the questions at the Comps level!
I had gone through the sequence you
had outlined as well as the visits suggested regarding pre-proposal
advice. I had addressed the present and
future assignments for your HRD 321 course, the Phenomenology course taught by
Jae Hoon Lim and have kept in touch with my Comp Team for the further Prep
program in the Comps Teams and Subject Matter Experts’ contributions. I am current or ahead in each course with my
impending absence in
For HRD 321 I found that you are right in the confusion in the dissertation review which you noted on the email you had sent me was to be submitted to Jae Hoon for Phenomenology rather than HRD 321. I had sent it to you under the title of dissertation review, which sounded more like HRD 321 than phenomenology and had sent to her the listing of the ten dissertations I had pulled—probably the source of the confusion that may have led her to believe I was absent from her class! I have enclosed each of the four stages of the dissertation reviews for HRD 321:
1) List of dissertations 1/13
2) First dissertation analysis 2/1
3) Second dissertation analysis 3/1
4) Third dissertation analysis 4/1
I will produce the Fourth
Dissertation analysis ahead of the April 28th deadline, as I had
each of the others, including those that were mis-directed. I have been current in the readings and
deliverables for each of the courses this semester, and have sent ahead those
for the programmed absence in March based on the only time the eighteen
students can accompany me abroad during their spring break time. I had postponed my departure in January for
the
I had called Sharon Confessore in
As you had suggested, I met with
Huda Ayas, and have been a regular reader of her proposal and dissertation at
each stage and iteration of it. I was to
have led the
From my own experience, and from witnessing the same response over two hundred times, I have been calling this a transformational learning experience, but I will not beg that question but attempt to establish the nature of this experience with a fresh group in the proposal, unless retrospective data would be supportive. Following Proposal defense and IRB approval, I could launch the refined protocol for the research in new medical missions abroad. The data I am collecting now is for refining the approach and for evaluating both the mission and the students who may receive a grade, even though I have informed each of the participants in the pilots that I am also studying the nature of the international medical mission experience in order to refine a proposal for a dissertation in transformational learning. (06-FEB-B-8)
Last year I had met with and later
corresponded with my advisor, Prof Michael Marquardt, and had attempted to meet
with him as both of us were heading off to the
First, I should stay with the schedule of April Comps, Summer 06 Proposal defense, subsequent data gathering and chapters 4, 5 writing with his critique for a defense of the thesis on target for March 07. I concur.
Second, he advised a phenomenologic qualitative study for a “richer” interpretation, over the semi-quantitative approach alone. I had made an appointment with and this Saturday spent time with Lisa Allen, the ELP Liaison in the Ashburn Campus library, searching for an already-validated instrument for quantitative analysis to be employed pre and post experience, taken from the Mental Measurement Yearbook.
Third, he advised that I get the thesis he had directed (with distinction) of the 04 ELDP defense by Millie Mateu, who had used each of the component parts that I had listed for my interest—Mezirow, Phenomenology, and the trans-cultural disorienting dilemma of the international context.
I have printed out her thesis, and after having read it, I had discarded my earlier choices from the listed ten dissertation abstracts and have used her thesis as the substrate for the analysis for HRD 321 “Dissertation Analysis” sequence. On Michael’s advice, I am trying to reach her for advice, or for consent to be the third member of the committee. The second member of the committee had already been invited after Michael had agreed to chair it, as I had written an email last year to Skip Williams for his participation, given his interest in both the international medical education aspects and his familiarity with the ELDP program as a full time GWU faculty graduate of one of the earliest Cohorts, as you are certainly aware.
This is a report of the current
status of the process, which I hope to keep on track, given the changes and
disruptions that are always possible as in the political events that had
derailed Huda’s earlier proposal plans when
I hope to avoid any such glitches but am aware of the lurking possibilities that they can interdict the plans now in progress; but this is where I am in that process, and thank you for your help through it.
GWG