Collaborative Research: US-KU-QA-AE Planning Visit - The Impact of American Higher Education in the Gulf Arab States

这个CNIC项目支持两位美国调查员计划访问阿拉伯海湾的三个国家，他们是纽约锡拉丘兹大学的娜塔莉·科赫博士和宾夕法尼亚州拉斐特学院的内哈·沃拉博士。他们计划中的访问将有助于发展一个多年期项目，探索美式大学对阿拉伯海湾三个主要君主国（科威特、卡塔尔和阿拉伯联合酋长国）的影响，并与科威特大学、德克萨斯农机大学卡塔尔分校和阿联酋的沙迦美国大学等当地合作伙伴开展合作。在过去的二十年里，海湾合作委员会（GCC）的大多数国家都制定了通过发展“知识型”经济来摆脱对石油依赖的计划。这些国家正在大力投资高等教育，并有意选择采用美国的高等教育模式，鼓励美国顶尖大学建立分校，寻求美国大学的合作伙伴关系，甚至重组国立大学，纳入美国式的使命宣言、学生公民模式和课程设置。采用三国比较的方法，研究人员将使用有针对性的案例研究，并利用文化人类学和政治地理学这两个学科的互补见解，探索关键行为者如何在发展和管理教学（教师和管理人员）以及课堂和研究生职业（学生）中谈判不同的海湾和美国价值体系。这项CNIC资助将使pi及其当地合作者能够设计一个混合方法的项目，并提交给国家科学基金会文化人类学和地理与空间科学核心项目。这个CNIC项目将有助于发展美国和海湾学者之间有价值的合作，以评估自由教育和非自由国有化政策之间表面上相互冲突的价值体系是如何在地面上运作的，并评估最近高等教育转型对海湾国家的影响。他们的研究结果将有助于为美国在该地区发展分校和许多其他类型合作方面的学术和政策辩论提供信息。迄今为止，关于美国模式的机构在其所在国校园之外产生的影响的人种学研究很少。这项计划访问资助的研究将使人们对美国高等教育在海湾阿拉伯国家的公民实践、性别角色和后石油时代的经济前景等方面的广泛影响有更细致的了解。当美国的政策制定者和大学管理者在发展国际分校和与外国大学建立合作关系的政治和经济关系时，这些发现对他们来说具有高度的相关性。除了为创新的实证和理论研究议程奠定基础，并促进ppi的早期职业发展外，这项规划资助将有助于制定一个高度相关的实用议程，可以在学术和政策圈内与广泛的受众交谈。

This CNIC project supports a planning visit to three countries in the Arabian Gulf by two US Investigators, Dr. Natalie Koch of Syracuse University in New York and Dr. Neha Vora of Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. Their planning visit will help develop a multi-year project that explores the impacts of American-style universities in three key monarchies in the Arab Gulf: Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), engaging local partners at the University of Kuwait, Texas A&M University-Qatar, and the American University of Sharjah in the UAE. Over the last two decades, most states of the GCC (Gulf Cooperative Council) have established programs to move away from petroleum reliance through the development of "knowledge-based" economies. These countries are investing heavily in higher education, and have deliberately chosen to adopt US models of higher education, encouraging the establishment of branch campuses of top American universities, seeking out US university partnerships, and even restructured national universities to include American-style mission statements, student citizenship models and curricular offerings. Adopting a three-country comparative approach, the investigators will use targeted case studies and draw upon the complementary insights of their two disciplines, cultural anthropology and political geography, to explore how key actors negotiate different Gulf and American value systems in developing and administering pedagogy (faculty and administrators) and in the classroom and postgraduate careers (students). This CNIC grant will enable the PIs and their local collaborators to design a mixed-methods project to be submitted to the NSF core programs in Cultural Anthropology and Geography and Spatial Sciences. This CNIC project will help develop a valuable collaboration between American and Gulf-based scholars to evaluate how the ostensibly conflicting value systems between liberal education and non-liberal nationalization policies operate on the ground and assessing the impact of recent higher education transformations on Gulf countries. Their results will help inform academic and policy debates in the U.S. regarding the development of branch campuses and many other types of collaborations in the region.There has been minimal ethnographic research to date on the impacts US-modeled institutions are having in their host countries beyond the campus walls. The study resulting from this planning visit grant will develop a more nuanced understanding of the broader impacts of American higher education in the Gulf Arab states in terms of citizenship practices, gender roles, and post-oil economic futures. The findings promise to be highly relevant to U.S. policy-makers and U.S. university administrators, as they navigate the politics and economics of developing international branch campuses and foreign university partnerships. In addition to laying the groundwork for an innovative empirical and theoretical research agenda and promoting the early-career development of the PIs, this planning grant will help develop a highly relevant practical agenda that can speak to a broad audience within both academic and policy circles.