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

该CNIC项目支持两名美国调查人员对阿拉伯湾三个国家的计划访问，他们是纽约锡拉丘兹大学的Natalie Koch博士和宾夕法尼亚州拉斐特学院的Neha Vora博士。他们的计划访问将有助于开发一个多年项目，探索美国式大学在阿拉伯湾三个主要君主制国家的影响：科威特，卡塔尔和阿拉伯联合酋长国（阿联酋），参与当地合作伙伴在科威特，得克萨斯州A M大学-卡塔尔，和美国大学的沙迦在阿联酋。在过去的二十年里，海湾合作委员会（海湾合作理事会）的大多数国家都制定了通过发展“知识型”经济摆脱对石油依赖的方案。这些国家在高等教育上投入巨资，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支，寻求美国大学的合作伙伴关系，甚至重组国立大学，以纳入美国式的使命声明、学生公民身份模式和课程设置。采用三国比较的方法，调查人员将使用有针对性的案例研究，并借鉴他们的两个学科，文化人类学和政治地理学的互补见解，探讨关键行为者如何谈判不同的海湾和美国的价值体系在开发和管理教学法（教师和管理人员），并在课堂和研究生职业（学生）。CNIC的拨款将使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NSF的文化人类学和地理与空间科学核心项目。这个CNIC项目将有助于美国和海湾地区学者之间开展有价值的合作，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如何在实地运作，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美国学术界和政策界就分支校园的发展以及该地区许多其他类型的合作进行辩论。迄今为止，关于美国模式的大学在校园之外对东道国的影响的人种学研究很少。这项计划访问赠款产生的研究将对美国高等教育在海湾阿拉伯国家的公民身份实践，性别角色和后石油经济未来方面的更广泛影响有更细致的了解。这些发现有望与美国政策制定者和美国大学管理者高度相关，因为他们在发展国际分支校园和外国大学合作伙伴关系的政治和经济中导航。除了为创新的实证和理论研究议程奠定基础，促进PI的早期职业发展外，该规划补助金还将有助于制定高度相关的实用议程，可以在学术界和政策界广泛传播。

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.