Frances Bakarr

Sierra Leone

EdD Ed. Admin

Columbia University

Frances Received an undergraduate degree and a postgraduate diploma at the University of Sierra Leone.  She taught there for two years and for two years at the secondary school she had attended.  Then she moved to another secondary school where she served as principal for 12 years.  She raised the funds needed to rebuild the school that was severely damaged by civil war.  The school's enrollment grew from 50 to 700 students during her principalship.  She is on study leave from her position as a school principal.  Her dissertation will deal with basic education for girls and will be based on field work in Sierra Leone.

Back-to-top

Ana de Souza

Brazil

ScD Public Health

Harvard University

Anna was trained in dentistry in Rio de Janeiro.  She practiced pediatric dentistry in rural communities near Rio de Janeiro, then joined the Municipal Secretariat of Health and Social Promotion in Rio where she managed school-based oral hygiene programs. She transferred to a village of about 6,000 persons and she soon became involved in community projects--improved wages for women, basic water and sanitation, food distribution, immunization campaigns, and adult literacy.  She became deeply interested in public health. She was awarded a government scholarship in 1992 to study public health in the U.S. 
Ms. de Sousa's dissertation explores efforts of a community-based health program in northeast Brazil to reduce infant mortality.  (Hers is part of a team study.)

Back-to-top

Lazima Onta Bhatta

Nepal

PhD Anthropology

Cornell University

Lazima grew up in a family that believed that women should be educated and independent values that are unusual in traditional Nepali society.  Her father was on the staff of the Nepal Red Cross Society and his social interests became her own.  She was educated in Nepal and at Brandeis University, where she held a tuition scholarship and won academic honors.  At Cornell, she received the A.D. White Fellowship in 1991-92 and the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Fellowship for 1992-96.  Her interest in social service and development became clear when she was at Brandeis; she also became interested in non-profit organizations’ interest in street children was stimulated at Cornell.
She was employed by the Child Welfare Society and the International Labor Office in Nepal.  Her responsibilities were in the field of child labor, and she focused on the problems of street children in Katmandu.  She will return to Nepal in May, 1996, to do field work for her dissertation, identifying the opportunities of street children for no-formal education, recreation, and health care.
Her husband is a candidate for the Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Policy Development.

.

Back-to-top

Malgorzata Ornoch-Tabedzka

Poland

MPH Public Health

Tulane University

Malgorzata grew up in Poznan and was active in the Solidarity movement as a young woman.  She was educated at the Adam Mickiewica University in Poznan and the Medical Center of Postgraduate Studies in Warsaw.  She was a social worker, health educator, therapist, and researcher at the Rehabilitation Hospital in Poznan for ten years, then joined a Health Care Center where she designed and implemented community-based primary health care.
She received a Hubert Humphrey Fellowship for study at Tulane in 1995-96.  She is interested in preventive and research-based health care, and is deeply concerned about the lack of research skills in the public health community in Poland.

Back-to-top

Margaret Walubuka

Kenya

PhD Education

Gallaudet University

Margaret grew up in the slums of Nairobi with parents who believed in the education of girls.  She attended Catholic schools and received training in primary education and special education in Kenya.  She was a teacher and principal of a primary school and a school for deaf children.  She received an M.S. from the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in Rochester, NY, before enrolling at Gallaudet University for the Ph.D.  Her dissertation will examine pre-vocational education programs for the deaf and multiply-disabled young adults in Kenya.

.

Back-to-top

Denise Zinn

South-Africa

PdD Education

Harvard University

Denise attended rigidly segregated schools in Cape Town.  Teachers in her high school were vigorously opposed to Apartheid and encouraged her to attend the "Open" University of Cape Town where she received teacher certification and a graduate degree.  She and her husband taught for ten years in a high school in Port Elizabeth where they also participated in political activities.

Denise accompanied her husband to the U.S. when he received a Fulbright Scholarship to study at Teachers College, Columbia University.  A year later, she received the Harvard-South African Fellowship.  Her dissertation explores the perceptions of teachers who are undergoing the transition between old and new educational methodologies in South Africa.

Back-to-top