Blending Cultures of Pedagogy

Liberal arts schools and university programs are flourishing in India. Over the past decade economic growth and the ability to pay for education have spurred the creation of private and public liberal arts schools. As internationalization of higher education and cross-border movements of students become increasingly more common, a new generation of students is now familiar with global education and corresponding western pedagogies. Along with the increase in study abroad programs is the rise in demand for quality liberal arts institutions at home. This study of O.P. Jindal Global University, founded in 2007, and the Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities (jslh) examines the contradictions and challenges inherent in supplanting long-held traditional teaching methods and classroom culture with the western concept of liberal education. The jslh faculty consists of Indian and foreign instructors while all students are Indian. Applying qualitative research methods of direct observation, interviews with faculty and students and surveys, the author examines changes in the traditional classroom power dynamics and the acceptance and resistance to new pedagogies. One strategy for addressing challenges, such as the faculty’s resistance to change was through in-depth discussion among faculty of the merits and limitations of traditional education and experiential learning. Foreign faculty benefitted from co-teaching with Indian faculty as all parties made a conscious effort to recognize cultural differences in student-teacher relations.

Scientific Diaspora: Stay Plans of Indian Faculty in the United States

In recent years, the “brain drain” experienced by developing countries, as their scientists and engineers chose to work and live permanently in developed countries, is seen as reversing. Although a reverse brain drain is projected as a new trend, a substantial number of immigrant scientists and engineers continue to work and live in developed countries. This paper presents the reasons why Indian faculty in science and engineering stay in the United States. Data for this study come from 51 in-depth interviews of faculty members of Indian origin working in various research universities across theus. Findings show that, although Indian faculty came to theusfor higher education without intending to become permanent residents, they chose to stay mostly due to the research opportunities, favorable work environments, career prospects and lifestyle preferences available in theus. They cope with the absence of family and cultural distance through periodic visits to India and by developing professional relationships with scientists and engineers in their home country—activities that facilitate transnational migration. The study adds validity to the international migration theory, which has not taken this particular group of faculty into consideration.

Literature and the Politics of Native American Studies

In a Panel Entitled “American (Indian) Studies: Can the Asa be an Intellectual Home?” at the 2002 Meeting of the American Studies Association, three Native Americanists—Robert Warrior, Philip Deloria, and Jean O'Brien—addressed the relation of their field to the broader terrain of American studies. Each remarked on the tenuous place of Native American studies in the academy, manifested by the underrepresentation of Indian faculty members, the existence of only two institutions granting PhDs in the field, the small number of scholarly journals devoted to Native issues, and neglect by other scholars, even those working in American and ethnic studies. Together, these problems create an institutional situation that Warrior labeled “intellectual homelessness,” in which “Native scholars … don't really belong anywhere” (“Room” 683). Yet these problems also suggest disparities between the questions that define Native studies and those that underlie scholarship in American studies as well as in conventional disciplines. If the marginalization of American Indian studies in academia, as these scholars suggested, reflects the place of Native peoples in United States society, so too does Native politics shape intellectual work in the field.