USA news on Youtube Apr 4 2018

Okay, welcome everyone.

We have yet again interesting visitors here in the

Department of Future Technologies.

We have Sean Langberg here.

you are working as a Program Officer in

the Institute of International Education (IIE).

Without further ado, I would like to ask you

what is the Institute of International Education?

IIE is an international, non-governmental

organization based in New York.

We have offices throughout the world that administer

various fellowship programs for both scholars and students.

I work in the New York office

on a program called Scholar Rescue Fund, but the Institute overall

has over 200 programs that it works on.

They are most famously known for the Fulbright Program.

That is a state department program that the IIE administers.

They facilitate student travel from the US to other countries

and from other countries to the US.

But other programs do private programs for corporations and

for professors as well and professional development programs.

It's just really kind of internationalizing education across the world.

And again based in New York, but offices throughout the world.

You've been working at the Scholar Rescue Fund.

It sounds interesting. What is the purpose of this specific fund?

The Scholar Rescue Fund is one of the programs that IIE runs.

It's a program for threatened scholars throughout the world.

so we have worked with host partners to place scholars from

Middle East, Africa, East Asia and Latin America

in host universities primarily in Jordan and Europe and North America.

We match scholars who are from those regions with host universities.

In order to qualify for a Scholar Rescue Fund you have to have

a high-level scholarship and also a high-level threat.

That's the that's the unique thing about Scholar Rescue Fund.

We work with scholars that are being targeted for their work or

are living in the midst of conflict.

In particularly we have Syrian, Iraqi and Turkish scholars among many others.

We administer a one to two year program for those fellows

while they're on their host campuses.

The idea is really saving the National Academy of those countries,

so that once the conflict subsides they can return to their countries and help rebuild.

So it's very important work.

I think so.

You have worked with Finnish universities,

can you describe the role of Finnish universities

in your work or your program?

Finnish universities like German universities,

American universities, Canadian universities and many others

work to host scholars on their campuses, so

we partner with host campuses in a funding

model where they provide funding and we provide funding to create

a funding package for these scholars.

They come to campus for one to two years.

They work with faculty members, they teach courses, they conduct research

and they kind of bring that unique expertise to Finnish universities and others,

because they are coming from place that are

often underrepresented in the Western academies.

So, they they're here on campus, across Finland,

for one to two years working with faculty and giving their perspective.

Finnish universities have been wonderful hosts and we're working with

expanding that program so that more scholars are able to come to Finland and

enjoy everything that has to offer for for those scholars.

Ok. This was a sort of brief interview,

so thank you, Sean. -Yeah, absolutely.

And thanks to our viewers.