- About
Who We Are - Admissions
Join Fletcher - Academics
Degrees + Programs - Career Services
For Students + Employees - Students
Life at Fletcher - Research
Faculty + Centers - News + Media
Fletcher Updates - Alumni
Stay Connected
- About
Currently viewing the category:
"About Fletcher"
Classes ended on Monday, and I can no longer put off completing this post about events at Fletcher this fall. I started it in October and added to it in November, but I didn’t finish either time, and the notices about events kept pouring in. The consequence of my procrastination is a bulging email folder into which I’ve shoved all the notices, while I waited for a day when I’d have enough time to sift through them and give readers a sense of the many ways to keep busy at Fletcher.
Some of each semester’s events are student organized. There was a November screening of Restrepo, sponsored by Fletcher Students in Security, and a talk on “The U.S. Foreign Service: Behind the Scenes of American Diplomacy” sponsored by three student groups. Earlier this month, the Asia Club, the Post-Soviet Nations Club, and Fletcher Students in Security organized an in-depth conversation about the effect of energy resources on the geopolitics of Central Asia. The groups arranged for current students and alumni with expertise in the area to lead the discussion. And there was my favorite annual event, Military 101, at which the Fletcher military fellows help students gain familiarity with the different military services.
The World Peace Foundation has done its part to keep students busy, offering a roundtable on the Crisis in Mali, a panel discussion of “Libya Today,” and a talk by Mary Kaldor, entitled “The New Peace.” Dr. Kaldor left campus with a new honor for her c.v. — the University’s Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award.
There were special annual lectures, such as the 16th Richard E. Snyder Presidential Lecture at Tufts, which was delivered this year by Anthony Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, whose talk was titled, “Sticks and Stones: Freedom of Expression and Political Correctness.” And there was the Constantine G. Karamanlis Chair in Hellenic and European Studies Annual Lecture, this year offered by Charles Dallara, Managing Director of the Institute of International Finance (and Fletcher graduate), who spoke on “The Greek Economy at a Crossroads.”
There was a timely election-related talk on “Election Aftermath: Why Should I Believe What I See on the News?” by Marian Porges, Senior Director of News Standards and Practices at NBC News (and Tufts graduate). And business-focused students might have attended talks in the Institute for Business in the Global Context Speaker Series, including:
- “Financial Inclusion: Are Emerging Payment Products the Magic Bullet?”
- “Why Brand Matters: The New and the True” and
- “Cultivating Global Leadership Skills: A CEO’s Career Journey“
The Development folks made my life simple by capturing everything on a poster.
And there were the yearly Charles Francis Adams lectures, including:
- Ambassador Robert R. King, Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues, on “United States Policy on Human Rights in North Korea”
- Ambassador Ron Prosor, on “The Jewish State on the Global Stage: A View from Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations”
But it wasn’t all lectures! Other events included:
- Library workshops on Bloomberg and Global Insight Workshop;
- A research colloquium sponsored by The Hitachi Center for Technology and International Affairs to describe the current Fletcher School research projects that the Hitachi Center funds;
- The Middle East & North Africa (MENA) Internship Panel at which students described their experiences to students;
- And there was cake to note the anniversary of the Marine Corps’s founding.
At an Information Session a few weeks ago, the student session leader, Hillary, summed things up by saying that there are more talks, presentations, and conferences on topics she’s interested in than she could ever attend. And that would be true for people of all interests in this multidisciplinary community. Ultimately, there are way more events than I can capture in one blog post. But I hope this short list gives you an idea of all that’s happening at Fletcher during each week of the semester. Scroll through the Fletcher calendar to see what might interest you.
Dear Ariel: What joint degree programs does Fletcher offer? Can I create my own joint degree program?
Fletcher currently offers the following formal joint or dual degree programs:
• MALD/JD – Harvard Law School, Harvard University
• MALD/JD – School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley
• MALD/MBA – Tuck School of Business Administration, Dartmouth College
• MALD/MBA – HEC MBA Program, HEC School of Management (Paris, France)
• MALD/MBA – Instituto de Empresa (Madrid, Spain)
• MALD/MBA – China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) (Shanghai, China)
• MALD/MAIS – Diplomatische Akademie Wien — Vienna School of International Studies (Vienna, Austria)
• MALD/MIA – University of St. Gallen (St. Gallen, Switzerland)
• MALD/MA – Department of Urban and Environmental Policy, Tufts University
• MALD/MS – Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University
• MALD/MA or BA – Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Tufts University
• MALD/MS – School of Engineering, Tufts University
• MA/MD – School of Medicine, Tufts University
• MA/DVM – Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, Tufts University
Like MALD students, MIB degree candidates may pursue a joint degree with a law school or other graduate program, but may not arrange a joint degree with an MBA. LLM degree candidates may pursue a joint degree with the MALD, requiring five semesters of study.
All students interested in joint degree programs must apply to The Fletcher School and the partner institution separately. Each school/department will admit students according to their own policies and qualifications. Financial aid will be determined by the school in which the student is registered.
In addition to the formal dual degree programs offered by Fletcher, students may design their own dual degrees programs with other professional schools (such as law or business school) or academic programs. Students interested in an ad hoc dual degree program should apply separately to both institutions, and should consult with each school after admission to arrange a program of study.
More information on joint degree programs can be found on our website.
Here’s a nifty page for those of you still thinking about how Fletcher will help you achieve your career objectives. The screen shot below shows what the page looks like. As you’ll see, the list on the left includes “Banking & Finance” and “Capitol Hill/Campaigning” and all sorts of other career directions in which Fletcher graduates have gone, and current students will go. If you go to the page, and click on “Banking & Finance” you’ll see a list of classes that can support your future career. Try it! Click around and check out this practice-oriented presentation of the Fletcher curriculum.
Among the many topics to which I don’t give enough attention is the LLM program. To correct this situation, I’ve asked Hyejin Park, the program’s interim director to provide some updates. Hyejin is a 2012 graduate of the program, and she is covering for program director (and another graduate) Susan Simone, while Susan is on maternity leave. Here’s Hyejin’s report on her trip last weekend to New York for an event.
I spent last weekend in New York City, escaping only a short time before Hurricane Sandy, for the annual International Law Weekend 2012, which the Fletcher School co-sponsored. It was an intense two days of intellectually stimulating panels on public and private international law topics, with practitioners, academics, and students from across the East Coast in attendance – a fitting occasion for the Fletcher LLM Program to be represented. One of the panels, entitled “Metatheory of International Law,” featured Fletcher’s very own Professor Joel Trachtman.
Now back in Medford, I am only beginning to realize what a whirlwind of two months the start of the academic year has been. We welcomed 17 students from 13 different countries into the Fletcher LLM Class of 2013, including one MALD/LLM joint degree candidate. As has been the case with the four preceding LLM alumni classes, the constituent members of the current LLM class bring with them an incredibly diverse range of life and work experience, and exhibit a deep engagement with international law.
Our High Table luncheon series is well underway, with talks thus far by the Hon. Robert Cordy, Associate Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, and Stuart Kerr, Director of Legal and Regulatory Affairs at the Millennium Challenge Corporation. In the spring semester, we will host, among others, Meg Kinnear, Secretary-General of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
The corridors of Fletcher these days tend to seem relatively calm and quiet on the surface. I’d like to think it must have something to do with students being deeply immersed in their midterm assignments, ranging from papers on human rights law and trade law, to simulated negotiations on treaty law. I look forward to being back on the blog soon with some more updates on the LLM Program.
Here’s how the Fletcher Course Bulletin describes it:
EIB B237: Field Studies in Global Consulting
The goal of this course is to provide an introduction to consulting as it is practiced worldwide and across sectors. Students will achieve this goal by undertaking a consulting engagement for a real-world client. The first part of the course will include an introduction to and practice in the essential skills that form the core of professional development for consultants at top level firms. Students will then put these skills to the test by completing a team consulting project for a sponsoring company.
And this website gives a nice picture of how the course plays out for the students and companies that participate. It’s a particularly challenging class for students, who pretty much need to clear their schedules to make time for the teamwork and travel that each project may involve, but the opportunity for genuine hands-on practical experience also makes the class very popular each spring.
Blog readers may already have picked up on this news from other sources, but I feel I should still mention that Fletcher Dean Stephen Bosworth has announced that he will retire at the end of the 2012-2013 academic year. Eleven years as dean is a good long stretch, particularly given that Dean Bosworth wore two hats for several years (the second hat being Special Representative for North Korea policy — exhausting travel included). There will, of course, be a search for his replacement, though I haven’t heard any details yet. For those who might wonder how this will affect Fletcher, I think it’s fair to say that business will carry on as usual, both this year and next.
Attention Africa experts and writers! Fletcher’s Institute for Business in the Global Context invites you to contribute your thoughts on the promise of Africa’s role in the global economy through an essay contest. The winners will receive a cash prize and travel stipend to join us here for the October 25-26 conference: Africa’s Turn?: The Promise and Reality of the Global Economy’s “Final Frontier.”
Whether or not you choose to enter the essay contest, we hope you will join us for what is sure to be an interesting two days. (The conference is free and open to the public.)
The Fletcher faculty has made some changes to what used to be the thesis requirement for all degree programs. Going forward, the requirement will be for the production of a capstone project. For some students (and their professors), this represents no change whatsoever. They arrived at Fletcher looking forward to writing a traditional academic thesis, and that’s what they’re going to do. For other students, this marks a welcome change. In some fields, a thesis is not the project format that best lends itself to the presentation of two year’s worth of learning. Here’s a little of the email Academic Dean Peter Uvin sent to students to explain the change. (Note that this was an email sent directly to students, not an official document, hence the casual language.) He starts by saying that, in fact, little (beyond the name of the project) has changed.
First, all degree programs always had to write a thesis, which was understood to be a traditional research project. Now we are changing that title a bit (“capstone project”) and we are giving students more flexibility in terms of their final academic piece of work. Over the years, many students have found the research thesis a very useful and rewarding experience, and they can continue to do this with all the professors at Fletcher. But other students have felt that a thesis was not a particularly useful exercise, given what they would be doing after Fletcher. We now officially allow for a broader range of choices to accommodate those students.
Second, students used to develop their thesis topics in many different ways, and this will also continue, though we will be more explicit about the need to associate the thesis writing with a course credit. Here are the choices for how a capstone project can be developed:
◊ Students can continue to build their capstone project off a course paper;
◊ A number of professors have decided that their courses are set up in such a way that their required final product is really an excellent preparation for the capstone project. This may be because they offer a lot of methodology, or because they require a product that is very labor intensive, or because they help students develop research proposals, etc. Those classes will now be called “incubator courses.” Students are not obliged to take incubator courses for their capstone projects; it is simply an option. Also: you can take these courses even if you do not want to write your capstone project through them!
◊ Students can also continue to use an independent study in order to write their capstone project.
◊ Often professors look for student assistance with research projects. The innovation here is that we encourage professors and students who work together in this way to use that work as the basis for the capstone project.
This is all new and a work in progress. It is important to have clear discussions with your capstone supervisors to understand exactly what s/he will be looking for. Some are going to be traditional and only want an academic thesis, whereas others are thrilled to be able to accept something else. Some see their courses as incubators, whereas others do not. Just talk to them. It will all work out. This is designed to make life more flexible and easier—not more stressful!
Our current second-year students will be the pioneers for the Capstone Projects, and I look forward to hearing about some innovative project formats.
Just when we had become accustomed to seeing vast areas of Fletcher unpopulated by students, along comes a group of eager learners sporting name tags. They’re here this week for a Summer Institute that Fletcher offers jointly with the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict. I’ll let the Institute organizers describe the program:
The Fletcher Summer Institute is an intensive one-week executive education program on the advanced study of nonviolent conflict and civil resistance. The program is held annually at the Fletcher School for a variety of international professionals, journalists, campaign organizers, coordinators, scholars, and policy analysts.
As cases of civil resistance multiply, it is essential that international professionals, journalists, scholars, and policy analysts understand how this form of struggle is generated, the strategies that make it effective, and how it can be fostered and learned. The Institute will address these and other issues, such as: How are nonviolent movements sustained and democratic transitions completed? How do movements deal with violent flanks as well as extreme repression? Historical and contemporary cases will be examined, including campaigns for social and environmental rights as well as political struggles against foreign occupiers and authoritarian rulers.
Both the participants’ presence at Fletcher and the Institute content seem very timely!
