Roberts, Daniel
Upon graduating from Vanderbilt University, I worked at a middle school in the Chicago Public Schools, a teacher trainer and health facilitator in Guatemala with the Peace Corps and as an ESL teacher in Taiwan. I returned to Vanderbilt to earn a master's degree in International Education Policy and Management and then worked for the Institute of International Education's Mexico City office as a researcher and administrator for its higher education scholarship programs. As a Dean's Scholar in MSU's educational policy program, for the past four years I have studied Swahili with support from FLAS fellowships through MSU's Center for Advanced Studies of International Development and African Studies Center and conducted research in Tanzania about community-based education and school gardens/farms with funding from the College of Education's Summer Research Fellowship. With support of an IIE graduate fellowship which replaced the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award in 2011, for the past year I have conducted dissertation research on how school cultivation programs shape educational quality and community food security in rural primary schools in Tanzania. My current assistantship in MSU's Tanzania Partnership Program is to work with teachers and village leaders in the rural village of Milola in Lindi Province, Tanzania in launching in-school clubs and programs for out-of-school youth in the areas of agriculture, health, and the environment.