Scholarship Spotlight: Lingnan University, Hong Kong; Liberal Arts Scholarship, $15,000

University:Lingnan University, Hong Kong

Level: Undergraduate; Arts, Business and Social Sciences

Scholarship Description:
To attract overseas students to our University so as to create a vibrant international environment on campus, the University offers scholarships to support outstanding overseas students to pursue undergraduate studies at our University.

Overseas Student Scholarships of HK$120,000 (i.e. about US$15,385) each per academic year will be awarded to successful applicants, covering tuition fee, hostel and other academic and living expenses. Each scholarship is offered on an annual renewable basis and is tenable for a period of up to 3 years, subject to continued outstanding academic performance.

Requirements:
Non-local applicants (other than Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland citizens) should have attained at a recognized post-secondary institution outside Hong Kong an equivalent qualification to the Admission Requirements of the University, including a degree, an associate degree or a diploma awarded by a recognized post-secondary institution; OR an International Baccalaureate Diploma; OR satisfactory completion of the first year in a four-year undergraduate curriculum or the first year of an associate degree program of a recognized institution; OR satisfactory completion of two years of full-time study in a post-Form Five institution, e.g. a technical institute; OR other equivalent qualifications which the University will consider on a case-by-case basis.

Non-local applicants may be required to achieve a minimum of Grade C in English in the GCE O-Level or GCSE Examination or an equivalent public examination; or a TOEFL score of 213 in the computer-based test, or 550 in the paper-based test, or 79 in the internet-based test; or an IELTS overall band score of 5.5.

Scholarship Application Deadline: March 31, 2011

Further Scholarship Information and Application:
http://www.ln.edu.hk/admissions/da/intl/scholarships/background.php

Please click here ( pdf size 1.98 MB) to download a leaflet on the Scholarships.

ESMT, Germany, Offers Exciting MBA Scholarship/Fellowship Opportunities for MBA, Executive MBA Programs (Full Tuition)

Supported by 25 corporate founders, European School of Management and Technology is able to offer substantial scholarships to support students. ESMT offers a number of merit-based scholarships for applicants.

Scholarships are allocated on the basis of intellectual excellence, evidence of personal and professional achievement and evidence of strong leadership potential as well as superior interpersonal skills. The scholarships are restricted to self-funded candidates and will be accounted for against the applicant�s program fees. Applicants must meet ESMT�s general admission requirements.

Following are a few of the scholarship opportunities:

Tagesspiegel Diversity Scholarship
Global Women�s Scholarship
ESMT Americas Scholarship
ESMT Central and Eastern Europe Scholarship
ESMT Africa Scholarship
ESMT Middle East and Central Asia Scholarship
ESMT Asia Scholarship
ESMT Academic Excellence Scholarship
ESMT Academic Excellence Scholarship for Women
QS ESMT Diversity Scholarships
Talentia Scholarships
Kofi Annan Business School Foundation

Full-time MBA Application:
Apply online (MBA)

Further Information:
Info Downloads
Info Events

Full-time MBA assistance:
Stephanie Kluth
Head of Admissions Office
Phone: +49 (0) 30 212 31-1400
Fax: +49 (0) 30 212 31-1409
mba@esmt.org

ESMT Offers Exciting MBA Scholarship/Fellowship Opportunities: Kofi Annan Fellowship, full tuition and fees.

Description:
The Kofi Annan Business School Foundation provides fellowships for talented and motivated students from developing countries that allow them to obtain a bachelor�s or master�s degree in Europe at one of the academic partners of the Kofi Annan Business School Foundation. Partner schools are ESMT, Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School (Belgium), and Hogeschool Utrecht (Netherlands).

Program: Full-time MBA

Scholarships available: up to three

Eligibility:
Applicants must be resident in one of the UN�s Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs), or Palestine.
Please use these links to find a list of countries qualifying:
Least Developed Countries (LDCs)
Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs)

Value:
Full tuition and fees of � 38,000 and a monthly stipend for living expenses

Conditions:
Fellows are expected to commit to returning to their home country or region to participate in the development of the local or regional economy.

For more information:
Download brochure
Website: http://www.esmt.org/info/scholarships

Imagine a nation with excellent schools

Imagine that 25 years ago that nation's schools were below international averages in math and sciences

Imagine that nation had large differences between schools with affluent students versus those with poorer students

Imagine that nation now has almost no difference in performance between schools with affluent students and those with poorer students

Imagine in that nation teachers are so respected that the best students compete to become teachers, not just for two years, but for a career

Imagine that that nation's schools are now internationally respected

Imagine that our nation might actually be able to learn from what that nation has done

Stop imagining. I'm talking about Finland, as you can read in a piece in today's Boston Globe, by Pasi Sahlberg, titled Learning from Finland and subtitled How one of the world�s top educational performers turned around.

Sahlberg is now director general of the Center for International Mobility and Cooperation at Finland�s Ministry of Education and Culture. Previously he served as a Washington-based World Bank education specialist. Having lived in the US, he is well-aware of the problems of the US educational system. He is also knowledgeable about international comparisons of schools, for example, the recent PISA (The Program for International Student Assessment) by OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), in which yet again Finland was the top ranked nation (ignore the results from Shanghai, which are (a) not typical of China, and (b) where students spend several hours daily in intensive test preparation AFTER a full day of school). Finland was also highly ranked in a international study by McKinsey and Company.

Finland used to have serious problems in school performance, as Sahlberg acknowledges.

Today, as the most recent PISA study proves, Finland is one of the few nations that have accomplished both a high quality of learning and equity in learning at the same time. The best school systems are the most equitable � students do well regardless of their socio-economic background. Finally, Finland should interest US educators because Finns have employed very distinct ideas and policies in reforming education, many the exact opposite of what�s being tried in the United States.

The Finns examined what other countries were doing, and as Sahlberg also writes

The secret of Finnish educational success is that in the 20th century Finns studied and emulated such advanced nations as Sweden, Germany, and the United States. Finns adopted some education policies from elsewhere but also avoided mistakes made by these leading education performers.

We'll talk about the mistakes Finland is avoiding shortly.

First, some argue that Finland is nowhere near as diverse as the US. Sahlberg acknowledges that is true, but also points out that it is becoming increasingly diverse in recent years, with the implication that the additional diversity is not affecting the performance of its schools. Further, as many have pointed out Finland has a far lower level of childhood poverty than does the US, well under 5%b as compared to ours at more than 20%. Yet in Finland differences between schools with substantial numbers of poor children - primarily in rural areas - now perform as well as those with more affluent students in the urban areas. Sahlberg refers to the results of the most recent PISA, where

The best school systems are the most equitable � students do well regardless of their socio-economic background.

.

There are some real differences in the approach that Finland took to achieve the results which now rank it so highly. For example,

Finnish children never take a standardized test. Nor are there standardized tests used to compare teachers or schools to each other. Teachers, students, and parents are all involved in assessing and also deciding how well schools, teachers, or students do what they are supposed to do.

How do politicians and administrators determine how well schools are doing? They turn to

sample-based learning tests which place no pressure on schools, and by research targeted to understand better how schools work.

There is also a culture where parents think teachers who work closely with them "are the best judges of how well their children are learning in schools."

And teachers are respected.

Finland has created an inspiring and respectful environment in which teachers work. All teachers are required to have higher academic degrees that guarantee both high-level pedagogical skills and subject knowledge. Parents and authorities regard teachers with the same confidence they do medical doctors. Indeed, Finns trust public schools more than any other public institution, except the police. The fact that teachers in Finland work as autonomous professionals and play a key role in curriculum planning and assessing student learning attracts some of the most able and talented young Finns into teaching careers.

Stop there for a moment and consider how different our approach is here. We have a well-established pattern of denigrating public schools and teachers. We have notable voices - Bill Gates, for example - arguing that teachers getting advanced degrees is a waste of time and resources. We have a concerted effort to delegitimize public schools, with moves for vouchers, charter schools run by for profit organizations, hedge funds seeing how turning to charters can lead to profits for their investors, etc. Yet Finns trust public schools more than any other public institution, except the police. Of course, we also don't trust the police in the US, which may indicate some real cultural differences that do not work to our advantage.

There is another important difference from what we have been seeing, because in Finland

School principals, district education leaders, and superintendents are, without exception, former teachers. Leadership is therefore built on a strong sense of professional skills and community.

Here we have the newly announced initiative of the George W. Bush institute to train 50,000 people with no prior educational work experience as principals running school, we have the effort5s of Eli Broad and others to take business executives and train them as superintendents running district. At a more basic level, we have a variety of programs, of which Teach for America is the most notable, giving young people 5 weeks of intensive training and then placing them in classrooms, with a commitment that is not required to be longer than 2 years. I might add to what Sahlberg writes that in Finland it takes about 2 years of training under decreasing levels of supervision and increasing assumption of responsibility before one is fully responsible for her own classroom.

Sahlberg offers some suggestion for what the US could learn from the Finns. He argues strongly against using choice and competition as drivers for educational improvement, noting

None of the best-performing education systems relies primarily on them. Indeed, the Finnish experience shows that consistent focus on equity and cooperation � not choice and competition � can lead to an education system where all children learn well. Paying teachers based on students� test scores or converting public schools into private ones (through charters or other means) are ideas that have no place in the Finnish repertoire for educational improvement.

He also notes that Finland provides teacher candidates with a government-paid university education - remember that most teacher candidates in this nation have to pay for their own education which can leave them with substantial debt before they begin to earn incomes. Finland provides more support when they move into their classrooms and treats teaching as a respected profession. As he notes,

As long as teachers are not trusted in their work and are not respected as professionals, young talent in the United States is unlikely to seek teaching as a lifelong career.

Please, note carefully the words teaching as a lifelong career. Two years as a means of enhancing one's resume for other purposes is not the same thing, and does not benefit either the students being taught or the nation as a whole, despite news coverage to the contrary.

Sahlberg is blunt - he tells us that "Americans should admit that there is much to learn" from the educational systems of nations like Finland behind whom the US now lags. He thinks it is possible, closing with these words:

With America�s �can do�� mentality and superior knowledge base in educational improvement, you could shift course before it�s too late.

Let me add one other difference between Finland and the US that Sahlberg does not address. The teaching force in Finland is 100% unionized. Unionization is not in and of itself an obstacle to excellence in education. We should remind those who seek to use things like America lagging in comparisons like PISA not to use unions as an excuse, especially when states with unionized teaching and general work forces tend to outperform schools in right to work states.

The role of unions is different, to be sure. The culture is different, and not just in the respect given unions in Finland, including teachers unions.

Not only does Finland not have the high degree of childhood poverty we have in the US, they also have a far more substantial social safety net, starting with income security for families and medical care for all, two things sorely lacking in this nation.

Thus while I strongly advise we listen to what Salhberg has to offer us about how we can reform our schools, we should also bear in mind that we will not fix all the problems of learning until we are also willing to address the continuing inequities in this nation. Fixing the schools will be insufficient. I note that at a conference earlier this year Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute said that we would be better served taking the money that we could spend reducing the principal/teacher ratio to a reasonable level where you could evaluate teachers, and get much more bang for the buck by taking that money and building a health clinic in schools such as those in inner cities. Rothstein was addressing just one part of the impact that economic inequity has upon students that schools as they are currently constructed cannot address.

Still, I think we can learn from Finland, probably more so than we can from a China or a Korea, both of which are struggling to to change the direction of their schooling away from the test centric places they have been, ironically at the same time that we are going in the wrong direction.

I began by asking you to imagine a nation with excellent schools.

Now I make the same suggestion as does Sahlberg, that we seriously attempt to learn from what Finland has achieved in the past 25 years.

Imagine what we might be able to do with our schools.

Collegiate Inventors Competition for 2011: US/Canada, Undergraduate prize $10,000, Graduate prize $15,000

Objective
Introduced in 1990, the Collegiate Inventors Competition has recognized, rewarded, and encouraged hundreds of students to share their inventive ideas with the world. The Competition promotes exploration in invention, science, engineering, technology, and other creative endeavors and provides a window on the technologies from which society will benefit in the future.

Eligibility
Students must be enrolled (or have been enrolled) full-time in any U.S. or Canadian college or university at least part of the 12-month period prior to the date the entry is submitted. In the case of a team (maximum of four students), at least one member of the team must meet the full-time eligibility criteria. The other team members must have been enrolled on a part-time basis (at a minimum) sometime during the 24-month period prior to the date the entry is submitted.

Requirements
The entry must be the original idea and work product of a student or team of students with his or her university advisor and must not have been (1) made available to the public as a commercial product or process, (2) described in extensive detail in a publication more than one year prior to the date of submission, or (3) issued a patent more than one year prior to the date of submission. On rare occasion, exceptions may be made to allow the submission of significant recent improvements to matter patented or published more than one year prior to submission of the application. The entry submitted must be written in English.

The invention, a reduced-to-practice idea or working prototype, must be the work of a student or team of students with his or her university advisor. If it is a machine, it must be operable. If it is a chemical, it must be complete with evidence of successful application of the idea. If it is a new plant, color photographs or slides must be included in the submission. If a new or original ornamental design for an article of manufacture is submitted, the entire design must be included in the application. In addition, the invention should be capable of being reproduced.

Do not send your invention. Finalists will be notified and given instructions to send any necessary documentation. A university transcript must be provided at that time to verify student status.

Award
Each year up to 12 finalists in Graduate and Undergraduate Divisions receive an all-expenses paid trip to present their work to a panel of expert judges. The top Graduate prize is $15,000, the top Undergraduate Prize is $10,000. Other prizes will be awarded to select finalists. Academic advisors of each winning entry also receive a cash award.

Deadline
The 2011 dates for the Collegiate Inventors Competition have not yet been determined.

Website
http://www.invent.org/collegiate/

Scholarship Spotlight: University of Dayton International Merit Scholarships

University: University of Dayton, OH

Scholarship Amount: $5,000-$25,000

Program Description:
University of Dayton offers international merit scholarships which range between $5,000 and $25,000 per year to first-year and transfer undergraduate applicants.

Website: http://admission.udayton.edu/International_Students
Areas of Study: *All
Levels of Study: Undergraduate
Open to Students from Any Region

Eligibility Requirements:
Requirements 1: The University of Dayton does not require international applicants to submit ACT or SAT scores for admission or a limited scholarship review. However, applicants are welcome to submit ACT or SAT scores, as good scores may increase scholarship awards.

Contact Information:
University of Dayton
Admissions Office
300 College Park
Dayton, OH 45469-1300

Phone #: +1 (800) 837-7433
E-Mail: admission@udayton.edu

Contact or visit the website for more information.

Scholarship Spotlight: University of Toledo International Rocket Scholarship

University: University of Toledo; Toledo, Ohio

Average Scholarship: $9,120; covers non-resident portion of tuition

Deadline: MayAward Notification Month: July

Program Description:
Students that are eligible for the International Rocket Award will be invited to compete for this limited and competitive scholarship. Students selected will receive one half of the out-of-state surcharge, that when put together with the International Rocket Award will cover the entire out-of-state surcharge.

Areas of Study: *All
Levels of Study: Undergraduate
Open to Students from Any Region

Eligibility Requirements:
Requirements 1: Minimum GPA of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale.
Requirements 2: Minimum of a 500 PBT / 173 CBT / 61 IBT on international TOEFL, or 6.0 on the IELTS.

For further information, contact:
The University of Toledo
Mark Schroeder
Undergraduate Admission
2801 W. Bancroft St
Mail Stop #300
Toledo, OH, 43606

Phone: +1 (419) 530-1213
Fax: +1 (419) 530-5745
E-Mail: mark.schroeder5@utoledo.edu

Visit the website to apply online: http://www.utoledo.edu

Scholarship Spotlight: Pacific Lutheran University International Student Scholarships, up to full tuition waver

University: Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Washington, USA

Scholarship Description:
Renewable International student scholarships. Amount varies in between $1,000 and full tuition waiver ($29,200 for 2010-2011) per year. Deadline for some scholarships is December 15. Some scholarships require a separate application.

Areas of Study: Many - check out the website
Levels of Study: Undergraduate and Graduate

Open to Students from:
Asia, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, North America, Oceania, Egypt, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda

Scholarship Information:
Avg. Award Amount: Varies (up to $29,200 for 2010-2011)
Number of Awards: Unlimited
Award Coverage: Tuition and fees.
Award Duration: Up to 4 years

Eligibility Requirements:
Requirements 1: Must be enrolled at Pacific Lutheran University.

Website: www.plu.edu/admission/international/apply

Contact Information:
Pacific Lutheran University
Hiro Kuroiwa-Lewis
Director of International Recruitment
Office of Admission
Tacoma, WA 98447-0003

Phone: +1 (253) 535-8177
Fax: +1 (253) 536-5136
E-Mail: kuroiwalewis@plu.edu

Thoughts About Teaching in a Democracy

They are not mine, although I will give my assent to them. I encountered them when reading a book.

Allow me to share them so that you can ponder them, before I tell you the author, because the value of thought should be independent of what we know of the thinker, should it not?

Let me begin with this:

Teaching is powered by a common faith: When I look out at my students, I assume the full humanity of each. I see hopes and dreams, aspirations and needs, experiences and intentions that must somehow be accounted for and valued. I encounter citizens not consumers, unruly sparks of meaning, making energy, and not a mess of deficits. This is the evidence of things not seen, the starting point for teachers in our democratic society.

I assume the full humanity of each -- Jerome Bruner once said that every child is capable of some degree of mastery in every domain. It is our task as teachers to explore with that child in a fashion that does not foreclose dreams, that does not devalue the experiences and life-knowledge with which that student arrives in our classrooms.

Citizens not consumers -- also not merely workers in our economy. If we are a democracy our primary task, especially for social studies teachers like myself, is to prepare students to be participants in our society, which in political science terms is a liberal democracy, and which can remain as one only so long as We the people are prepared to exercise our responsibility for it.

Participatory democracy requires a high level of vigilance and action in its defense and in its enactment.

Note those first two words -- participatory democracy -- it is not a spectator sport, but rather requires our commitment. Our education should have as its most important purpose preparing our students for a life in such a participatory democracy. Without that even their economic futures -- and that of the nation -- may well be in doubt.

Educators, students, and citizens must now press for an education worthy of a democracy, including an end to sorting people into winners and losers through expensive standardized tests that act as pseudo-scientific forms of surveillance; and end to starving schools of needed resources and then blaming teachers and their unions for dismal outcomes; and an end of "savage inequalities' and the rapidly accumulating "educational debt," the resources due to communities historically segregated, underfunded, and under-served. All children and youth in a democracy, regardless of economic circumstance, deserve full access to richly resourced classrooms led by caring, thoughtful, fully qualified, and generously compensated teachers.

Note the key words, in groups.

All children and youth -- we should not be making distinctions based on economic status of the parents or the community

Full access to richly resourced classrooms -- again, lesser economic status should not further deprive some of the chance to experience and use the resources that can open doors and inflame imaginations

By caring, thoughtful, fully qualified, and generously compensated teachers -- Fully qualified does not mean learning on the job after only five weeks of training. Caring means the focus is the well-being of the students, not the future economic and professional status of the teachers. Generously compensated -- well, at least sufficiently compensated that one does not have to take a second job to pay one's bills, and can devote full attention to the meaningful task of teaching.

Do these words resonate with you? The teachers I have asked to consider them all responded positively, even when they did know the source.

They are from the third edition of To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher.

The author is now retired from his university post, after a long period of teaching students from the youngest to his graduate students.

His name is William Ayers.

Yes, that William Ayers.

Does that change your reaction to his thoughts? If so, shame on you.