The arc of my experience as a Tulane global citizen can be traced back 30 plus years, when I was a member of the first Tulane Law School class to obtain the international specialization certificate. Fast forward, when I returned to Tulane 16 years ago as an attorney in the General Counsel’s Office. My role evolved over time where, serendipitously, I now serve as Tulane’s Director of Global Operations. This includes overseeing day-to-day activities of the University’s international subsidiary, Tulane International.
The breadth, scope and impact of Tulane’s activities worldwide is truly breathtaking, particularly its research and capacity building projects in developing countries. We follow the maxim that, if you give someone a fish, you feed them for a day. If you teach them how to fish, then they can feed themselves for a lifetime. Tulane excels in teaching people how to fish. To this end, we collaborate with communities abroad to understand their needs, and craft solutions tailored to the destination, where locals are empowered to meaningfully participate, ideally in a way that is sustainable and cost-effective. This is the case, whether we are facilitating environmental sustainability and forest and habitat preservation at the FCAT field station in Ecuador’s remote jungles or in the Congo building out a country-wide contraceptive network.
I’m constantly impressed by the creativity and ingenuity of Tulane faculty and students. Someone approaches me with an idea, “I want to do this here abroad.” They have these awesome ideas, and I work with them to facilitate it. My goal is to provide holistic advice, and discuss operational planning, the logistics, travel health and safety. I learn as much from the traveler as hopefully they learn from me. It’s a dance, so-to-say, with a back-and-forth dialogue. What are the academic goals? What is the business and cultural setting? Based upon this dialogue, we may repackage activity design to embrace compliance with host country and U.S. laws; arranging for work abroad; and travel health, safety and security. Again, they all need to be tailored to the destination, and relevant business practices and cultural norms.
Given the ever-increasing urgency of global warming, I’ve found it personally rewarding to collaborate with Tulane’s School of Science and Engineering faculty member, Jordan Karubian, to develop and expand a field station located in Ecuador. This labor of love dates back to 2018, when Tulane received initial funding to acquire land in Ecuador for habitat conservation, preservation and reforestation. It’s impossible to do this without close collaboration with local Ecuadorians and the indigenous population. They typically are the ones who negatively impact the habitat. They also are best positioned to serve as stewards to protect and preserve. Tulane opted to collaborate with trusted, long-term Ecuadorian collaborators. We helped them create a legal foundation called FCAT with FCAT being the conduit to acquire and manage the land that is one of the most biodiverse locations on the planet. A modest field station was then constructed to accommodate 50 workers, faculty and students rotating in-and-out as part of their academic endeavors. This was not an easy lift.
There are now 5 Tulane schools that with activities at the FCAT field station. So this sight is truly interdisciplinary, which is exactly what we’re trying to encourage. We have faculty rotating through, undergrads rotating through, graduate students and postdocs too. This includes both Tulane and other universities. All for the purposes of preservation, reforestation, and sustainability, which includes applying scientific techniques to these domains. It’s an honor to contribute to and be part of these concrete sustainability efforts abroad. They are both rewarding and impactful. May your journey as a Tulane global citizen also be successful, safe and rewarding!
---Director of Global Operations, Tulane Global
