Fulbright Scholar Jill Perry heading to Paraguay in Peace Corps
Fulbright scholar is on the go
By Joshua Myerov
Monday, April 28, 2003
WALTHAM - By the time Bentley College adds Germany to the long list of countries it partners with, the person responsible for making it happen may be thousands of miles away.
Jill Perry, Bentley's director of the Cronin International Center, recently returned from a three-week Fulbright Scholar Program in Germany, where she got an in-depth look at the German educational system. Now, she's putting the wheels in motion to send Bentley students to German colleges and bring German students here.
But Perry isn't hanging around to see the fruits of her labor. Next month, she's heading for Paraguay, where she will spend two years doing municipal development in the Peace Corps, the federal government program that promotes international understanding by sending U.S. citizens abroad to work at the grass-roots level.
In Germany, Perry and 25 other college administrators from across the United States got a whirlwind tour of the country and the higher education system. Two particular schools, the University of Technology Munich and the Technical University of Dresden, piqued her interest as possible partnership schools for Bentley. Both have strong business curriculums, she said, which would make them good matches for Bentley. Perry estimated it would take about a year to get an exchange up and running.
Already, Bentley has semesterlong or yearlong exchange programs with 13 nations, including Austria, China, France and Mexico, and has sent students on shorter trips to places like Ethiopia, Greece, Bahrain and the Dominican Republic.
For Perry, the trip to Germany was unique. It was not simply about finding a German school partner. The Fulbright program intended for the administrators to fully understand the German higher education system.
"In a lot of places, students were the last thing on everybody's mind," she said.
In Germany, higher education is free. In the American equivalent of 10th grade, students choose a career track, somewhat based on testing that indicates strengths and weaknesses.
Some students take the vocational track, which includes careers like auto mechanic. Other go to technical universities, which involve anything from architecture to civil engineering. Still others go to basic university, equivalent to an American liberal arts education.
Regardless of the track, students spend six years training for their field before they become full-fledged members of the work force.
But now, Perry said, because of Germany's membership in the European Union, the educational system is being revamped. The addition of bachelor's and master's degree programs will make Germany more consistent with EU standards, Perry said.
For Bentley, the knowledge Perry gained from her trip will help the Cronin International Center put together its German exchange program.
"Now we know what we need to do to prepare our students to go," she said.
Perry also is considering options for a Bentley-German partnership beyond the traditional student exchange. For example, there already are plans for a Bentley professor to teach a course in Berlin.
Perry also said she was lucky to be in Germany during an important moment in history. She saw 25,000 people stage a "huge protest" against the American-led war in Iraq. The protest was remarkable for its peacefulness, she said.
"They're an amazingly welcoming society, given their history," she said.
