Interview with Desha Girod 04/11
Question 1: Describe your course and how you incorporate JUHAN.
0:45 The class that I taught in the fall which is a JUHAN class is entitled Civil War. It is a class that looks at academically the very best work that has been done on understanding the causes of Civil War, why some countries experience civil war and others don’t, and understanding the termination of civil war – why, and when, and how civil war ends. Also, some post conflict reconstruction issues. In particular, what role if any can external actors play in bringing about the successful reconstruction of countries that recently experience civil war?
1:27 We cover the gamut of issues that are important from an academic perspective as well as from a policy perspective. The students who participate are very excited and come from some basic understanding from the news about how destructive civil wars can be and how difficult they are to solve, especially in the aftermath of what they’ve seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are really eager to understand the problems and to find solutions. Especially since they have the policy know how from reading newspapers, which is common among Georgetown students, I really focus the class on doing the very, very best academic reading on these issues and then having them bring in policy ideas that they pick up from the newspapers.
2:25 The way I structure the class is, it’s a lecture class, so I go through the readings and some of my own expertise on some of the conflicts we study, and I hold a discussion. Even though it’s a lecture, I hold a lot of discussions in the class, and sometimes I break them up into groups to do more policy focused case studies – looking at certain countries and groups of countries. I have them imagine, if they were in the national security council, what would they advise the president to do regarding a certain conflict, how would they think about the trade off I terms of the economic crisis at home and what can be done in a place like Libya? These kinds of policy exercises force them to think about the very best we know academically, bringing in their own experiences about what they hear from the news, and put that to work in context of them actually wanting to do something in terms of policy.
3:25 That’s the general structure of the class which made it a natural class for the JUHAN project because we are dealing with humanitarian disasters that are caused by human beings in a sense that these are complex humanitarian emergencies that emerge as a result of rebel groups taking up arms and fighting against the government and a government that is unwilling to negotiate with the rebels.
Question 2: Can you talk a little bit more about the way you have incorporated the JUHAN philosophy in the course?
4:03 The JUHAN philosophy really asks professors to think carefully about the issues of humanitarian disasters and the causes that prompt these emergencies to occur as well as the actors involved in doing something about them, in either creating them or solving them. Having the JUHAN support was one of the things that really got me to think carefully about putting together case studies and simulations and policy exercises because what better way to think about actors than to think about yourself sitting on the national security council and who would you work with in a country like Libya in the present issues of humanitarian disasters there or in a country like Afghanistan? I thought that was a way that I could very easily target a lot of issues that are important for the JUHAN philosophy.
Question 3: What difference did it make to you as a professor to take this philosophy and incorporate it into your course?
5:15 It made a big difference. I should say that I was a new professor starting with the JUHAN project, so when I was designing the syllabus, I was designing it with JUHAN in mind. If that had not been a part of my experience, I may have just done a straight lecture class and not incorporated the simulation component; it just might not have crossed my mind. By virtue of being involved with the JUHAN process and talking with other faculty and talking with CNDLS about the philosophy, it became very clear to me that this would be the best way to bring out these issues, which are very important. At the end of the day, I would have wanted students to engage with these issues anyway, but JUHAN really helped me to figure out as a teacher how to bring those into the classroom with the simulation idea.
Question 4: And what about the impact on students?
6:15 The students commented about the simulations quite a bit in the evaluation of the class. If anything, they wanted more of it. They got to see that that’s where what they were reading for the class was making itself relevant. Knowing something about the general, statistical social science work on why some countries experience civil wars and others not and why some countries terminate civil wars and others have ongoing civil wars, they found that that’s where they could really use those findings and make those findings relevant when they could think about – what are the structural conditions in a place like Afghanistan in a war that continues on and on and what can be done from a policy angle to address those structural issues. They are able to mix the policy angle with the theoretical angle in a very concrete way through the simulations.
Question 5: Thinking about your own teaching practice and moving forward, how do you think that JUHAN may affect your teaching as a new professor as you continue your teaching tenure?
7:55 Having that experience of figuring out ways of making the things students read academically very concrete and relevant from a policy perspective, I think that is something that will stay with me and help me with my undergraduate teaching to maintain student interest and keep them engaged and realize the ways that social science is relevant and thinking like a social scientist is relevant to their own development as thinkers or individuals who may end up working for NGOS or in policy or staffers in senate offices. I think having had the experience and support of JUHAN especially with things like these simulations, it made a big difference to my teaching. Even if Georgetown were not a part of JUHAN, I would continue to do this kind of thing because I can see that it made my teaching better and helped my students get more out of the class.
Question 6: Have your interactions with your students changed as a result of teaching from a JUHAN philosophy?
9:24 Because all of my undergrad classes so far have been JUHAN classes, its hard to know if they would be different if they were not JUHAN classes. One thing that my students take advantage of, which I bring up as part of JUHAN orientation, is a lot of them talk to me about their future and wanting to know about opportunities in the humanitarian affairs field whether it be NGO, policy related, where to get a masters to study these things further. I think that that’s a conversation that would not be happening as much with my students if I were not a JUHAN teacher and if I weren’t looking to bring up those components so actively in the course. I think that is how my interactions with students have changed.
Question 7: Do you think that your expectations of students have changed as a result of the JUHAN philosophy?
10:31 I definitely expect them to be very aware of what is going on in the world. Having the JUHAN active humanitarian awareness component I think is something that has gotten me to prioritize that on a regular basis in class. From the very beginning, I go over where students can find easy access to great news stories from the New York Times and even from blogs these days. I connect them to a lot of that and I definitely have an expectation that they are staying updated and that is something that I can get a sense of during class discussion. That’s definitely an expectation that I have that has grown out of my experience with the JUHAN philosophy.
Question 8: What kernel of wisdom would you give people who are just starting out teaching? Is there any one thing that jumps out about your own teaching that you might share with future faculty?
11:47 I think what surprised me the most is how much we learned. Those of us who were doing a Ph.D. for some time and may have taught early on in the Ph.D., but disappeared from the world when writing our dissertations and then we got a job and started teaching right away. I didn’t realize when I started teaching just how much I know about these topics compared to undergraduates who are just being exposed to thinking systematically about these things for the first time. One of the things that became very clear to me right away is how important it is to understand that we do come into teaching them with quite a lot of expertise on these issues, so we have to break it down and walk students through all of these complex concepts and ideas that we think of so easily as faculty and even as new faculty. That is something that is really important to remember that when students are undergraduates, they are eager to learn and they know a lot and they have a lot of capabilities, but it is really important to walk them through these ideas carefully and slowly.
13:19 I also think that having high expectations is really important because I think that students work really hard and they work to meet those expectations. I haven’t been disappointed at all in the kind of work that Georgetown students are putting forward. I think having high expectations is really good. I wouldn’t hesitate to bring in policy components, class discussion, and things that really engage students with the real academic issues. I think that helps students make the academic issues more meaningful and also it just engages them more in the learning as more active learners instead of more passive learners.
Questions 9: Anything that has been a challenge for you that you think that other new faculty might encounter, just to give them a heads up?
14:27 I think that teaching a new class is extremely challenging. The more time that a person can allocate in preparation for that the better. I spend a bit of time during the summer before teaching in the fall preparing for the lecture component of the class in order to do it without all the pressures that we’re under during the fall semester for example. I think that taking as much time as possible ahead of the teaching to organize the class and to be very aware of exactly how to structure it day by day. The more of that one can do the better. It also frees up more of one’s teaching time for giving the students instead of preparing for classes last minute. In retrospect, I think that the time that I spent preparing for my classes particularly over the summer is something that I would like to share.
Question 10: Is there anything else you’d like to share in term as of your JUHAN course or being a new professor?
15:49 The one thing I will say – I did my Ph.D. work at Stanford where I had my teaching experience just as a graduate student TA and, while I enjoyed teaching there a lot, it’s amazing how at Georgetown – and I don’t know if I am seeing students as a professor now instead of a graduate student or if its because there is something about Washington – but the way in which students engage in policy issues here is really phenomenal and unique. I think that we have a wonderful opportunity as professors to engage with that. Teaching has been a lot of fun. It’s a lot more fun than I ever anticipated. Part of that is being involved in the JUHAN process, but more generally, I just think that Georgetown students are really phenomenal.
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