As my home country Mongolia increases its pace of development to participate more in the international community, I embraced the opportunity of spending a year in the United States. The academic year 09/10 became my Humphrey year that I spent at the Peabody College of Education and Human Development (Vanderbilt University) in Nashville, Tennessee. It became a year full of professional networking, site visits and trips besides our academic learning.

From the very beginning, I saw the opportunities of professional as well as personal development when pursuing a professional affiliation at an American university. I completed my professional affiliation at the Teaching Center, Belmont University lasting six weeks. This enabled me to increase and complete my knowledge about the professional development of the faculty at university level.

To me, one of the highlights of the program was the chance to attend conferences and seminars that were organized in the US and that responded to individual interests. I highly appreciated the panel discussion of the Association of International Education Administrators Conference in Washington DC, the American Management Association Seminar on Human Resources Management in SF as well as the TESOL convention in Boston, MA.

They gave me great insights into the internationalization of American higher education, current issues of Human Resources Management and teaching English as a foreign language. Upon my return from the United States, I joined the Institute of Finance and Economics as a Director of International Joint and Exchange Programs. Being highly motivated and full of ideas, I want to make my contribution to the development of international programs of the Institute. One of my first successes? While I was at Vanderbilt University we paid a number of site visits to universities and colleges and among them was the Volunteer State Community College in Gallatin, Tennessee.

Recently, the IFE and the Volunteer State Community College signed a Memorandum of Understanding to promote the strengthening of mutually beneficial educational exchanges and cooperative programs between our schools. Isn’t it great? In the future, we intend to expand our international relations with American universities and colleges and share our experiences in the field of Higher Education.

Dolgormaa Jamiyan

Humphrey Fellow 2009-2010

Peabody College of Education and Human Development

Vanderbilt University

Nashville, TN