The World Comes to UMass Lowell

03/05/2024
By Brooke Coupal

Syed Irshad Ali traveled to the United States for the first time, but for him, it felt like he visited 18 countries at once.

Irshad Ali is one of 19 international teachers who came to UMass Lowell for the Fulbright Teaching Excellence and Achievement (FTEA) program, a six-week initiative that immerses participants in the U.S. educational system and culture. This year’s cohort of teachers hailed from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, Honduras, India, Kazakhstan, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Mongolia, Nepal, Nigeria, Panama, Tanzania, Ukraine and Vietnam.

“I’m not just in the U.S.; I am with 18 different countries with 19 different cultural ambassadors,” says Irshad Ali, an English-as-a-foreign-language teacher at a secondary high school in India. “This Fulbright has given me a different perspective of the world.”

For the past eight years, UMass Lowell has been a host university for the FTEA program. Education Prof. A.J. Angulo, who serves as the principal investigator and executive director of the FTEA program at UMass Lowell, received a $235,000 grant from the U.S. Department of State to host this year’s group of educators.

“The program is a really powerful way for the U.S. to communicate cultural and educational ideas and to bring together people from around the world to solve problems,” he says. “I think of it as the United Nations of education, because you see so many different countries and so many different ways of thinking about the same issues.”

Jane Chikapa teaches English and geography to students aged 15 to 22 in Malawi. According to UNICEF, only 13% of girls complete upper secondary school in the southeastern African country.

“I come from a culture where men are considered superior and women are considered inferior,” she says.

Workshops on gender equity taught by Education Assoc. Prof. Phitsamay Uy made a lasting impact on Chikapa.

“It has given me passion to fight more for girls,” she says.

In addition to gender equity, the teachers completed workshops on leadership, taught by Education Prof. James Nehring, and pedagogy, instructed by Matthew Beyranevand ’03, ’10, an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics and the mathematics coordinator for Chelmsford Public Schools. 

Education Clinical Prof. Michelle Scribner and Instructional Technology Manager William Suppa taught technology workshops to the teachers, while English-as-a-foreign-language workshops were instructed by Jeanne O’Hearn ’17, the world language department head for the Masconomet Regional School District, and Laurie Hartwick ’12, ’21, the multilingual learners director for Lawrence Public Schools.

The Fulbright teachers visited local middle and high schools, where they got to observe classrooms and teach a lesson about their countries. Liudmyla Chernobryvets, an English-as-a-foreign-language teacher in Ukraine, was paired with Toni Ciaccia, a language arts teacher at West Middle School in Andover, Massachusetts.

“It was a really positive experience,” Ciaccia says. “It’s this idea that you’re bringing the world into your classroom.”

Education has been disrupted in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion of the country.

“We all need to have shelters in our schools because we have bombings every day, and you do not know which part of the country it will be,” Chernobryvets says. “We do our best for our students so they get a decent education.”

Ciaccia’s class got to ask Chernobryvets questions about the war during her lesson on Ukraine, where she discussed the similarities and differences of her home country and the United States. Ciaccia’s students wrote letters to Chernobryvets’ students, and the teachers plan to set up Zoom classes for the students to meet once Chernobryvets is back in Ukraine.

“I will remember this experience forever,” Chernobryvets says.

The Fulbright teachers got to venture outside the classroom for activities that included a visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, a UMass Lowell hockey game and bowling. They experienced many firsts: Irshad Ali experienced snow for the first time, and Chernobryvets saw the ocean and ate her first lobster roll.

While the teachers are going home with new lessons and experiences, the local community has also benefited from their visit, says Pralhad Maralihalli, an education Ph.D. student from India and the assistant director of the FTEA program at UMass Lowell.

“Where else are you going to find 18 countries represented in one space?” he asks. “For the six weeks that they’re here, they’re actually impacting lives.”