Fall 2010 - Asian University for Women

ASIAN UNIVERSITY FOR WOMEN OCTOBER 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2
Ethical Leadership
EDUCATED LIVES
Moving Beyond Conflict
SPREADING HOPE
AUW and the
CHITTAGONG COMMUNITY

2
LETTER FROM THE CHAIRMAN
Since our founding in 2008, individuals from around the world
have been drawn to the mission of the Asian University for
Women (AUW).
They have come together to build AUW from the ground up into the institution
it is today: a University on the brink of transforming the promising young women
of Asia into the leaders of tomorrow. We are thankful for their support, pleased
to be entering our third year of operations, and optimistic about the future.
After launching our undergraduate curriculum in the 2009-2010 academic year,
we are refining the program to provide our students the best possible preparation
for their graduate studies and future careers. Our nearly 450 students from 12 countries across
Asia and the Middle East now make up two undergraduate classes and one Access Academy class.
This fall, we welcomed 40 new undergraduate faculty and teaching staff whose personal backgrounds
vary as greatly as the students they teach, but who are all united by extraordinary talent and achievement
in their fields.
The convergence of ethnicities, cultures, and religions at the heart of the AUW community has made
the University a symbol of hope in a region so often troubled by sectarianism. AUW represents the
triumph of meritocracy over privilege, understanding over intolerance, and excellence over mediocrity.
Yet even while we continue to grow, there is still much work to be done. I invite you to read
about these bright young women who have surpassed innumerable obstacles to get to where they
are today, and to join me in supporting them in their quest to become the next leaders of Asia.
Sincerely, Jack Meyer, AUW Support Foundation Chairman
OCTOBER 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2
CONTENTS
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
ACADEMIC UPDATES
Access Academy Graduation Address 3
AUW Students Intern at Home and Abroad 4
Stanford to Host AUW Summer Program 6
ETHICAL LEADERSHIP, EDUCATED LIVES
AUW’s Undergraduate Program 8
STUDENT EXCELLENCE
AUW Student Gains Reporting Experience 12
Moving Beyond Conflict, Spreading Hope 14
STUDENT LIFE
Cross-Cultural Friendships at AUW 16
The Debate Over Marriage 17
THE GREATER AUW COMMUNITY
Beyond These Walls 19
8
UNDERGRADUATE
CURRICULUM
This year, AUW will build upon
the 2009–2010 foundational year
to incorporate a more traditional
“modes of thought” approach
to the core curriculum and five
new majors.
AUW PATRONS: PROFILE SERIES
Condoleezza Rice 22
Cherie Blair 23
GOVERNANCE AND FUNDRAISING
International Delegates Visit AUW 26
FACULTY MEMBERS
Reconciliation, like most meaningful change,
does not happen over night; much vision,
planning, and hard work is involved.
SPREADING
HOPE
14
AUW’S JANUARY SYMPOSIUM
Imagining Another Future for Asia: 30
Ideas and Pathways for Change
19
BEYOND THESE
WALLS
The Chittagong community welcomes
AUW into its midst, and AUW students
show their appreciation.
AUW NEWS
EDITOR AND WRITER
Bonnie Shnayerson
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Shahirah Majumdar Mariah Steele
ABOUT THE ASIAN UNIVERSITY FOR WOMEN
Located in Chittagong, Bangladesh, the University aims to be the first of its kind: a regional institution dedicated solely to
women’s education and leadership development, international in outlook, but rooted in the contexts and aspirations of the
people of Asia. It offers two distinct but closely tied academic programs—(1) a year-long Access Academy for talented
students intending to matriculate into AUW but requiring additional preparation in English and other academic subjects;
and (2) a “four plus two” program that combines a four-year undergraduate (BA) program in the liberal arts and sciences
with two years of graduate professional training offered in the areas of Entrepreneurship and Management, and
Environmental Engineering and Sustainable Development.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Claudio Cambon
DESIGN
Kerri St.Pierre

ACCESS ACADEMY 3
Access Academy Graduation Address
On July 17, 2010, members of the AUW community gathered at the Chittagong
Club to celebrate the matriculation of the second class of Access Academy
students into the undergraduate program. The ceremony was attended by
Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dr. Dipu Moni, the keynote speaker, and Hasan
Mahmud, the State Minister for Environment and Forests. The following is the
text from a speech delivered by Shahirah Majumdar, a lecturer in writing at AUW.
Shahirah Majumdar
Good morning Honorable Ministers, Vice
Chancellor, Access Academy teachers, faculty
(new and returning), AUW staff, parents, friends,
well-wishers, Chittagonians.
Good morning to those who are far from home.
Good morning to those who have learned to call
this city home, even if they only arrived here a
year, a month, or a week ago.
Good morning to those who were too nervous to
eat breakfast this morning (I have to admit, I was
one of them).
Good morning to all those who have no idea
what they’re doing or where they’re going or
what their place is in this world.
Good morning to all those who just make it up
as they go along.
And good morning to those lucky few of you
who’ve known what you wanted to do since the
age of 2.
Good morning to the revolutionaries, the hungerstrikers,
the trouble-makers, the earth-shakers.
Good morning to you dreamers of dreams, you
makers of music, you wielders of magic, you
invincible summers.
Good morning Access Academy class of 2010.
Today is a big day and I congratulate you. But
what’s even bigger is what comes after.
You have spent the past 12 months being challenged,
tested, poked, prodded, pushed outside
your comfort zone in almost every way you can
imagine. Emotionally, psychologically, socially,
academically. You came here, not knowing anyone,
many of you to a new country, some of you
outside the place you had grown up for the first
time in your entire lives. Some of you came here
with limited English skills. Some of you are the
first ones in your family to receive a university
education.
RIGHT: The 2010 class of Access Academy graduates prepares
to receive their diplomas.
You came here not knowing what to expect,
and you came here not knowing what you are
capable of. You came here brave, willing, hardworking,
having faith in the future, in the mission
of this University, and in yourselves.
On behalf of my colleagues—the undergraduate
faculty, into whose hands you now pass—I want
you to know that we hold that faith sacred. We
share in it and we make it our own.
Graduates, I want you to think about how you
would have described yourselves 12 months ago.
I want you to think about the things that you
were afraid of, the things that made you nervous.
I want you to think of the things that you wanted
to be and to do but weren’t sure how or if they
were even possible.
Maybe it’s a short list, maybe it’s a long list.
Compare that list to how you see yourselves
on this day, standing in your graduation gowns
on this bright morning when the world seems
without limit, when anything seems possible. I
want you to take note of the fears that you have
overcome, the knowledge and the abilities that
you have made your own. And I also want you
to take note of the things that you still have to
work on. Write them in your heart. We—that is,
each one of us that is part of this University and
its founding mission—will continue to work on
them together. Because you are the world’s most
precious resource and the future cannot exist
without you.
Because you are greater than anything that has
ever happened to you. You are bigger than the
circumstances into which you were born. You are
bigger than your religion or your gender. You are
bigger than your nation, your caste, the color of
your skin, the conditions of your birth. You are
bigger than anyone has ever let you know.
But you know. Deep inside you, you know how
unique you are and what you have to offer as an
individual with your own special array of ideas
and thoughts and abilities that no one else in
the world possesses but you. In a world that is
full of contradictions, in which there are no easy
answers and in which we are all making it up as
we go along—in this crazy, complicated, samsara
world, the one thing that you can always be sure
of is yourself. Remember that any time you don’t
do well on an exam, or don’t get an internship
you were sure was yours; it’s just a minor setback
that you can overcome. Everything that you have
dreamed of is possible. Everything that is on
your list of hopes and aspirations is a reality that
is ready to bloom inside of you: ready to take
over and transform the world.
A very great leader once said, “Be the change
you wish to see in the world.” [Mahatma Gandhi]
A very great thinker once said, “Live the life you
have imagined.” [Henry David Thoreau]
A beloved prophet once said, “Eat something
sweet every day.” [Prophet Muhammad]
Try to do all of these things, and remember the
words of a poet who said: “To be nobody but
yourself in a world which is doing its best—day
and night—to make you like everybody else
means to fight the hardest battle which any
human being can fight and never stop fighting.”
[ee cummings]
Graduates, I want you to remember that you are
here today because you earned it. AUW is not
your father’s house nor your husband’s house.
It is your house and you have earned your place
here on the strength of your talents and your
hard work—and that itself is a radical thing. Keep
fighting, keep believing and, most of all, keep
being yourselves while making the best of your
opportunities. And know that we are all here to
support you as you do that. The world changes
because we do, and it becomes a better place
only because we make it so.
Congratulations, and welcome to the undergraduate
program.

4
OCTOBER 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2
AUW Students Win Internships at Home and Abroad
Internships enhance a university education by providing real-world experiences.
AUW encourages its students to put to work what they have learned in the classroom
by completing three internships before graduation—in the not-for-profit,
for-profit, and entrepreneurial sectors.
This year, AUW students enthusiastically
embraced the task of pursuing internships. The
range of ways they spent the summer speaks not
only to the diversity of their interests, but to the
considerable reach of their talents. Some students
sought service-oriented positions with
local NGOs or with charitable organizations in
their home countries, while others worked in the
offices of large global corporations and banks,
and still others won coveted positions in international
conferences.
Students who remained in Bangladesh could
choose from various opportunities. Two local
NGOs provided internships to nearly 20 AUW students
from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Myanmar, and
Pakistan in a range of areas including the promotion
of HIV/AIDs awareness, protecting the rights
of sex workers, and microfinancing and economic
development. Save the Children Australia
(Bangladesh), an NGO that seeks to give children
a greater voice in issues of governance and to
empower them in the context of their communities,
enlisted a pair of AUW students to conduct
research for the “Listen to Children’s Voices” project
and to participate in the planning of a Child
Parliament. Students also took part in internships
in public health and medical informatics with
Oasis Cure (Bangladesh), which aided in the
establishment of a clinic and hospital in a village
located outside of Chittagong.
On campus, a group of AUW students contributed
to the iStep project under the purview
of Carnegie Mellon University’s (Pennsylvania,
US) TechBridgeWorld research group.
TechBridgeWorld launched iSTEP (innovative
Student Technology ExPerience) as a platform to
provide Carnegie Mellon students with the
opportunity to formulate solutions to real-world
problems on the ground. The iSTEP program
subsequently sent a five-member team to
Chittagong to work with AUW students on a
range of projects, including the creation and
evaluation of culturally relevant educational technology
and games designed to enhance English
literacy, and the customization and enhancement
of Braille Writing Tutor technology in order to
improve the availability of educational resources
to visually impaired students in Bangladesh.
(TechBridgeWorld kept a blog about their experience
in Bangladesh that can be accessed at
http://istep2010.techbridgeworld.org/.)
Other students returned to their native countries
to work with local NGOs. A group of AUW students
from Nepal became involved with CCS
Italy, an NGO that promotes development projects
in health and education in Nepal; they
completed their internships
under the joint supervision of
the executive director of the
organization and AUW’s country
coordinator. A group of AUW
students from Cambodia
worked with a local NGO on a
community project focused on
helping children.
Many AUW students also sought positions abroad
that met their interests. Marvah Shakib, an Access
Academy student from Afghanistan, started keeping
an eye out earlier this year for opportunities
associated with Empower Peace, a worldwide
educational and leadership program created in
the aftermath of 9/11 to promote understanding
“We believe that we will acquire a respectable place in the world,
not through flashy certificates, glamour or glitter, but through our
hard work, commitment, and dedication.”
NAWRA MEHRIN
between the Muslim and American worlds. When
she discovered that Empower Peace was hosting
a conference in Boston, Massachusetts, she leapt
at the opportunity. She was one of 110 applicants
selected from a pool of 1,200, and out of this
group, one of the top 10 applicants. She was
awarded a full scholarship.
Aptly named “Women2Women,” the conference
offered female students from the United States
and from 28 countries around the world the
opportunity to explore topics such as cultural
leadership, government and public service, and
media technology and media literacy. Marvah
returned to Afghanistan with a rejuvenated commitment
to empower women and an “action
plan” to host a conference of her own, with the
goal of counseling high school aged women in
Afghanistan on the importance of completing
their educations despite the pervasive societal
pressure to marry. “Marriage is a part of life but
education is much more important. Women are
the main point of a society; if the women are educated,
they can educate their children,” she says.
Student Azmina Karim, a native of Bangladesh
who is committed to supporting disabled children
in her country, was thrilled to discover The
Help Group, a leading non-profit located in Los
Angeles, California, that serves “children with
special needs related to autism spectrum disorders,
learning disabilities, ADHD, mental
retardation, abuse and emotional problems.” 1
She applied for a position as an intern and subsequently
spent her summer in the United States
expanding upon her prior volunteer experiences.

STUDENT INTERNSHIPS
5
Students aspiring toward a career in finance will be excited to hear that worldrenowned
financial services firm UBS will sponsor the internships of two to three
AUW students at their Hong Kong branch in the summer of 2011. The company
will provide students with a monthly stipend and cover all costs associated with
the ten-week program, including airfare and accommodation. Bank of America
Merrill Lynch has similarly committed to provide internships to AUW students.
Mowmita Basak Mow, an undergraduate student
from Bangladesh, also traveled to the United
States to take part in an exchange program
sponsored by the U.S Department of State’s
Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The
program, hosted by the University of Virginia’s
politics department, offered 20 students from
India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh the opportunity
to study new media and to learn about its impact
on civic engagement, politics, and journalism,
while also acquiring valuable leadership skills.
Academics, journalists, and politicians delivered
“It was my honor and privilege to be a part of this amazing multinational
company. Their work ethic definitely reflects what they believe
in terms of their mission statements and mottos.… The 12 weeks I
spent at HSBC created a big impact on my life.”
lectures on a range of topics, including how to
be a responsible leader in a democratic state,
the changing face of media, and the role of
emerging media technologies in political campaigns
and elections. Mowmita comments, “I
feel myself very lucky to attend such an honorable
program, and learn about democracy in the
birthplace of one of the most powerful democracies—the
United States.”
In addition, program participants were given the
opportunity to take part in their own new media
project. Mowmita, whose dedication to community
service runs deep, opted to set up a blog
that could serve as an open forum for youths to
discuss the different ways they could serve their
communities. Program participants were also
encouraged to engage in community service
activities; Mowmita subsequently traveled to
Charlottesville, North Carolina, every week to
work at a home for the elderly and at a community
center for the homeless.
AUW students wishing to fulfill their for-profit
internship requirement could turn to employers
such as Tata Group, a multinational conglomerate
of companies involved in several business
fields that offered AUW students
internships in different parts of
India in sectors including hotel
management and information
technology; or Standard
Chartered Bank, which boasts
over 75,000 employees worldwide
and franchises in Asia,
FARAH IQBAL Africa, and the Middle East, and
provided internships to students
in Chittagong; or to a myriad of other employers
such as HSBC Bank, Bank Asia, Dutch Bangla,
and the World Bank Bangladesh.
Farah Iqbal, a student from Bangladesh who
interned at HSBC in Chittagong, wrote of her
experience: “It was my honor and privilege to
be a part of this amazing multinational company.
Their work ethic definitely reflects what they
believe in terms of their mission statements and
mottos.… The 12 weeks I spent at HSBC created
a big impact on my life.”
Nawra Mehrin, also a native of Bangladesh,
spent her summer pursuing her interest in development
economics at the World Bank offices in
Dhaka, where she worked closely with the South
Asia Poverty and Finance team on a report titled,
“Ready-Made Garments and the Importance of
Compliance Issues in Bangladesh.” In addition,
she attended conferences, workshops, and seminars
that she believes will better prepare her for
her future career.
“One of the take-away messages that I bring
back to the AUW community this summer is,
‘Supply creates its own demand,’” she says. “At
primary glance, this statement might just sound
like something extracted from a business magazine,
but when analyzed deeply, these words are
quite [relevant] to the notion of our newly born
institution. We are being prepared for something
new, something different, something unique …
We believe that we will acquire a respectable
place in the world, not through flashy certificates,
glamour or glitter, but through our hard work,
commitment, and dedication.”
1
”About Us.” http://www.thehelpgroup.org/about.htm.
Accessed 13 August 2010.
OPPOSITE (left): AUW students with members of Carnegie
Mellon’s iSTEP team in Chittagong.
OPPOSITE (right): Three AUW students work on an iSTEP
project.
BELOW (left): An AUW student conducts a survey in a village.
BELOW (right): Mr. Syamal Gupta, recently retired Chairman of
Tata International and now a Senior Advisor to the Chairman
of Tata, with AUW students in India. Mr. Gupta announced
that Tata internships were available to AUW students when
visiting the University in April 2010.

6
OCTOBER 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2
Stanford University Dean to Host 2011 Summer Program for AUW Students
The Asian University for Women has enjoyed an association with Stanford University,
one of the world’s leading research universities, since 2007 when AUW founder
Kamal Ahmad first introduced Provost John Etchemendy to the University’s mission.
Provost Etchemendy’s initial interest was buoyed
by Dean Richard Saller’s deep commitment to
the cause, and Stanford subsequently volunteered
to send two of its postdoctoral fellows to
Chittagong each year to join the AUW faculty.
Now, after discussions that were facilitated by
Mrs. Janet Montag, AUW Development
Committee Chair, Stanford has gone one step
further by sponsoring a yearly summer program
on its California campus—located just outside
San Francisco—for 25 AUW students starting in
2011. The course will be taught by none other
than Dean Saller, who heads Stanford’s School of
Humanities and Sciences and is a member of
AUW’s International Council of Advisors.
“Vocational training is about learning routines for doing certain kinds of work that
have been done before … and this is even more starkly true where the teaching
and learning involves rote memorization. And I would say liberal arts education in
contrast is about creative and analytic thought to confront the new and to lead.”
Stanford’s six-week summer program promises to
provide AUW students with a transformative educational
experience. In the program’s first year the
course will focus on “The History of Family and
Women in Western Civilization.” In addition, students
will be exposed to talks by prominent
women in the Stanford community on the subject
of leadership. “The idea [is] to expose the students
to some of the thought leaders in the
faculty on the Stanford campus,” Dean Saller
says. Classes will be held in the mornings
Mondays through Thursdays, and in the afternoons
Stanford teaching assistants will host
discussion sections and one-on-one writing workshops
with AUW students. Beyond the formal
teaching of the curriculum, the program will give
AUW students the opportunity to experience San
Francisco’s various cultural offerings. Every Friday,
there will be a scheduled cultural event and on
Sundays, field trips into the Bay Area. The students
will also live in dormitories on the Stanford
campus to ensure total cultural immersion.
The association between AUW and Stanford
reveals Stanford’s strong commitment to the
region. Dean Saller points to the importance of
AUW’s model of liberal arts in the developing
world. “Vocational training is about learning routines
for doing certain kinds of work that have
been done before … and this is even more starkly
true where the teaching and learning involves rote
memorization. And I would say liberal arts education
in contrast is about creative and analytic
thought to confront the new and to lead.”
Dean Saller plans to create a new program of
Southeast Asian Studies on Stanford’s campus.
“We have a few scattered faculty but we need to
be much more comprehensive in the way we teach
Stanford students about South Asia,” he says.
One way to do this is to strengthen the ties
between Stanford and AUW. The decision to
send postdoctoral fellows to Chittagong each
year is an example of this commitment. The program
has afforded AUW the valuable opportunity
to bolster its teaching staff with researchers who
are expert in their fields.
Lucina Uddin, who is taking a break from autism
research to join AUW as a teaching fellow for the
fall 2010 semester, learned of the position through
an e-mail announcement that was circulated
among the Stanford postdoctoral fellows. “When I
first heard about [the
RICHARD SALLER
Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences
at Stanford University
announcement] I was
surprised. There aren’t
that many opportunities
for research
careers in Bangladesh
because there are very
little resources,” she
says. Research in the
sciences is vital in
developing Asia; such
research can tackle
endemic issues such as the lack of clean water, the
spread of infectious diseases, and the need for
sustainable development.
In the 2011 spring semester, Se-Woong Koo will
serve as the Stanford teaching fellow. He is currently
completing his PhD in religious studies
with a focus on East Asian religions at Stanford,
where he is also a fellow at the Ho Center for
Buddhist Studies. His spring course at AUW,
“Introduction to Asian Religions Through Art,”
will be offered as a part of the core curriculum.
Dr. Uddin received her BS in neuroscience and
PhD in psychology at the University of California
Los Angeles (UCLA), and went on to work as a
research scientist at New York University and
Stanford University. Her research explores the
organization of the brain in individuals struggling
with the developmental disorder autism. In 2010,
she received a five-year Career Development
Award from the National Institute of Mental
Health to continue her research.
As a native of Bangladesh who moved to the
United States shortly after she was born, Dr.
Uddin was happy to embrace the opportunity to
contribute to her home country in a meaningful
and sustained way. “I realized that I was
extremely privileged to have had access to the
education and opportunities available in the U.S.,
and I was drawn to the idea that I could help to
create similar opportunities for women in the
country of my birth,” she says. In addition, she
hopes that her experiences in the sciences will
both inspire and reassure AUW students that
their aspirations are well within reach. “To be
academics, to be scientists, it’s not even really
considered a career path for women here [in
Bangladesh]. I think it’s nice to provide an example
of that.”
Dr. Uddin has designed a course called “The
Mind” that draws from the fields of psychology,
anthropology, philosophy, linguistics, and neuroscience
to examine mental processes—such as
perception, memory, and judgment—and the
relationship between language and thought. She
is also taking advantage of the opportunity to
practice her Bengali and spend time with the
members of her family who live in Bangladesh.
“I never thought that my academic background
and interests would lead me to this type of international
work, but when I realized the unique
contribution I could make to AUW, I could not
turn down the opportunity … I hope that my
time here will be both a rewarding experience for
me personally, and a useful contribution to the
mission of the University,” she says.
Dean Richard Saller of Stanford University, an AUW International Council of Advisors member, discussed Stanford's association
with AUW at a lunch in Hong Kong hosted by the former Chief Secretary of Hong Kong and AUW Patron, Mrs. Anson
Chan. From left to right: AUW Founder Kamal Ahmad, AUW Patron Mrs. Anson Chan, and Dean Richard Saller of Stanford
University.

8
OCTOBER 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2
Undergraduate
CURRICULUM
Ethical Leadership, Educated Lives
Since its founding in 2008, the Asian University
for Women has sought to integrate the best of
Western and Asian educational traditions to form
a curriculum that will prepare its students for a
lifetime of extraordinary careers and leadership
roles in their respective fields.
In the first year of the undergraduate program in AUW’s 2009–2010
academic calendar, AUW adopted an interdisciplinary approach to
the undergraduate curriculum that emphasized integration across
the core courses and team teaching in the classroom. This year,
AUW will build upon that foundational year to incorporate a more
traditional “modes of thought” approach to the core curriculum
and five new majors. The new academic program is considered one
part of a more comprehensive educational strategy that focuses on
developing leaders.

UNDERGRADUATE CURRICULUM 9
New Directions in AUW’s Undergraduate Curriculum
If the Asian University for Women is to demand critical thinking and excellence
from its students, it must deliver the same to them in return.
AUW’s undergraduate curriculum,
revised under the leadership of
Dr. Mary J. Sansalone, the
recently appointed Provost and
Chief Academic Officer, demonstrates both the
University’s capacity for self-examination and its
resolve in supplying students a first-rate education.
As a young institution, AUW has avoided the
pitfalls of complacency by approaching every
new academic year with a renewed sense of rigor
and zeal. The most recent changes in AUW’s
undergraduate curriculum reaffirm the University’s
dedication to progress as its academic programs
and students evolve.
AUW’s liberal arts program has numerous objectives.
The University seeks to provide its students
with a curriculum that is at once enduring and
contemporary; that develops exceptional critical
thinking, writing, and speaking skills; and that
encourages tolerance and creative problem-solving
in a world faced with complex problems for
which there are no simple solutions. AUW must
offer its students a breadth of study in the core
curriculum, depth in the individual majors, and
preparation for graduate study. Most important,
AUW’s academic program strives to instill an
ethos of public service in its students, who will be
trailblazers for a generation of confident and ethical
leaders in Asia.
To achieve these goals, AUW’s curriculum has
been tailored to meet the needs of Asia while
also drawing upon the best aspects of liberal arts
programs at renowned universities in the West
such as Oxford, Harvard, the University of
Chicago, Stanford, Yale, and Cornell. In this way,
AUW hopes to expose its students to established
methods of teaching without ever compromising
the fundamentally regional nature of the program.
In the “Regional Challenges” courses, for
instance, students apply critical thinking skills to
learn about the challenges facing Asia, including
environmental and public health challenges,
human rights, and education and literacy.
“It was a wonderful intellectual endeavor to meld the best of Western
educational traditions into a curriculum that speaks to Asia and its
challenges and seeks to nurture leaders.”
“It was a wonderful intellectual endeavor to meld
the best of Western educational traditions into a
curriculum that speaks to Asia and its challenges
and seeks to nurture leaders. Our new core curriculum
focuses on developing in each
student a broad worldview, creativity of thought
and vision, critical reasoning skills, ethical
responsibility, and a vision of self that engenders
the confidence to think boldly about the future,”
Professor Sansalone says.
In addition to the Regional Challenges courses,
the core curriculum consists of four modes of
thought: “Social Analysis,” “Ethical Reasoning,”
“Literature, Civilization Studies, and the Arts,”
and “Sciences and Mathematics.” The core curriculum
is designed to introduce first-year
University students to the important modes of
thought and critical reasoning that will underpin
their entire undergraduate experience at AUW. In
the Social Analysis category, for example, students
study the classic texts of social and
political thought; explore themes of power, identity,
and resistance; and examine philosophical,
psychological, and scientific approaches to
understanding how the brain
works in a course called “The
Mind.”
All first-year undergraduate students
must also take two writing
and rhetoric intensive seminars,
which are offered in all the academic
disciplines. Each seminar
will have no more than 20 students in the classroom
and will explore topics such as “Banned
Books: Writing about Incendiary Topics,”
“Writing of the South Asian Diaspora,” “Human
Rights,” and “Women’s Issues in a Transnational
World.” Professor Sara Amin, now in her second
year of teaching at AUW, comments: “I love that
PROFESSOR SANSALONE

10
OCTOBER 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2
rhetoric and writing classes are centered on current
and political issues, such as human rights.”
In conjunction with the requirements of the core
curriculum, students must choose from the following
academic majors: “Philosophy, Politics,
and Economics,” “Asian Studies,” “Biological
Sciences,” “Environmental Sciences,” and
“Public Health Studies.” The majors also emphasize
the regional nature of the studies at AUW.
For example, in the Public Health Studies major,
students explore South Asian population studies
while also attaining a foundational body of
knowledge in biology (including epidemiology),
quantitative sciences important to public health
(such as biostatistics), social and behavioral sciences,
and health policy, law, and management.
Students can fulfill their eight elective credits by
engaging in approved summer study-abroad programs
such as the Stanford University host program
or an independent research project. Alternatively,
they can use their electives to fulfill a minor in a
range of subjects, such as Chinese or Arabic—
languages that are important to the region.
Professor Dr. Sangita Rayamajhi, a returning
faculty member at AUW and the first woman in
Nepal to receive a PhD in English literature,
notes: “The students of AUW are open to the
very many academic and diverse cultural challenges
and experiences which to them have
become a way of life at the University. This curriculum
will help foster an environment centered
on learning and positive values and facilitate the
progress of students in assuming their individual
roles in the University and, ultimately, their positions
in the greater society.”
The Asian Studies major demonstrates how the
undergraduate curriculum will prepare students
for their future roles in the region. The innovative
and interdisciplinary major covers varied subjects
such as “Literature and the Arts,” “World and
Asian History,” “Asian Religion, Ethics, and
Philosophy,” “Culture and Society,” and “State,
Power, and International Relations.” Professor
Agnes Khoo, the coordinator of the Asian
Studies major, reflects on the major: “Asian
Studies at AUW is unique because Asian Studies
in the West is more about ‘the foreign gaze into
Asia,’ whereas at AUW, as Asians and being
located in Asia, we have the advantage of putting
into the subject what we already know about
our own experiences to learn about how we
relate to the rest of the world.” Students pursuing
an Asian Studies major will have the
opportunity to write and present a senior thesis
on a subject of their choosing.
Dr. Bernadine Dias, a research scientist at the
Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University
and a member of the AUWSF Board of Directors,
chaired the curriculum advisory panel that
reviewed AUW’s 2009-2010 academic program
and voiced her support for the revised curriculum.
“I am delighted to see the enhancements
made to the AUW curriculum under the leadership
of Mary Sansalone,” she says. “These
enhancements address the weaknesses identified
by the curriculum advisory panel and also ensure
the relevance of the curriculum to both the mission
of AUW and the needs of the students and
the region.”
The students at AUW have also expressed their
delight with the curriculum. Sangji Zhoumo, a
second-year undergraduate student from China
who intends to major in Politics, Philosophy, and
Economics, exclaims: “I’m really excited about
my excellent professors … They ask us practical
questions, for example, ‘Do we need a government
or not?’ … [These] are questions I’ve never
thought about.”
Parwana Fayyaz, a first-year undergraduate student
from Kabul, Afghanistan, who completed
the Access Academy program, agrees: “The
approach to teaching challenges us to think
about things, to develop leadership skills, and it
fosters intellectual curiosity.” Parwana is enrolled
this semester in “Social and Political Thought,”
“History of Modern China,” “The Art of the
Personal Essay,” and “Pre-Calculus.”
“Two years ago, I was a cook for my family,” she
says. “Now I’m a daughter to my whole country.
Two years ago, I was just Parwana, a typical person
who went to school and went home. Now I
speak my mind. I’m confident. I analyze the situation.
Now I think about my future. I want to
represent my people and help them solve their
problems.”
With Professor Sansalone at the helm, AUW has
used the vehicle of liberal arts to create an
enduring curriculum that will effectively prepare
its students to meet the challenges they may
face in their roles as the future leaders of the
region. Armed with the tools of critical thinking,
creative problem-solving, and ethical reasoning,
and equipped with a broad foundation of knowledge,
AUW’s graduates are sure to make the
changes today that will be felt by the multitudes
tomorrow.
In Professor Amin’s words, “This is a curriculum
that I am proud to be part of, and that I am looking
forward to engaging the students in this year,
and in the years to come.”

UNDERGRADUATE CURRICULUM
11
Meet Professor Mary J. Sansalone
The Asian University for Women has appointed American engineering professor Dr. Mary J.
Sansalone as its Provost and Chief Academic Officer. Professor Sansalone, 52, was one of the first
female professors to earn both tenure and the rank of professor as a member of the engineering faculty
at Cornell University, where she later served as Vice Provost of academic programs. Following
her career at Cornell University (1987-2006), she served as Dean of Engineering and Applied
Sciences at Washington University. As an undergraduate, she studied literature and engineering at
the University of Cincinnati, from which she graduated summa cum laude. She went on to pursue
graduate study at Cornell, where she earned a master’s and a PhD in Structural Engineering. Prior to
turning to academic administration at Cornell, she spent a year at the John F. Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard University, obtaining a master’s in Public Administration. Recognized as both
a scholar and an outstanding teacher, in 1992 Professor Sansalone was named “U.S. National
Professor of the Year” by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie
Foundation.
In addition to her many academic accomplishments, Professor Sansalone’s career has been marked
by a dedication to women’s empowerment. As the first woman to earn a PhD in her engineering
program at Cornell, and then later as a Dean at Washington University, Professor Sansalone consistently
fought to open more doors to women in the male-dominated field of engineering. During her
tenure as Dean, she oversaw a dramatic increase in women on the engineering faculty; the number
of women is now double what it was when she first arrived.
AUW Announces the
Appointment of Dr. Ashok
Keshari
Dr. Ashok Keshari has joined AUW as the
new Dean of Math, Science, and Engineering
from the Indian Institute of Technology in
Delhi, where he previously served as a professor
of civil and environmental engineering
for 17 years. A recognized expert in the field
of environmental engineering, Dr. Keshari
brings to AUW a strong academic background
as a teacher and a scholar and a talent for
building new academic programs. He has
been involved with a range of projects in
the field, including environmental planning
for hydropower projects and evaluating
water arsenic levels in India. Dr. Keshari is
developing the new graduate program in
Environmental Engineering and Sustainable
Development.
Professor Sansalone succeeds Dr. Hoon Eng Khoo, who has completed her three-year assignment with AUW and returned to the National University
of Singapore where she serves as an Associate Professor of Biochemistry at the Medical School.
*A scholarship was recently established in Dr. Khoo’s honor with funds raised by “Among Women,” a group of women who are alumni of the prestigious, all-women colleges in the United States
known as the “Seven Sisters.” The scholarship was announced during the September 2010 conference celebrating Bryn Mawr College’s 125 th founding anniversary.

12
OCTOBER 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2
An AUW Student Reports on Women’s Issues in Bangladesh
Canada that serves as a forum for young people
across the globe who wish to speak out on the
issues of the day (http://www.dispatchesinternational.org).
Kaushi applied, but given her limited
experience writing in English, she doubted she
would get the position.
It is winter in Bangladesh and the end of the year
has ushered in an unforgiving bout of cold
weather. In this part of the world, cold weather
means more than merely an extra sweater; as
temperatures drop below 40 degrees Fahrenheit,
newspapers across the country report on the dire
condition of street dwellers who spend their
nights sleeping outdoors.
The effects of the cold snap can be seen in the
plastic surgery and burn unit of this Dhaka hospital,
where a lack of sufficient beds leaves patients
stretched out on the cold floor with nothing
more than a thin bedsheet as covering. The wails
of a young girl, her forearms raw with burns, fill
the ward as her mother explains that she cannot
afford the cost of painkillers. The scene would be
daunting for even an experienced reporter, and
Kaushalya Ruwanthika Ariyathilaka (“Kaushi”),
just 22 years old, is neither a professional
reporter nor a hospital staff member. But she is a
student from the Asian University for Women
(AUW), and she is determined to get her story.
At the start of winter break, Kaushi and her
friend, a fellow AUW student from Bangladesh
who came along to serve as a translator, boarded
a train headed for the capital city of Dhaka.
Using their own money to purchase train tickets,
the AUW students set out for a three-week journey
that promised to leave an indelible mark on
two young women standing at the intersection of
the classroom and their future careers. Kaushi
was on assignment from the Canadian journal
Dispatches International to investigate the issue
of acid attacks against women, one of eight feature
articles she plans to write on the challenges
women face in the region.
A native of Colombo, Sri Lanka, Kaushi is the
daughter of a building contractor and a housewife.
She is unassumingly driven and quietly
passionate about her experiences as a student
reporter. She explains: “When I read about
things, I can’t forget them … I know I can’t do
anything, because I don’t have the means to. But
maybe the little thing I’m doing will do something
for the people.”
As an Access Academy student at AUW, Kaushi
volunteered to take part in a cyber-mentoring
program that AUW offers in conjunction with the
University of Toronto in Canada. The program
was designed to allow AUW students from both
the Access Academy and the undergraduate programs
to discuss mutual career goals and
“When I read about things, I can’t forget them … I know I can’t do anything,
because I don’t have the means to. But maybe the little thing I’m
doing will do something for the people.”
hobbies with student mentors half a world away,
using online tools such as video chat and instant
messaging. Some AUW students became particularly
close with their mentors and, aided by the
marvels of modern technology, managed to
speak with their mentors frequently and even
face to face. Kaushi’s mentor, a law student at the
University of Toronto, encouraged her to apply
for a position as a student reporter at Dispatches
International, the quarterly publication of the
International Partnerships Foundation (IPF) in
KAUSHALYA RUWANTHIKA ARIYATHILAKA
Kaushi did nonetheless go on to win a position
as a reporter. Soon thereafter she also submitted
an essay to the World Bank essay competition on
climate change and was selected as one of the
top 200 finalists from a pool of 2,500 candidates.
“I never imagined I would write things like this,”
she says. In the summer of 2009, she and her
AUW classmate Mowmita Basak Mow attended a
journalism conference hosted by the IPF in
Canada. The conference brought together aspiring
reporters from 11 countries around the world,
including Canada, the United States, Germany,
Moldova, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica,
Ecuador, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. “It was so
nice to meet people from so many different
places in the world,” Kaushi gushes. The conference
provided workshops on photojournalism,
research techniques, and how to write feature
articles. Kaushi stayed with the family of a former
Access Academy teacher of hers for the entire
three-week visit, demonstrating the far reach of
AUW’s still-nascent network.
Kaushi’s investigation of acid attacks led her from
Chittagong to Dhaka and into this hospital ward.
She has interviewed professors at Dhaka
University; met with police officers at the local
station; and traded statistics with staff members
at an NGO that caters to burn victims. In each
instance she has relied on pure gravitas and
determination to get her interviews; most, if not
all, of these interviews were a result of her knocking
on one door, then another, until she found
the person who was willing to help her. She has
also faced down dissenters who would prefer she
not investigate this topic at all, like the doctor
who refused to grant her an interview, insisting
that she must receive permission from the courts
or from the police first.
Kaushi ignored his warnings
and marched up to the director
of the hospital instead,
who agreed to the interview.
Most important, Kaushi has
spoken with the victims
themselves. In a powerful
example of the impact AUW
hopes to have in the region, Kaushi has displayed
the remarkable ability to connect with the
victims on a personal level, transcending the
boundaries of suspicion and fear to grant a voice
to this perpetually marginalized segment of the
population. For her article on the issue of dowry
violence, Kaushi was able to interview women in
their homes before their husbands came home.
“[The women] were scared all the time. [But] we
were also girls, so they were free to talk,” Kaushi
says. Her role as a student reporter ultimately

A PROFILE IN EXCELLENCE
13
highlights the strength of the AUW model, which
proposes that female leaders will be uniquely
capable of identifying and rising to meet the
problems that exist within their communities.
Kaushi plans to continue balancing her schoolwork
with the responsibilities of working as a
student reporter over the coming months. Her
research into acid attacks and dowry violence
only strengthened her commitment to investigating
the challenges women face in the region. For
her next article, she hopes to explore the state of
Sri Lankan women, both Tamil and Sinhalese,
who have lived through the war. “I was thinking
that I would write about the experience of our
students,” she says. “Some of them have been
severely affected by the ethnic conflict.”
She credits her upbringing for her strength of
resolve. “I was brought up by my family to not
stay silent if something wrong is happening,” she
explains.
LEFT: The author pictured on AUW’s permanent campus site.
“A Wife’s Darkest Hour: Dowry Violence in Bangladesh”
by Kaushalya Ruwanthika Ariyathilaka, Excerpt*
Even before marriage, women suffer in Bangladesh. Girls are fed last and least, and are often
seen as a burden; this is typical in most South Asian countries. Parents see marriage as a safe way
to get rid of their daughters. Unfortunately, girls find no heaven in their marital houses because
some families demand a dowry from their daughters-in-law. While Bangladesh recognizes Islam
as its official religion, dowry continuously contradicts both religion and the law. According to the
Qu’ran, receiving dowry from the bride’s family is haram, forbidden by the Islamic law; it is the
husband’s family that should provide mohorana, money for the bride’s family.
Statistics show that 88% of the recently married Muslim wives in Dhaka, the capital of
Bangladesh, did not receive their mohorana, but were forced to give a dowry. 1 Even though
girls and women … wear the burqa, as a means for following the guidelines of the Qu’ran,
people easily forget about religion when it comes to taking or demanding a dowry.
“It has become a practice to give dowry to the groom’s family to show gratitude that he has
agreed to marry the bride. But the truth is, it has become a kind of source of income for the
groom and an easy way to get money without working for it,” explains Dr. Saira Rahaman Khan,
an assistant professor at the School of Law at the BRAC [Bangladesh Rural Advancement
Committee] University and a founding member of Odhikar, a leading non-governmental organization
working to raise awareness on human rights abuses in Bangladesh. According to Khan,
“social pressure on the bride’s family and fear” are the factors that keep nurturing the dowry
system—despite the fact that it is legally banned.
*Note: The full text of Kaushi’s article can be accessed on the Dispatches International website at http://www.dispatchesinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=58:kaushi1&catid=44:bangladesh&Itemid=58.
1
Statistics were compiled by Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK), a non-profit organization based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and
published in ASK's 2006-2008 District Report on Human Rights Violations.
Kaushalya Ruwanthika Ariyathilaka, a second-year undergraduate student, grew up in the outskirts of the Sri Lankan capital city Colombo in a town called Kelaniya. Although she pursued biology in
high school, she decided to major in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics with a possible language minor after coming to AUW. Her current classes include “Comparative Politics and Democratization,” “Politics of
Developing Areas,” “Principles of Microeconomics,” and “Calculus.” She intends to pursue a master’s degree in International Relations and hopes to one day work for the United Nations.
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14
OCTOBER 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2
LEFT: The members of the Sri Lankan summer project
pose with faculty and advisors.
BOTTOM: The Sri Lankan students attend a workshop in
Colombo on the involvement of women in peace efforts.
One student’s amorphous suggestion that they
“go back to Sri Lanka and do something”
became more concrete as the students petitioned
AUW to support the project. The students
also planned a fundraiser, surpassing their goal
of 50,000 taka, and collaborated with LEADS, a
Sri Lankan community development organization,
to plan the trip. In May, the students
headed home, where the real work began.
Cleaning a graveyard. Visiting a temple. Playing cricket. As disparate as these
activities may seem on the surface, they all were used as part of efforts to reach
a singular and elusive goal: fostering dialogue, trust, and reconciliation between
the mostly Buddhist Sinhala and mostly Hindu Tamil communities in Sri Lanka
that have endured decades of mutual animosity.*
Reconciling these two groups is a lofty
goal, but AUW’s undergraduate Sri Lankan
students learned during their Summer
Project that a strong community working
together has the power to heal, connect, and
inspire people from any background. And in the
process, they strengthened their own academic
and life skills.
Reconciliation, like most meaningful change,
does not happen over night; much vision, planning,
and hard work is involved. At AUW, the
work began in September 2009, when the students
attended a workshop led by Evangeline
(Evan) Ekanayake, then serving as counselor and
deputy director of AUW’s Health and Wellness
Center. This workshop successfully defused
growing tensions between AUW’s Tamil and
Sinhalese students by helping them recognize
their own prejudices and exchange personal stories
with each other. (See AUW’s January 2010
newsletter for more information.)
In true AUW fashion, the students were not content
with just their own enlightenment: the
Sinhalese and Tamil students wanted to share
their newfound understandings that reconciliation
is not only possible, but also invigorating.
In the capital city of Colombo and the central city
of Kandy, students met with 14 experts to discuss
the war in Sri Lanka, peace and reconciliation
practices, psychosocial ramifications of war, ethnic
identity, Sri Lankan politics, and women’s
roles in all of the above. One highlight, according
to the students’ final report, occurred when
economist Dr. Nishan De Mel “made us question
how and why we have labels that make us
believe we are different from some and similar to
some.” Student Umaiyal, who is Tamil, thinks that
this workshop “changed [us] the most” because
they learned that identities and ethnicities are
man-made cultural creations whose meanings
and boundaries change over time and are far
from immutable. The lesson was profound: now,
Umaiyal says, “I do not feel that I have ‘Sinhala’
friends because I think that we all are from the
same community.”
*(A 26-year war between the government army and the
rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ended just last year.)
Moving Beyond Conflict
SPREADING HOPE
by Mariah Steele

SPOTLIGHT: SRI LANKA SUMMER PROJECT 15
In workshop leader Evan’s words, the Summer
Project was designed “with three aspects to it:
‘head work,’ by which we mean really educating
ourselves, studying about the conflict … ‘hand
work,’ offering our physical labor to work with
them on community development aspects …
then the ‘heart work’ aspect of just being with
them, listening to their stories.” The lectures and
workshops provided the trip’s initial “head work”
by contextualizing the war for students and giving
them tools for their upcoming fieldwork. Umaiyal
remembers, “I was so surprised to learn the real
history of Sri Lankan ethnic conflict, because most
of us did not know the basic reason for this conflict.…
Previously, I thought only Tamils were
struggling due to this conflict, but now I realized
that both communities are affected.”
Traveling farther, the students finally reached their
destination in the neighboring villages of
Karadipoval and Dimuthugama, Tamil and
Sinhalese respectively, outside the northeast city
of Trincomalee. Despite temperatures reaching
37 degrees Celsius (about 99 degrees
Fahrenheit), the AUW students performed their
first batch of “hand work” at a cemetery between
Karadipoval and Dimuthugama—the one place
both communities share. Through cleaning,
sweeping, weeding, and planting flowers at the
cemetery alongside people from both villages,
the students “promoted unity among the divided
community,” according to the final report.
The second “hand work” session, which included
more weeding and sweeping, took place at
Dimuthugama’s Buddhist temple—a place where
many of the neighboring Tamils had never been.
Food, talk, and storytelling accompanied this
gathering of students and villagers, fostering
communication across ethnic lines. Student
Kaushalya, who is Sinhalese, comments, “It is
more enlightening to sit beside a Tamil girl and
discuss the ethnic conflict and what we have
been told than sitting along with a bunch of
Sinhalese and discussing it.”
More “head work” occurred as the students prepared
and presented two workshops to the
villagers about the importance of education. In
this region of Sri Lanka, education is not a priority
for many families because working children
can bring in extra money. Thus, the first workshop,
targeted at children, used games to show
youngsters how education can help them reach
their goals. The second workshop, for parents,
suggested simple ways that parents can help
their children’s education, even without “money,
knowledge, and comforts,” as Kaushalya says.
The parents’ pledges at the end of the workshop
to do more for their children’s education indicated
the workshops’ success.
Amid all this activity, the students also managed
to perform the academic projects assigned by
their AUW professors. For instance, some of the
students conducted household surveys in both
villages about demographics and access to electricity
and water. Other students collected oral
histories or created a documentary about the
communities. Time was also set aside for reflection:
on May 19, the one-year anniversary of the
ABOVE (clockwise): The Sri Lankan students lend a hand in a cemetery in the village of Dimuthugama; team members load
books they purchased for Sri Lankan communities with money from their fundraising event; the Sri Lankan team on their
way to speak with villagers in their homes.
armed conflict’s end, the AUW group together
visited a famous Hindu temple, a historic
Buddhist temple, and a Catholic church. “We
spent the day in religious observance to remember
the fallen on both sides and pledge for a
new start in the future,” Evan describes. The significance
of togetherness on this day was not lost
on the students, either: Kaushalya writes, “This
was a good opportunity for us to appreciate
each other’s differences and to embrace them, to
realize what has happened in the past 30 years.”
While such “heart work” happened throughout
the trip, two events stand out for their unique
ability to connect the two communities: a cricket
match and a campfire. The cricket teams were
completely mixed—Tamils and Sinhalese, villagers
and AUW students, even high and low
castes! The students reported that “the bitter
experiences of discrimination or poverty were
forgotten for an hour and we all played united,
enthusiastically, and energetically.… Both
Karadipoval and Dimuthugama villagers were
cheering for each other, disregarding their biases
and prejudices.” Similarly, on the students’ final
evening, both communities organized a surprise
campfire to thank the AUW group. At the gathering,
villagers mingled and performed local
talents. As Kaushalya describes, “We all sat
around the campfire despite the darkness, mosquitoes
and the cow dung on the ground. We
disregarded our social status, our knowledge and
our skills, and where we come from to enjoy the
dancing, singing, and other performances.”
The trip’s positive impact on AUW’s students has
already begun to grow. Kaushalya reflects: “The
Summer Project was a great opportunity to make
use of all the skills we learned in class such as
leadership, decision making, planning, and thinking
critically.… When [the experts in Colombo]
said that they were impressed with our skills and
abilities, especially our sharpened critical thinking
abilities, I was so glad of the decision I made
in coming to AUW.”
Furthermore, Umaiyal explains how the trip has
changed her: “I feel like I was born again after
this Summer Project with new thoughts and realizations.…
I had a dream to go to the Western
world after my graduation, but now I understood
how badly our country needs educated people
who have different perspectives. So, after this
Summer Project I decided that after my studies,
I will be back to Sri Lanka to serve the people.”

16
OCTOBER 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2
Cross-Cultural Friendships at AUW
Two Pakistani and Bangladeshi students at AUW defy history
through the bonds of friendship.
Minza and Ulfat are best friends. Like any other pair of young women who
share the close-knit bonds of friendship, they discuss the minutia of everyday
life, study together, and treat each other’s families as their own. There is just
but one critical difference that makes this friendship different from most others:
Minza is from Pakistan and Ulfat is from Bangladesh, two countries with a
history of bitter relations.
In 1947 Bangladesh—known as “East Bengal” under British India—separated
from India along with West Pakistan to form Pakistan. A two-part country agreement
turned East Bengal into East Pakistan, but the arrangement proved
untenable for the Bengalis, who felt marginalized in
their territory 1,600 km from the central government.
In 1971, East Pakistan separated from West Pakistan
to create the independent nation of Bangladesh.
The bloody war of independence soured the relationship
between the two countries, and left a legacy
of torment. Yet Minza and Ulfat, who met at AUW, are
inspiring examples of the University’s ability to bridge our friendship grew.”
historical divides and to create fresh experiences of
tolerance to erode entrenched narratives of distrust.
They embody the potential of AUW’s extraordinary
social experiment, in which young women from 12 countries throughout Asia
and the Middle East live and learn together in a setting removed and at once
intimately tied to their pasts.
Minza and Ulfat come from starkly different backgrounds. Minza grew up in
the city of Gujranwala in Pakistan, and Ulfat in a village outside the city of
Chittagong. Minza knew nothing of Bangladesh, and had only agreed to
come to AUW at the behest of her father, who insisted that AUW represented
a valuable opportunity. After studying at the Access Academy for a year,
Minza says: “Now I know what I’m doing here.”
Ulfat also knew very little of Pakistan. She subscribed to the stereotype that
Pakistanis are “very conservative and the girls always wear burqas.” Minza, in
contrast, only covers her hair. Ulfat had also been taught from a young age
about the role of Pakistan in Bangladesh’s emergence as an independent
nation, and she was shocked to discover Minza’s relative lack of knowledge
about the nearly one-year war. “I came to know that in [Pakistan] people
don’t know very much about the history of that time … that we had to fight
for 9 months and that many people died.”
The two young women became fast friends as roommates in the Access
Academy, where they were also members of the same academic group. The
first challenge to overcome was the issue of communication. Minza speaks
Urdu, which is similar to Hindi, and Ulfat speaks Bangla, the hard-won
national language of Bangladesh. During the war, Bangladeshi freedom
fighters held up their language as a symbol of their unique heritage and
distinct identity from Pakistan. Ulfat says, “We face difficulties sometimes.
But when we came to Access Academy, at first [Minza] didn’t know Bangla
so I [spoke] Hindi. She felt [she was] home if I spoke in Hindi with her. That’s
how our friendship grew.”
Ulfat’s concession to speak Hindi did not go without notice, and indeed,
caused some consternation among Ulfat’s Bangladeshi classmates. “Some
girls, they didn’t take it very easily,” Ulfat admits. But the two young women
only grew closer and before long Minza could understand Bangla. Now,
when they aren’t speaking in English, the two girls communicate with each
other in their native languages—Minza speaking in Urdu and Ulfat responding
in Bangla—in an arrangement that may leave an observer’s head spinning
but makes perfect sense to them. Minza says: “Many Bangladeshis know
Hindi, [it is] very similar to Bangla. Urdu and Hindi are [also] very close. If you
know one language, it’s easy to know another. Ulfat talks in Bangla with me,
I reply in Urdu. Now it’s habit, it’s usual.”
When Ulfat first invited Minza to her village outside of Chittagong, Minza was
wary, asking Ulfat repeatedly if her family was comfortable with having a
“We face difficulties sometimes. But when we
came to Access Academy, at first [Minza] didn’t
know Bangla so we [spoke] Hindi. She felt [she
was] home if I spoke in Hindi with her. That’s how
Pakistani in their home. But when she arrived, Ulfat’s family greeted her with
the hearty welcome and bottomless hospitality that is pervasive throughout
Bangladeshi society. “I felt really comfortable,” Minza says. “They just
accepted me as a friend.”
After their graduation from the Access Academy in the summer of 2009,
Minza invited Ulfat to travel with her back to Pakistan to stay in her home in
Gujranwala, a city in the Punjab province. At first, Ulfat’s parents were reluctant
to condone a trip to a country riddled with violence. “My parents were
really afraid [to send me] because of the bombings there,” Ulfat says. But
then Minza’s parents reached out to Ulfat’s father,
who is a fluent Urdu speaker, and reassured him of
his daughter’s safety in their care. Ulfat was granted
permission to spend a month in Pakistan with her
best friend, and now, “Our families are also kind of
close,” says Minza. Until Ulfat, Minza’s family had
never met a person from Bangladesh.
The unlikely friendship between Minza and Ulfat,
and the cross-cultural discoveries it has engendered,
ULFAT
exemplifies the University’s mission to create broadminded
leaders with the vision to confront the
variegated problems of tomorrow. Their friendship highlights AUW’s capacity
to force its students to confront the unfamiliar, and to usher them from the
realm of stereotypes into the realm of lived experiences, where preconceptions
are rarely correct and truths are far more complex. It is the realm that
best mirrors the world, and it is in this realm that the future leaders of Asia
should reside.
On My Return from Dhaka (Bangladesh III)
Faiz Ahmed Faiz* // Translation by Agha Shahid Ali
After those many encounters, that easy intimacy,
We are strangers now –
After how many meetings will we be that close again?
When will we again see a spring of unstained green?
After how many monsoons will the blood be washed
From the branches?
So relentless was the end of love, so heartless—
After the nights of tenderness, the dawns were pitiless,
So pitiless.
And so crushed was the heart that though it wished,
It found no chance—
After the entreaties, after the despair—for us to
Quarrel once again as old friends
Faiz, what you’d gone to say, ready to offer everything,
Even your life—
Those healing words remained unspoken after all else had
Been said.
*Faiz (1911-1984) was a renowned Pakistani Urdu writer who was widely considered
to be the leading poet of South Asia. He was a two-time Nobel Prize nominee
and the winner of the 1962 Lenin Peace Prize. In 1957, Faiz organized and hosted
a convention of poets from Africa and Asia in Chittagong.

IN THE CLASSROOM 17
The Debate Over Marriage
An Access Academy class brings a variety of perspectives to the table during
a class debate on marriage.
The end of the school day at AUW is fast
approaching as throngs of Access Academy students
gather in the halls between classes and the
air is peppered with the sounds of chatter and
laughter. As afternoon nears, students contemplate
their schoolwork and extracurricular
activities, or perhaps an excursion outside to
enjoy the last days of winter in Chittagong, when
the days are balmy, the mosquitoes few, and the
nights cool.
“In developing countries, more than 60 million women aged 20–24
were married/in union before the age of 18. Over thirty-one million
of them live in South Asia.”
UNITED NATIONS CHILDREN’S FUND (UNICEF)
But before they can revel in sweet freedom,
there is still one more class to go. Ms. Tamanna,
a teacher of Bangladeshi descent who grew up
near Boston, explains the topic of the day: a
class debate on the merits of “arranged” versus
“love” marriages. She defines a love marriage as
a union in which a woman selects her own partner
and an arranged marriage as a union
organized by the couple’s parents.
The subject of marriage is a particularly relevant
one. To qualify for admission to the Asian
University for Women, students must be between
the ages of 17 and 25, and they must commit
themselves to five or six years studying away
from home at this age when many of their peers
are on the verge of marrying or indeed already
have. The pressure to marry poses a continual
challenge to AUW’s mission to extend higher
education to a part of the population that has
been historically underserved. According to
recent estimates by the United Nations Children’s
Fund (UNICEF), “In developing countries, more
than 60 million women aged 20-24 were married/in
union before the age of 18. Over
thirty-one million of them live in South Asia.”
(UNICEF estimates are based on Multiple
Indicator Cluster Surveys [MICS], Demographic
and Health Surveys [DHS], and other national surveys
from 1987-2006.) UNICEF also lists
Bangladesh, the University’s host country, as one
of the developing countries in which the majority
of women—60 percent—have married or
entered into a union by the age of 18. 1
That the young women in Ms. Tamanna’s class
have applied to AUW, let alone saying goodbye
to family members and moving to Chittagong,
would seem to indicate that these students have
already made the decision to put their education
before marriage. But in reality, marriage—be it
an arranged or love pairing—continues to arise
as a question mark among AUW’s students, many
of whom left boyfriends behind when they came
to AUW. Taking into account the one-year Access
Academy program, the three
years of undergraduate education,
and the two years of
graduate study, AUW students
can commit to as many as six
years in an international setting.
A number of students matriculate
to AUW from another university
(19 percent, according to a 2010
student survey), which only extends the number
of years they must commit to earning their
degrees. Upon graduation, AUW students may
find themselves well beyond the expected marrying
age and face additional pressure—from both
relatives and peers—to forgo their nascent
careers for the presumed security of marriage.
AUW stresses the importance of balancing family
and career. But to do so may require altering the
expectations of one’s family, friends, and community,
not to mention one’s own. The challenge
that marriage poses to the longevity and sustained
impact of the AUW experience will only
become more pronounced as the University continues
to develop.
The students are poised and adept debaters, substantiating their opinions
with arguments that speak to their excellent training during their
five short months at the Access Academy.
While there are no simple answers to the complex
questions that arise when considering these
marriage issues, the debate among Access
Academy students over arranged and love marriages
during this typical afternoon in Chittagong
issues a portal of understanding into two different
approaches in the region, and in doing so,
allows an emotional subject to be considered in
intellectual terms. The students are poised and
adept debaters, substantiating their opinions
with arguments that speak to their excellent
training during their five short months at the
Access Academy. Skill supersedes passion as
they navigate a topic in which they all have a personal
stake.
After Ms. Tamanna explains the parameters of
the debate, the Access Academy students divide
themselves evenly into teams according to interest,
with seven students arguing in favor of love
marriage and six in favor of arranged marriage.
The class consists of students from Palestine,
Vietnam, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, India,
and Sri Lanka, and their range of viewpoints
on marriage becomes apparent as the debate
wears on.
The team arguing in favor of arranged marriage
points to the wisdom of one’s parents in choosing
a suitable partner for a woman, saying, “They
have spent most of their lifetimes caring for us,
bringing us up, and educating us—they know
best,” and, “Parents are more experienced.
According to this experience they can give a
decision and this decision can make our lives
easier.” The team asserts that arranged marriages
are often happier than love pairings given
that the bride and bridegrooms’ parents have
already determined the compatibility of the couple
through the careful consideration of
educational, religious, and financial status.
A member of the love marriage team immediately
counters, “It’s not just about background,
finance, and religion—it’s about the person himself.”
A young woman adds that arranged
marriages restrict religious freedom; the daughter
of a love pairing, she was permitted to
convert to Christianity while her brother
remained a Buddhist. A Palestinian student
recounts in rapid-fire English the successful love
marriage of her own parents and another young
woman assails the dowry system, arguing that
arranged marriages engender the unfair treatment
of women through the pervasive practice
of requiring the bridal family to
pay a fee to the husband.
The class ends abruptly with no
clear victors. Not that the students
were expecting any—they
welcome the friendly arguments,
as only students who are living
and learning among 12 different nationalities
can. The debate only represents the patchwork
of cultural norms that make up Asia. But while
how to spend the rest of the afternoon may pose
the more immediate question, the issue of marriage—arranged
or love—looms large in the
future.
1
http://www.unicef.org/protection/index_earlymarriage.html
(updated 6 March 2008).

18
OCTOBER 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2
Beyond

COMMUNITY 19
The Chittagong community welcomes
AUW into its midst, and AUW students
show their appreciation.
If desks, blackboards, and books are the building
blocks of any university, then a greater sense of
community, and the caliber of the individuals who
make up that community, are what separates the
mediocre from the extraordinary—and bring a university
alive with the pulse of intellectual collaboration
and discovery. This community of learning, especially
for exceptional universities, is rarely restricted to campus
boundaries, but instead reaches outward, sharing
its best and brightest with its neighbors.
As the Asian University for Women welcomes new
students to M.M. Ali Road each year, it continues to
strengthen its bonds with the surrounding community.
In fact, Chittagong was chosen as the site of the
University—with plans to eventually build a permanent
campus just beyond the city limits—precisely
because the port area’s diverse population presents
limitless potential for enriching the students’ experience.
Within AUW, there are students from 12
countries throughout Asia and the Middle East; just
outside the University, there is a Buddhist temple, a
Hindu temple, a church, and a mosque.
Yet despite the diversity of the city’s population, the
opening of AUW in Chittagong was nothing short
of an anomaly. Nonetheless, the community greeted
the University with open arms. When AUW’s Access
Academy was first established in 2008, the University
partnered with local residents to create a host mother
program for the Access Academy students, the majority
of whom had never before lived away from home.
The host mothers introduced the young women to
Bangladeshi culture, often taking them on trips to different
sites throughout the city, inviting them to their
homes, and sharing with them the local cuisine.
These Walls
Many of the host mothers learned of AUW through
Mrs. Monowara Hakim Ali, the president of the
Chittagong Women Chamber of Commerce and
Industry and a former member of AUW’s Bangladesh
Board of Advisors. Mrs. Hakim Ali founded the
Chittagong Women Chamber of Commerce in 1989
to counteract the lack of Bangladeshi women in the
workplace. The organization seeks to empower
women in Chittagong to assume roles beyond the
home by granting them the skills and the support
to transform their daily hobbies, such as knitting and
cooking, into profitable businesses.
LEFT: A traffic jam of cars, trucks, rickshaws, and CNGs (named
for their fuel source: compressed natural gas) makes for organized
chaos during rush hour in Chittagong.

20
OCTOBER 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2
Mrs. Hakim Ali often can be found holding court
with Chamber members in her office at the Hotel
Agrabad, a cosmopolitan hotel in downtown
Chittagong where she currently serves as director.
She offers the women of Chittagong loans to
get their businesses started and practical advice
that she has acrued from years of experience
operating as a pioneering businesswoman in the
region’s traditionally male-dominated business
environment.
“Local people are very proud to know that this University
is going to be here.”
MRS. MONOWARA HAKIM ALI
The Chamber demonstrates that while an
institution like AUW may have been new to
Chittagong, it certainly was not unprecedented.
Mrs. Hakim Ali sees the same model of progress
proposed in the Chamber alive and well at AUW.
She calls the University “a big step for the
women of Chittagong,” not merely because
AUW educates promising young women from
the city, but because it offers women of all ages
and backgrounds a portal to the outside world
and an example of female empowerment. She
notes that garnering support for the University
has not been difficult: “Local people are very
proud to know that this University is going to be
here.” She also expresses her faith in AUW as an
institution. “I know some of the local girls: what
they were and what they are [now] doing. What a
change!” she says.
Mrs. Hakim Ali embodies the strong connection
between AUW and the greater community. She
regularly attends events at the University and, on
occasion, she has reserved the pool at the Hotel
Agrabad for the exclusive use of AUW students.
She grows emotional, her dark eyes filling with
tears, as she describes the outpouring
of gratitude from the students, who
sent handwritten notes and painted
signs as thanks. “That’s my achievement
in life,” she asserts.
In exchange for this hospitality, AUW
has encouraged its students to contribute
to their surroundings. The benefits go
both ways. Not only does the community gain by
embracing the students’ participation, but the
students’ experiences play a crucial role in their
development into thoughtful and ethical leaders.
AUW students have responded enthusiastically
by beginning projects of their own or by working
with local non-governmental organizations.
Four Access Academy students, for example, volunteer
with a local NGO that runs a small village
school. Every Saturday morning they navigate
Chittagong’s congested streets to reach the village,
located an hour and a half away by public
transportation. The school is housed in one
room. Nearly 60 students, some as young as 3
years old, pile into the room to listen to the
young women standing before them. Faced with
an overflow of students, the Access Academy
students are often forced to relocate the class to
the village’s temple, where, in an incongruous
departure from the hushed quietude of the
space, they break into song and dance to keep
the youngest class members captivated.
One Access Academy student notes, “We don’t
have enough resources but we are trying our
best to teach them as much as we can … In [the
Access Academy] we learn a lot of things, so we
want to share that knowledge with them … their
focus is narrow.” To that end, the Access
Academy students teach their class about the
world; they expand their students’ horizons as
their own horizons have been expanded, showing
the children world maps and answering the
questions that tumble forth in waves of curiosity,
such as when computers were invented and what
a printer does exactly. The Access Academy students
often return home to AUW with a list of
additional questions to research before the start
of the next teaching session.
AUW’s Community Service Club also supplies a
local school with teachers. Without fail, the club
members wake early on Saturday mornings to
travel to a nearby impoverished community.
Stepping carefully through the trash-strewn
paths to get to a one-room school with packed
dirt floors and a corrugated tin roof, the AUW

COMMUNITY 21
students teach English to an eager group of children.
The club members are undeterred by the
modest settings and easily take on their teaching
roles. They spell out English words on the blackboard
as their students diligently copy the text
into worn notebooks.
Another group of Access Academy students,
members of a class called “How to Start Your
Own School Based on the BRAC Model,”
responded to a need expressed within the hallways
of AUW. AUW’s cleaning staff is composed
“[Access Academy] students not only get firsthand experience with
poverty in Bangladesh, they also get firsthand experience in playing a
part in its alleviation—something we hope they will use in the future
in their own countries.”
primarily of underprivileged women from surrounding
neighborhoods in Chittagong. When
the cleaning staff voiced an interest in learning
English, the Access Academy students began
hosting weekly classes in empty classrooms at
the University. Some staff members hoped their
children could learn English as well, so the
Access Academy students expanded their
classes to accommodate additional participants.
The Access Academy students shifted strategies
ACCESS ACADEMY STUDENT
once again when the number of children attending
dropped because of the costly and lengthy
commute. Now, the Access Academy students
teach nearly 30 children, ranging in age from 5 to
16, four times a week in the nearby community
of Askar Digghi Uttur Par, where a number of the
cleaning staff resides. They also run an additional
program that caters to older students and
focuses on both English and mathematics. Next
year, they plan to begin another school for interested
children in a neighborhood adjacent to
AUW. They will also incorporate lessons in basic
computer skills into their tutorials
for the AUW cleaning staff and
extend these tutorials to other
staff members at the University.
One student who is involved in
the project reflects on the meaning
of the experience for the
Access Academy students.
“[Access Academy] students not
only get firsthand experience with
poverty in Bangladesh, they also get firsthand
experience in playing a part in its alleviation—
something we hope they will use in the future in
their own countries,” she says.
Fundamental to AUW’s mission is the belief that
education can make a transformative difference,
not only in the lives of those who are fortunate
enough to receive it, but also in the lives of
others who benefit from the impact of that
education. The Chittagong community has provided
the University with a welcoming home, and
in return, AUW students will continue to take
their education to the streets.
OPPOSITE: Children in the street in front of their house in
Chittagong.
BOTTOM (left): A group of AUW students shopping on the
street.
BOTTOM (top to bottom): An AUW student interviews children
on the street; an AUW student in her hometown located
just beyond Chittagong; AUW students pile into a taxi
during an excursion around the city.

22
OCTOBER 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2
Condoleezza Rice: An Academic at Heart
It is safe to say that Condoleezza Rice has shattered a fair number
of glass ceilings in her day.
But of all the challenging posts she has held in
her illustrious career—U.S. Secretary of State,
senior advisor on Soviet and Eastern European
affairs for the White House during the disintegration
of the Soviet Union, the first woman and
only the second African-American to serve as
National Security Advisor—she says it was a job
in academia, not government, that presented her
biggest professional challenge.
Dr. Rice says she was taken aback when she first
learned of her nomination to be provost of
Stanford University; she was the youngest and
the first African-American female to hold the
post. Then just 38 years old, she was a lightweight
contender in the boxing ring of academic
hierarchies. “I remember saying to the communications
director, ‘Well, I’ve never even been a
department chair,’” she says. When he
responded that she had, however, managed
U.S.-Soviet relations, Dr. Rice replied, laughing:
“‘Yes, but [Soviet General Secretary] Mikhail
Gorbachev doesn’t have tenure.’”
Dr. Rice appears more comfortable characterizing
herself as an academic than a politician; she
describes the political accomplishments of her
career as extended departures from what was an
otherwise natural trajectory into the academic
world. “I never considered Washington a permanent
home,” she explains when discussing her
desire to return to academia.
Dr. Rice’s devotion to education stretches back
to her grandfather, who was the first person in
her family to earn a university degree. He saved
up the profits from his cotton sales to pursue
“book-learning,” not an easy feat for a black
man living in the segregated South. When his
funds ran out, he obtained a scholarship with
the stipulation he become a Presbyterian minister.
Henceforth, a reverence for both education
and the Presbyterian Church went hand-in-hand
in the Rice household. Her family has been
college-educated ever since.
Given her passion for education, it is no surprise
that Dr. Rice supports the Asian University for
Women. Since becoming a Patron of the
University in 2009, she has brought her considerable
knowledge of both international affairs and
universities to bear, a powerful combination in
AUW’s ambitious quest to change the landscape
of women’s higher education in Asia. In doing
so, Dr. Rice has also served as a role model to
the many AUW students who draw inspiration
from her life path.
Dr. Rice was born in the segregated city of
Birmingham, Alabama, into the heart of the civil
rights struggle. Throughout her childhood the
city was ravaged by violent protests; in 1963, one
of her friends died in the infamous Birmingham
“… my parents and my friends’ parents really raised us to believe
that we could do anything we wanted to do and be anything we
wanted to be, and that the key to it was to get a good education.”
church bombing that killed four little girls on a
Sunday morning. In the midst of this political and
social turmoil, the young Condoleezza Rice
remained devoted to her studies, encouraged by
parents who insisted that education was the
gateway to a better life. “The remarkable thing
to me is that despite the circumstances of
Birmingham my parents and my friends’ parents
really raised us to believe that we could do anything
we wanted to do and be anything we
wanted to be, and that the key to it was to get a
good education,” she says.
Dr. Rice enrolled in the University of Denver as an
undergraduate and originally pursued a major in
music with hopes of becoming a concert pianist.
She had recently come to the realization that her
future as a great pianist was a limited one—“I
knew that I might end up teaching 13-year-olds to
murder Beethoven,” she jokes—when she took a
course with Soviet specialist Josef Korbel, who
also happened to be the father of former
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. This “flash
of a class” sparked an enduring love for political
science and impressed upon Dr. Rice a lifelong
passion for teaching. “I love being a professor
because you can really open up worlds to your
students and make them see things differently.…
And I suspect that at some point Dr. Korbel saw
that light go on in me,” she says.
Dr. Rice went on to become a professor of political
science at Stanford University—a position she
holds today—and then provost. While at
Stanford she met Brent Scowcroft, who had
served as Gerald Ford’s National Security
Advisor. He later appointed Dr. Rice to the
George H. W. Bush’s National Security Council as
the Special Assistant to the President for Soviet
affairs, and so began a meteoric political career.
Still, Dr. Rice always returned to her roots. She
explains: “I belong in a university … every time I
go to government and come back to the university
I think I strengthen and make deeper my
ability to reach students and teach, and every
time I go back into government, I’ve taken the
opportunity in the academy to reflect and
develop new ideas.”
She understands acutely the vital role of an institution
like AUW in the developing world. “I
believe if you want to do something about
uncontrolled population growth, then educate
women and they won’t have children at age 12. If
you want to do something about human trafficking,
educate women and they won’t get into that
circumstance. If you want to do
something about poverty, educate
women and they will create circumstances
to educate their daughters
and their sons and so on and so
on. I think education of women
internationally is really the key to a
much better world, period,” she
says.
She points to the ripple effect AUW can have
throughout the region. “I suspect that when
these daughters come back into their villages
and into their towns, and people see what’s happened,
more and more families will want their
daughters to have this kind of opportunity.”
Though Dr. Rice urges students at AUW to steel
themselves against the challenges they may face
on their paths toward becoming leaders in the
region, she also cautions them against planning
every step along the way. Back at Stanford, her
students often ask her how they can become the
next Secretary of State. “You start as a failed
piano major,” she says.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE

AUW PATRONS 23
Cherie Blair: Passing It Forward
AUW Patron Cherie Blair speaks about the importance of education in her own life
and for the future of Asia.
Cherie Blair waits patiently while a line of people
forms before her, jostling to have their photograph
taken with the leading human rights
activist and wife of Britain’s former Prime
Minister, Tony Blair. She betrays few traces of jet
lag as she poses diligently for photograph after
photograph with event participants, reporters,
staff members, and drivers. She even allows the
photographers behind the lenses to switch
places so that they too can collect their personal
mementos of her visit.
Mrs. Blair is in Bangladesh to launch the Cherie
Blair Fellowships at the Asian University for
Women (AUW). During her brief stay in the capital
before continuing to the southern port city of
Chittagong where the University is located, she
meets various dignitaries to spread awareness
about AUW. Wherever she goes, a phalanx of
photographers, security officers, and bystanders
follows; throughout it all, Mrs. Blair handles the
constant attention with the grace of someone
accustomed to being in the spotlight and the
frankness of someone who has never forgotten
her roots.
Mrs. Blair was raised by her mother and grandmother
in a working-class setting in Liverpool.
Her father, an actor, abandoned their family when
she was a child. Neither her mother nor her
grandmother could attend school past the age of
14; nevertheless, Mrs. Blair was raised in a
household that placed the utmost importance on
obtaining an education. She attributes her subsequent
professional accomplishments and even
her personal successes to the education she
received. And she remains keenly aware of the
role her mother and grandmother played in
allowing her to pursue that education.
“They made very many personal sacrifices to
ensure that my sister and I had the education
that neither of them had the opportunity to
have, even though both of them were intelligent
women. And there are many, many women
around the world today who had potential that
wasn’t realized, who hope [for that education] for
their daughters and granddaughters as well as
for their sons and grandsons,” Mrs. Blair says.
While Mrs. Blair acknowledges that boys also
face difficulties in pursuing an education—
crippled by the predictable culprits of poverty
and limited opportunities—she
says that women
face the additional
challenge of gender
discrimination in traditionally
male-dominated
circumstances.”
societies. Although boys
are certainly deserving of
education initiatives, Mrs. Blair is first and
foremost drawn to the plight of women who
encounter a wider range of obstacles than their
male counterparts. “Just to establish that level
playing field against the backdrop of centuries of
disadvantages, we have to do something to help
girls catch up,” she says.
Given her strong belief in empowering women
worldwide, it should come as no surprise that
Mrs. Blair was drawn to the Asian University for
Women. She became a Patron of AUW in early
2009 and has traveled the globe raising support
for the University ever since. Beyond extending
access to higher education to more women, Mrs.
Blair points to the leadership training AUW offers
as the key to catapulting gender relations into the
future. She comments: “Education for all is very
important, but I also think that leaders are important.
And the fact that the AUW is unashamedly
elitist in that sense, in that it’s looking for the elite
talent of the region … I applaud that. But it is not
elitist of course in the traditional sense, because it
does not seek to educate the rich and the fortunate.
In fact, its mission is very determinedly to
identify those whose potential for leadership
would otherwise go unrealized because of their
economic circumstances.”
In the fall of 2008, Mrs. Blair set up the Cherie
Blair Foundation for Women, a London-based
organization that seeks to provide female entrepreneurs
in Asia, the Middle East, and East Africa
with access to basic and advanced training in
finance and development. Like the Asian
University for Women, the Foundation believes
that women, as half of the population of any
given country, represent a critical vehicle for
development. By granting women the power to
transform their economic status, AUW and the
Foundation aim to give women a voice where
previously there was silence, and a way where
previously there was only a will.
Mrs. Blair’s relentless support for AUW reveals
a deeper and more personal commitment to
the University, one that stems from an appreciation
of the role that education has played in
her own life. She was the first person in her
family to attend university and was accepted by
the London School of Economics (LSE) on full
scholarship. “I understood that the quid pro quo
for … [my university education] is that I should
try to give something back for the advantages
that essentially other people paid for me to
have,” she says.
Mrs. Blair’s education at LSE was certainly the
stepping stone for an extraordinary career that
continues today. Growing up in England in the
“… [AUW’s] mission is very determinedly to identify those whose potential
for leadership would otherwise go unrealized because of their economic
CHERIE BLAIR
1960s and 1970s, Mrs. Blair says that she was
always aware that her professional success
depended on out-performing her male classmates.
It just so happened she had the mind to
do so. She graduated university with First Class
Honors in 1976 and earned the top mark in the
Bar exam for that year. In 1995, she became a
Queen’s Counsel and later a part-time judge. In
2000, she and a number of other prominent barristers
established the Matrix Chambers, a legal
practice with a focus on human rights and public
law. Meanwhile, she raised four children with her
husband.
When praised for her ability to juggle a family
with a successful legal career, Mrs. Blair demurs,
saying: “I think the superwomen actually are
women like my mum and grandmother who without
access to resources, both education and
economic, brought up their families and instilled
in their children the ambition to do something …
Whenever I have a hard time, I think how much
harder it was for my own mother.”
As the photo session comes to a close, Mrs. Blair
is bustled toward a waiting car. She will next
travel to Chittagong to award her fellowships to
ten AUW students who have been selected on
the basis of their extraordinary academic performances
and strong leadership skills. Once in
Chittagong, she will greet her fellows with her
trademark bear hug, the expressions on each of
their faces reflecting the magnitude of the
moment.
She may not consider herself a superwoman, but
Mrs. Blair certainly has no trouble masquerading
as one.

24
OCTOBER 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2
Breaking New Ground
For students around the world, fall marks the start of a new academic year
and fresh beginnings full of possibility.
So too is it that time at AUW. Our undergraduate
students have returned to AUW after a summer
break in which they pursued internships and
community service projects. In addition, we are
proud to welcome 141 new students into our
undergraduate and Access Academy programs
for the 2010-2011 academic year. This year we
will again be located in our leased facilities on
AUW Lane in Chittagong. While we are fortunate
to be able to expand into a leased building next
door to accommodate our growing student body,
we are in great need of a home of our own.
The need for a permanent campus is best understood
in the numbers. Opening our doors in
2008, we had 129 students and 14 faculty in
Chittagong. Two years later as we begin the
2010-2011 academic year, we have grown to
nearly 450 students and over 40 undergrad faculty
and teachers. But the need goes much
deeper than simple dormitory and classroom
space. Our academic programs in the hard sciences
demand state-of-the-art wet laboratory
facilities. As our students progress to higher-level
studies, competencies in laboratory skills are
required for advancement. In the humanities as
well, there is a need for small seminar spaces,
tutorial spaces, and rooms that are available to
students for collaborative work. Our performing
and visual arts programs need exhibition and studio
space to thrive. Our students need outdoor
and indoor athletic spaces to round out their
educations. Finally, as in all institutions, so much
of the personal growth we hope to see in our
students occurs in unstructured spaces and
moments beyond the classroom. Whether it is
running into a professor in the coffee shop and
discussing a point for the lecture or hanging out
with friends in the rooftop garden, or working
well into the midnight hours with a study group
on a collaborative project, these are the experiences
that enrich a university experience, and
these are the opportunities that simply require
more space.
We are fortunate that the Bangladesh government
has granted us 130 acres of beautiful land
in the hills outside the city of Chittagong. Our
architects, the world-renowned firm of Moshe
Safdie and Associates, have developed a master
plan for the AUW campus and detailed designs
for the first building to be constructed, the
Campus Center. This Campus Center will act as a
mini-campus and contain over 180,000 square
feet of classrooms, seminar rooms, laboratories,
computer labs, a 30,000-volume library, a performing
arts center, a cafeteria, faculty offices
and administrative offices, a health center, and
athletic facilities.
The cost of this project is $21.5 million USD. To
date, we have raised $6 million USD restricted
for campus use. Site infrastructure development
will commence in November 2010 and building
construction in early 2011.*
With each newsletter and appeal for support we
stress the need for funds to support the program
and scholarship of our students. I am asking for
more in this letter. In addition to your support for
the programs at AUW, I want you to consider an
additional amount, perhaps 10% or 20% of your
usual gift, which can be directed to the building
of our campus. We are grateful for the continued
support of our operations as we build our new
home, but we have now arrived at a critical milestone.
This is the moment when we all need to
pull together to take this next important step for
our young university.
Warm regards,
Janet Montag, AUWSF Board Member and
Chair of the 2010-2011 Development Committee
The featured speakers of AUW’s first-ever New York event honoring the Goldman Sachs Foundation and its 10,000 Women
Initiative are pictured here from left to right: Jack Meyer, Chairman of the AUWSF Board, AUW Patron Condoleezza Rice, AUW
Patron Cherie Blair, Access Academy student Tam Nguyen, undergraduate student Mahilini Kailaiyamgirichelvam, AUWSF
Board member and Goldman Sachs Japan Managing Director Kathy Matsui, and AUWSF Board Member and Chair of the
2010-2011 Development Committee Janet Montag.
Moving Forward
In addition to the $5 million AUW needs to raise for operating expenses this year,
AUW needs to raise approximately $15 million over the next 3 years for the
Campus Center.
MAKE A GIFT
“Buy a Brick” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $1,000 USD
Building Foundation Benefactors. . $25,000 USD
Academic Village Founders . . . . . $100,000 USD
Buy a Brick, Foundation Benefactors, and
Academic Village Founders will be named on the
Founders Wall in the Campus Center.
LEFT: The AUW Campus Center, shown here, will act as
a mini-campus that houses the University’s most critical
functions while the rest of the campus is built.
*Tata Consulting Engineers (TCE) have been enlisted to
provide construction supervision and management.
NAMING OPPORTUNITIES
Seminar Rooms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $35,000 USD
Classrooms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $40,000 USD
Health Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $100,000 USD
Science/Computer Labs . . . . . . . . $125,000 USD
Courtyard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $300,000 USD
Cafeteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $500,000 USD
Auditorium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $700,000 USD
Library & Information
Commons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $1,200,000 USD

EVENTS 25
London – June 17
Lady Judy Moody-Stuart, an AUW Board member, hosted a
luncheon with Asia House to introduce AUW to Londoners
involved with Asia.
Hong Kong – March 25
Ms. Anson Chan, an AUW Patron, hosted Mr. Richard Saller, the
Dean of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University and an
esteemed member of the AUW Council of International
Advisors, as keynote speaker at a luncheon for leaders in the
business community.
Milan – May 19
The Olivetti and Agnelli Foundations hosted a luncheon for
community and philanthropic leaders to benefit AUW.
New York – May 13
AUW hosted “An Evening to Benefit AUW” to honor Goldman
Sachs and AUW Board member Ms. Kathy Matsui. AUW
Patrons Dr. Condoleezza Rice and Mrs. Cherie Blair were
keynote speakers. Over 200 people attended the event and all
proceeds benefitted AUW programs.
Kuwait – January 31
International Council of Advisors member Mrs. Lulwa Al-Mulla
hosted a dinner for over 300 guests. Mrs. Cherie Blair, an AUW
Patron, was the keynote speaker. Former Prime Minister Tony
Blair also spoke at the dinner.
Washington, D.C. – June 4
The Ambassador of Kuwait and Mrs. Rima Al-Sabah hosted a
dinner to benefit AUW. AUW Patron Dr. Condoleezza Rice spoke
as the guest of honor.
Bangladesh
Tokyo – April 15 and 16
Over 200 people attended the film screening of the PBS awardwinning
documentary A Time for School, with remarks by
documentary film producer Ms. Tamara Rosenberg. Proceeds
from the evening benefited AUW scholarships. Ms. Catherine
Sasanuma, a member of AUW’s Board of Directors, hosted a dinner
to introduce members of the business community to AUW.
AUW’S WORLDWIDE NETWORK OF SUPPORT IN 2010
An Evening to Benefit AUW
AUW hosts its first New York City event.
On May 13, 2010, the AUW Support Foundation
hosted its first-ever New York City event, “An
Evening to Benefit AUW,” at the acclaimed auction
house Sotheby’s. The evening was a great
success with over 200 people in attendance,
many of whom were new to AUW. AUW Patrons
Mrs. Cherie Blair and Dr. Condoleezza Rice
served as keynote speakers.
Mrs. Blair spoke about the importance of educational
opportunities for talented young women in
Asia. She reflected on her personal relationships
with some of the AUW students she had met during
her visit to AUW in January of 2010, and the
courage and determination they each displayed
in coming to AUW.
Dr. Rice joined students Mahalini
Kailaiyamgirichelvam, a first-year undergraduate
student from Sri Lanka, and Tam Nguyen, an
Access Academy student from Vietnam, in a conversation
about the importance of a liberal arts
education. They discussed the need for critical
thinking skills and reasoning in the development
of strong leadership. Dr. Rice emphasized the relevance
of studying and understanding world
history for those developing innovative solutions
to problems and leading others toward those
solutions.
AUW honored the Goldman Sachs Foundation
and its 10,0000 Women Initiative for their support
of the Access Academy. A very generous
grant from the Goldman Sachs Foundation
enabled the Access Academy to open its doors
to its first cohort of students in 2008. Those
young women have now completed their first
year of undergraduate work at the University. In
addition, AUW honored Ms. Kathy M. Matsui,
Managing Director, Chief Japan Strategist, and
Co-Director of Asia Investment Research,
Goldman Sachs Japan Co., Ltd., for her deep
commitment to AUW. Ms. Matsui has been
instrumental in introducing AUW to the expatriate
American and Japanese communities in
Tokyo and cultivating strong support for the mission.
Mr. Jack Meyer, AUW Support Foundation
Chairman, gave a brief history of AUW’s mission,
and Mrs. Janet Montag, Chair of the AUWSF
2010-2011 Development Committee, concluded
the evening with a speech outlining the various
ways the audience could get involved. The
evening raised over $250,000 for AUW. Thank
you, New York!
Chairman of the AUWSF Board Jack Meyer and AUWSF
Board member and Goldman Sachs Japan Managing
Director Kathy Matsui mingle with guests at AUW’s New York
event.

26
OCTOBER 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2
local government, the guests enjoyed dinner and
a student cultural performance in a setting that
was nothing short of magical.
The visit was a great success for both the trip
participants and the students. The students benefited
from meeting an impressive group of
women who had journeyed great distances to
meet them, and the delegates saw firsthand the
progress AUW is making every day. The aweinspiring
stories of the students left an indelible
mark on the participants, who spoke with students
over meals, between classes, and in
impromptu meetings throughout their trip. As a
result, each participant, including the youngest
delegate at the age of 13, professed her desire
to come back to Chittagong to see this inaugural
undergraduate class graduate.
International Delegates Visit AUW
On December 2, 2009, 30 women from Kuwait, Italy, Japan, Australia, Hong Kong,
Thailand, and the United States convened in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The delegates, with a range of assorted and distinguished
backgrounds in academia, business,
and philanthropy, had differing levels of familiarity
with AUW. For some, the visit was a long-awaited
opportunity to see AUW after supporting the
University from afar; for others, the visit served as
their first introduction to AUW. But the women’s
common purpose united them; they embodied
the power of AUW’s mission to attract likeminded
individuals from different corners of the
world with little in common save their fundamental
belief in AUW’s model for quality tertiary
education for the women of Asia. “All the delegates
were there to learn from one another how
to be part of building the AUW of the future,”
says the founder of AUW’s Australian Support
Group, Ms. Joan Lefroy.
Mrs. Janet Montag, Chair of AUW’s Development
Committee, served as delegation leader for the
trip. The response from the delegates to the
invitation to attend was overwhelmingly positive.
As the numbers swelled to thirty women, “It got
very exciting,” Mrs. Janet Montag says. “We
realized then that we had something that was
going to be very special.” The delegates were
also thrilled with the opportunity to be a part of
such a diverse group of women. Ms. Catherine
Sasanuma, Asian University for Women Support
Foundation board member and Japan Support
Group member, notes: “In every bumpy bus ride
[there was] a moment where you connected with
someone from a different part of the world.”
AUW welcomed the delegates to Dhaka with a
dinner and an address from keynote speaker Dr.
Dipu Moni, Bangladesh’s first female foreign minister.
Dr. Moni spoke passionately about the
government’s support of the University. The following
day the delegates traveled to the AUW
campus in Chittagong. They spent the next two
days observing Access Academy and undergraduate
classes, meeting with students and faculty
members, and touring the facilities. Because the
visit coincided with the end of the fall term, the
delegates were able to participate with students
and faculty in the academic fair highlighting the
semester-long projects of the students. In addition,
the delegates visited a Grameen Bank
project and toured a ship breaking yard.
For many of the delegates, the most memorable
aspect of their visit to AUW was a dramatic performance
about reconciliation by Tamil and
Sinhalese students from Sri Lanka. The presentation
described the story of the civil war in Sri
Lanka from the personal standpoints of the students
and concluded with a song that the entire
group performed together, a stirring testament
to the ability of these young women to rise
above their deep-seated divisions. Ms.
Sasanuma says the performance reaffirmed her
commitment to AUW. “For me [the drama] was a
metaphor for what this university is all about. It
was a metaphor for girls from the region coming
and seeing that they could make a difference …
that they could heal and lead this region in a new
direction and overcome barriers that have been
there in the past.”
At dusk on the final evening of their visit, the
group arrived at the gates of the future campus
site, located on 130 acres in the hills outside of
Chittagong. Under a darkening sky of pink and
blue hues that gave way to pinpricks of stars, the
delegates proceeded on foot into the heart of
the campus, guided by the effulgence of suspended
lanterns. There, with dignitaries from the
Ms. Anne Makepeace, a member of the AUW
Japan Support Group, reflects: “In our one-onone
conversations and our group talks, it was
emphasized repeatedly that the girls were so
excited to be studying in a liberal arts context
where they were encouraged to inquire, question,
use their voice, and express themselves
knowing that their teachers and fellow classmates
would respect them no matter what they
might say.”
The delegates returned from Bangladesh energized
and ready to get to work to ensure the
University succeeds in fulfilling its great potential.
That potential is no less than the education of
the future leaders of the region.
ABOVE: AUW’s permanent campus site, located on 130 acres
in the hills outside of Chittagong.
BELOW: The delegates had the opportunity to observe AUW
students in the classroom.

EVENTS 27
Moved to Action
An AUW supporter parlays her enthusiasm for the University
into a successful fundraising event in Kuwait.
By Mariah Steele
From left, Mrs. Lulwa Al-Mulla hosted a successful fundraising event for AUW in Kuwait.
Access Academy students Farida Royesh of Afghanistan and Haneen Ayoub of Palestine
spoke at the dinner. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and AUW Patron Cherie Blair,
not pictured, were also featured speakers.
From the moment Mrs. Lulwa Al-Mulla first heard about the Asian University
for Women, she was amazed by the mission of the University. That same day,
she says, she resolved “to put all my effort and all my willingness [into doing]
anything they would ask for.” Mrs. Al-Mulla subsequently organized one of
the most successful fundraising events in AUW’s history: the Kuwait Gala.
On January 31, 2010, in Kuwait City’s Arraya Ballroom, 300 prominent
Kuwaitis and expatriates gathered for a dinner in support of AUW. Guests
included four members of the Kuwaiti parliament, seven former Kuwaiti
Ministers, and eight ambassadors, along with numerous business, non-profit,
educational, and media leaders. Among the guests who had journeyed
great distances to attend the event were former British Prime Minister Tony
Blair and renowned human rights lawyer and AUW Patron Cherie Blair.
Mrs. Al-Mulla set the stage for the evening with an opening address, followed
by a speech from Mr. Blair describing his “belief in education as a
liberator of the human mind and also as a liberator of the human spirit,” and
then a speech from the keynote speaker of the event, Mrs. Blair. She captivated
the audience with a passionate address about the importance of
higher education for women around the world, especially in Asia. She
declared: “We need to provide role models for girls and women, not replacing
men, but working alongside them and bringing new qualities and new
perspectives … The result won’t just be a fairer society for women, but a
better world for all of us: men, women, and children.”
The highlight of the gala occurred when two AUW Access Academy students
spoke about their personal experiences. Haneen Ayoub, who plans to
study environmental engineering to help her homeland of Palestine develop
sustainably, spoke in Arabic about why AUW is so important to her and her
goals, and Farida Royesh discussed her ambition to become an advocate for
women’s rights in her native Afghanistan. Farida also talked about befriending
students from other countries and realizing “that we have many more
similarities than differences.” She continued to say that “thanks to friendly
discussions in our dining hall and dorms … [I have] also come to see my
world differently.”
Farida’s description of her own transformation from a girl with “no childhood”
to a woman whose “dreams are alive, limitless, and attainable,” and
who believes that she and her classmates “can help shape the future,” was a
tangible endorsement of AUW’s mission. Both students delivered their
speeches with astonishing poise, as if they had been born to speak in front
of large audiences. (Farida’s speech can be accessed at
www.youtube.com/user/auwfilms#p/u/5/PaZwGzU42o4.)
The impact of the event continues to reach far past that evening. Following
the event, Saudi Prince Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, a well-known philanthropist
and humanitarian, called Mrs. Al-Mulla to learn more about AUW
and to offer his support. In addition, five Arabic newspapers, two English
newspapers, and two television channels covered the event, and another
Arabic newspaper interviewed Mrs. Al-Mulla. With so many influential individuals
among the Kuwait Gala’s guests, there’s no question that AUW’s
message and goals will continue to percolate in the minds and hearts of
change-makers throughout Kuwait and the region.
The unwavering commitment, talent, and energy Mrs. Al-Mulla displayed in
planning this successful event was no surprise. Her career as a renowned
activist and volunteer has focused on achieving political rights for women in
Kuwait. Most notably, she was the named plaintiff in the first lawsuit challenging
the constitutionality of the Kuwaiti Election Law that denied women
political participation, and she has since worked tirelessly to raise awareness
of women’s constitutional and social rights in Kuwait. In addition, she is the
Secretary General of the Women Cultural and Social Society, a Kuwait-based
NGO, and she is also a member of AUW’s International Council of Advisors.
In December 2009, Mrs. Al-Mulla visited AUW with a delegation of supporters
from around the world. Seeing AUW firsthand only furthered Mrs.
Al-Mulla’s commitment to the University and its students. She was particularly
impressed by the intelligence, determination, and grace of the
students, and was also struck by how happy they seemed. During her
speech at the gala a month later, she described how her trip to Chittagong
had encouraged her to take action. “What I saw was nothing less than a testament
to the power of sheer will and determination to transform dreams
into reality,” she said.
The AUW community is grateful to Mrs. Al-Mulla for adding her considerable
talents to the global network of supporters who continue to propel
AUW into the future.
KIPCO - one of the leading
investment companies in the Middle
East region - is proud to support the
Asian University for Women.
We wish students and staff a bright
and successful future.
visit our website: www.kipco.com

28
OCTOBER 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2
Mary J. Sansalone is the
Provost and Chief Academic
Officer of the Asian University
for Women. As an undergraduate
she studied literature and
engineering. She obtained her
PhD in structural engineering
from Cornell University, and a
master’s in public administration
from the John F. Kennedy
School of Government at
Harvard University. In 1987, she
joined the faculty of engineering at Cornell University and
later served as Vice Provost of Academic Programs.
Following her career at Cornell (1987-2006), she served as
Dean of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Washington
University. Recognized as both an innovative scholar and an
outstanding teacher, in 1992 Dr. Sansalone was named “U.S.
National Professor of the Year” by the Council for
Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie
Foundation.
Ashok Keshari is the Dean of
the Division of Mathematics,
Science, and Engineering at
AUW. Dr. Keshari obtained his
PhD in civil engineering from
the India Institute of Technology
(IIT), in Kanpur, India. He did his
postdoctoral studies at Korean
National University in South
Korea. He specializes in water
resources and environmental
engineering, geosciences, and
geoinformatics, and his areas of interest include hydrological
and environmental modeling, groundwater flow and pollution
modeling, groundwater recharge and sustainable
development, remote sensing and geographic information
systems (GIS), optimization and the finite element method
(FEM), waste management and sewerage systems, and policy
analysis and risk assessment. Prior to joining AUW, Dr.
Keshari served as a professor at IIT Delhi for 17 years.
Meherun Ahmed received both
her PhD and MA in economics
from the University of
Washington in Seattle,
Washington. She taught microeconomics,
development
economics, labor economics,
and economics of gender at
Carleton College in Minnesota
before joining AUW. Her
research focuses on the microeconomic
analysis of household
behavior, with an emphasis on investment in education and
health, nutrition, poverty and inequality, as well as labor
force supply. She is also involved with a non-profit organization
in Bangladesh that seeks to empower rural women
through adult literacy programs and other income-generating
activities.
Amina Akhter received her
master’s degree in information
and communication technology
(ICT) from the Asian Institute of
Technology (AIT) in Thailand.
She worked as a researcher in
Internet education and research
laboratory (intERLab) at AIT
before joining AUW. Her
research interest is wireless ad
hoc networks and the ways in
which ICT can be employed to
develop the socioeconomic infrastructure of rising countries
in Asia.
Sara Nuzhat Amin is returning
for her second year of teaching
at AUW. She completed her
PhD in sociology at McGill
University in Canada. Her dissertation
focused on the
conversations and debates in
the Canadian and American
Muslim leadership and faith.
She specializes in political sociology
and quantitative
methods, and she has worked
with demographic health surveys, surveys on labor income
dynamics, youths in transition surveys, and various United
Nations, World Bank, and IMF datasets.
Nasreen Chowdhory completed
her PhD at McGill
University in the Department of
Political Science with a focus on
comparative politics and South
Asia. Her dissertation
“Belonging in Exile and ‘Home’:
The Politics of Repatriation in
South Asia,” examines the
question of belonging among
refugee communities in South
Asia. She received her master’s
of philosophy and MA from Jawaharlal Nehru University,
New Delhi. Her present work interests include comparative
politics, ethno-politics, state formation, citizenship, and
forced migration.
Shahana Chowdhury completed
her PhD in green
chemistry at Monash University
in Victoria, Australia; her master’s
in applied science at RMIT
University in Melbourne,
Australia; and her B.Sc. (Hons)
and M.Sc. in chemistry at Dhaka
University in Bangladesh. Her
present work interests include
sustainable chemistry practices
in Bangladesh, and introducing
green chemistry to undergraduate students.
Yan Gao received her BA and
MA in history from Wuhan
University in the People’s
Republic of China and she has
just completed her PhD at
Carnegie Mellon University. Her
research focuses on the interrelationship
between the
environment and society in both
historical and contemporary
China, the culture and society of
modern China, and the comparative
history of the West and China. She is now working on
her dissertation, in which she examines the local resilience of
rural communities against natural disasters in Central China,
and how military practices affected the local resilience in late
imperial China.
Georgia Guldan is returning for
her second year of teaching at
AUW. After her thesis research
in rural Bangladesh, Dr. Guldan
received her PhD in nutrition
from Tufts University in the
United States. Prior to teaching
at AUW, Dr. Guldan taught at
the Chinese University of Hong
Kong, where she helped build
the new Food and Nutritional
Sciences Programme. Her
research interests include the design of interventions to help
combat malnutrition among the younger generation. Dr.
Guldan teaches courses in nutrition and public health.
Faheem Hussain is also returning
for his second year at AUW.
Dr. Hussain completed his PhD
at Carnegie Mellon University
(CMU) in the Department of
Engineering and Public Policy,
with a focus on technology and
development in the South Asian
region. His research interests
are in information and communication
technology for
development (ICTD), telecommunication
policy and management, science and
technology policy, and community media.
A.N.M. Moinul Islam completed
his PhD in economics at
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale (SIUC). His research
interests include the impact of
foreign direct investment, especially
in developing economies;
microfinance and women’s
empowerment; and regional
economic integration.
Joanne Nystrom Janssen
received her PhD in English
from the University of Iowa and
her MA in English literature from
Ball State University. Her work
focuses on quotation and identity
in nineteenth-century British
fiction, examining the confluence
of rote learning
educational practices and prevailing
philosophies of the mind
and memory. Her research interests
also include nineteenth-century daily life, education,
religion, and imperialism. Dr. Janssen is a former journalist.
Ibrahim Khan received his PhD
in civil and resources engineering
in the field of sustainable
technology from Dalhousie
University, Canada, in 2006,
where he also received his master’s
in marine management. He
holds an interdisciplinary bachelor
of science degree, with a
specialization in marine science
and biology. Dr. Khan has developed
new management tools
and innovative techniques in environmental sustainability.
He has also participated in several large-scale development
and research projects in different countries.
Agnes Khoo is returning for her
second year of teaching at
AUW. Dr. Khoo completed her
PhD in sociology at the
University of Manchester in the
United Kingdom and her MA in
development studies at the
Institute of Social Studies in the
Netherlands. She received her
BA degree in sociology and
social work from the National
University of Singapore, where
she also studied translation. Dr. Khoo, a native of Singapore,
specializes in Asian studies, gender studies, development
studies, sociology, oral history, social movements, and NGO
work. She taught at the University of Manchester and the
Manchester Metropolitan University before joining AUW.
She has published an oral history book on women’s struggles
against colonialism in Southeast Asia, which has been
translated into several languages.

FACULTY PROFILES: ACADEMIC YEAR 2010-2011 29
Se-Woong Koo will join AUW
as the Stanford Teaching Fellow
in January of the coming academic
year. He is completing his
PhD in religious studies, with a
focus on East Asian religions, at
Stanford University in Fall 2010.
He earned an MA in art and art
history, with a focus on the history
of Chinese art, at Stanford
University and he received his
BA degree in art history from
the University of British Columbia. He is currently a fellow at
the Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford University.
Brenda Kranz obtained her
PhD from Flinders University in
Australia through the School of
Biological Sciences. Her thesis
explored the evolution of social
behavior in a subfamily of thrips
(insects). She has since done
two postdocs on the evolution
of live birth and other reproductive
behaviors in insects at
Tokyo University of Agriculture
and jointly between Australian
National University and University of Adelaide. Dr. Kranz has
broadened her interests and has worked on routes of heavy
metal exposure in human infants and, for the last several
years, has worked in the humanitarian and development sectors.
She was a plant protection specialist in Maldives, where
she worked with the government to support education and
policy development for the integrated pest management of
crops and the setup of the national quarantine facility. Most
recently, she led various food security initiatives in conjunction
with the Australian Red Cross.
S. Agnes Lee completed her
Ph.D. at the University of
Colorado at Boulder in the
Department of Anthropology,
with a focus on Human Ecology.
Her dissertation, entitled “The
Sidamo, Their Cattle, and
Ensete: A Study towards an
Understanding of
Agropastoralism and
Sustainability” looked at the
role of history and politics within
a framing system in Ethiopia. Her other interests include
issues of diversity, the role of culture in consumption patterns,
and community-based research.
Shahirah Majumdar has a BA in
anthropology and an MFA in
writing from Columbia
University. Her MFA thesis was a
literary exploration of identity
formation and cross-cultural collision
among second-generation
Asian-Americans. She is interested
in new prose forms,
including the lyric essay and
flash fiction, and in how access
to language affects the kinds of
stories we tell. In addition, she has a background in typography
and graphic design and is interested in the interplay of
text with visual context.
Tomomi Naka received her MA
and PhD in anthropology from
the University of Iowa, and her
MA in American studies from
Doshisha University in Japan.
She studies the relationships
between religious beliefs, cultural
values, and social and
economic changes such as suburbanization,
movement of
industries, and environmental
transformations. Her current
research interests include charitable behavior, international
and ecumenical relief, and economic development projects.
She has received several awards and scholarships including
a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholarship, a
Graduate Fellowship at the University of Iowa Obermann
Graduate Institute on Public Engagement and the Academy,
and a Graduate Summer Fellowship at the Young Center for
Anabaptist and Pietist Studies.
Andrea Phillott received her
PhD in biology from Central
Queensland University in
Australia. She began her career
as a biologist studying sea turtles,
after pursuing
postgraduate studies focused
on the fungal invasion of sea
turtle nests. This in turn fostered
her interest in wildlife diseases
and led her to accept a position
as a postdoctoral and senior
research fellow with the Amphibian Disease Ecology Group
at James Cook University, Australia.
Sangita Rayamajhi is returning
for her second year of teaching
at AUW. Dr. Rayamajhi was the
first woman in her home country
of Nepal to receive a PhD in
English literature. She has been
teaching literature for the past
21 years and her concentration
lies in women’s studies (issues in
South Asia) and literature. She
came to AUW after having
served as a faculty member at
Tribhuvan University. She is highly respected for her work in
women’s studies throughout South Asia and has published
works on a wide array of subjects ranging from gender and
politics, to the use of language in the media. Dr. Rayamajhi
has produced three monographs, one authored play, and
one co-authored book.
Meghan Simpson holds a PhD
in comparative gender studies
and an MA in European studies
and international relations from
Central European University in
Budapest, Hungary. Her
research focuses on women’s
and gender issues in post-
Soviet Central Asia, specifically:
women in non-governmental
organizations; international
assistance; intersections of gender,
race/ethnicity, and class; and processes of identity
formation. Before joining AUW, she taught at the
Department of Gender Studies at CEU. She has also worked
with the Center for Policy Studies at Central European
University and pioneered several projects for the Open
Society Institute (Budapest), which sought to promote the
introduction of diversity into local governance reforms in
Central Asia.
Lucina Uddin joins AUW as the
Stanford Teaching Fellow for
this coming academic year. Dr.
Uddin completed her PhD in
psychology at UCLA in 2006,
after completing undergraduate
work in neuroscience and philosophy.
She has just completed
her postdoctoral studies at the
Stanford Medical School. Her
current academic interests
include cognitive, systems, and
developmental neuroscience. She uses functional magnetic
resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging to examine
the organization of large-scale brain networks in development
and pathology (e.g., autism spectrum disorders and
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorders). Dr. Uddin recently
received a career development award from the National
Institute of Mental Health to continue her research. Dr.
Uddin was born in Chittagong, and moved to the U.S. with
her parents when she was an infant.
Amber Wise received her PhD
in chemistry from the University
of California-Berkeley in 2008,
where she specialized in biochemistry
and creating new
inorganic surfaces and interfaces
to study cell-cell communication.
After graduating from
Berkeley, she worked in the area
of science policy and scientific
integrity during an internship,
after which she did her postdoctoral
studies. Her interests include issues of toxic substances
in the environment and consumer products. She believes that
educating young scientists to practice greener and safer
methods of chemistry and material development is the first
step to improving public health and the environment.
Jolie Wood has just completed
her PhD in government at the
University of Texas at Austin.
Her doctoral dissertation was on
contentious politics and political
expression by lower-class and
middle-class occupational
groups in Varanasi, India. Her
interests include urban grassroots
political participation and
expression, contentious politics,
social movements, and civil
society. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Varanasi
and Delhi and speaks Hindi. She also worked for several
years as a policy analyst in the areas of foreign policy and
arms control in Washington, D.C., and New Delhi.
Ganesh Chandra Ray is a
professor of mathematics at
Chittagong University. He
joins AUW full-time for the
2010-2011 academic year on
leave from his home university
to teach calculus. Professor Ray
received his master’s degree
in math from the Peoples’
Friendship University in
Moscow, where his thesis
was the study of behavior
of the solution of a non-stationary linear problem with free
boundary. He also received his PhD in physics and math
from the USSR Research Center for Surface and Vacuum
Investigations, Moscow, where he used analytical computing
to look at problems in general relativity. Professor Ray currently
works in the field of optimization theory and serves
as a thesis advisor to students pursuing a master’s of science
degree in the field of Linear and Nonlinear Programming
at Chittagong University. Professor Ray has also taught at
Garyounis University in Benghazi, Libya.

30
OCTOBER 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2
ACCOMMODATIONS:
Below is a list of the recommended hotels in
Dhaka and Chittagong. Please make hotel
reservations directly with your hotel of choice
and notify Ms. Katsuki Sakai of the AUW
Support Foundation. You can reach her via
e-mail at Katsuki.Sakai@asian-university.org.
Kindly also provide the hotel of your choice
with a copy of your flight itinerary in the event
that an airport pick-up needs to be arranged.
(Please confirm your booking by December 10, 2010, to
take advantage of the special rate offered to AUW guests.)
Radisson Hotel
Airport Road, Dhaka Cantonment
Dhaka-1206 Bangladesh
Tel: +880-2-875-4555; Fax: +880-2-875-4551
E-mail: shuq@radisson.com (Mr. Yameen Huq)
Website: http://www.radisson.com/dhakabn
US $175.00++ (Deluxe)
US $190.00++ (Atrium)
US $255.00++ (Club)
Westin Hotel
Main Gulshan Avenue
Plot 01 Road 45 Gulshan 2
Dhaka-1212 Bangladesh
Tel: +880-2-989-1988; Fax: +880-2-989-4800
E-mail: Al.Amin@westin.com (Mr. Md. Al Amin)
Website: http://www.starwoodhotels.com/
westin/index.html
US $195.00++ (Deluxe Single)
US $225.00++ (Deluxe Twin)
An Invitation
BRAC Inn
(Recommended for student participants)
75 Mohakhali
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Tel: +880-2-988-6681; Fax: +880-2-988-6683
E-mail: bracinn@bdmail.net
Website: www.bracinn.com
US $40.00++ (Single)
US $50.00++ (Double)
Imagining Another Future for Asia: Ideas and Pathways for Change
AUW Hosts International Symposium in Dhaka, Bangladesh
The Asian University for Women will convene a three-day international symposium in Dhaka on
January 20, 21, and 22, 2011. Chaired by the Hon’ble Prime Minister of Bangladesh and Chief
Patron of AUW Sheikh Hasina Wazed, and the leading British human rights lawyer and a staunch
Patron of AUW Cherie Blair, the symposium will be styled as “Imagining Another Future for Asia:
Ideas and Pathways for Change,” and will bring together students, scholars, and leaders from all
walks of life to focus their attention on four key themes confronting Asia: governance, poverty,
environment, and security. This conference follows a similar program held in October 2008 which
focused on “Overcoming History: Rethinking Rights and Opportunities for Women in Asia.”
We are eager to welcome you to this symposium. For those wishing to visit the Asian University
for Women in Chittagong, there will be an organized program for visitors on January 18, which
will culminate in a formal ceremony to mark the launch of the construction of AUW’s permanent
campus in Chittagong.
For the attendees participating in the program
in Chittagong on January 18:
Peninsula Hotel in Chittagong
486/B, O.R. Nizam Road
CDA Avenue, Chittagong – 4000
Tel: +880-31-616-722; Fax: +880-31-624-385
E-mail: fom@peninsulactg.com (Mr. Abdul Bari
Bhuyian)
Please provide code number TPC17JAN2011
when making your reservation.
Website: www.peninsulactg.com
US $110.00++ (Deluxe Single)
US $125.00++ (Deluxe Twin)

SYMPOSIUM
31
PROGRAM OF EVENTS (OPENING DAY)*
THURSDAY, JANUARY 20, 2011
The full conference program can be accessed on AUW’s website at http://www.asianuniversity.org/newsAndEvents/events/january2011.htm
Speakers listed in bold have been confirmed
10:00 am—12:00 pm Opening of Symposium
Bangabandhu International Conference Centre, Dhaka
Screening of AUW Fundraising Film
Chaired by:
Jack Meyer, Chair of the Board of Directors, Asian University for Women Support Foundation;
Senior Managing Partner, Convexity Capital Management
Remarks by:
Cherie Blair, Patron of AUW; attorney and human rights activist
Sheikh Hasina Wazed, Prime Minister of Bangladesh; Chief Patron, AUW
Keynote Speakers:
Asma Jahangir, Chairman, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan
Michelle Bachelet, Former President of Chile and Head-designate of the UN Agency for Women
Y.A. Bhg Datin Paduka Seri Rosmah Mansor, First Lady of Malaysia
Akie Abe, Former First Lady of Japan
Concluding Remarks:
Dipu Moni, Foreign Minister of Bangladesh; Chair of the AUW Bangladesh Board of Advisors
12:00—2:00 pm Lunch
Chaired by:
Sheikha Abdulla Al-Misnad, President of Qatar University
Speaker:
Jane McAuliffe, President of Bryn Mawr College
2:00—3:00 pm AUW students debate with Bryn Mawr College students
(To Be Confirmed)
3:30—5:00 pm Looming Challenges to Asia’s Future:
Governance, Poverty, Security, & Environment
Chaired by:
Kathy Matsui, Managing Director, Chief Japan Strategist and Co-Director of Asia Investment
Research, Goldman Sachs Japan Co., Ltd. and Member of the AUWSF Board of Directors
Speakers:
Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, History Department, Harvard
University
William Kirby, Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business
School and T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies at Harvard University
Maliha Lodhi, former High Commissioner of Pakistan to the United Kingdom; former
Ambassador of Pakistan to the United States
Sunita Narain, Director, Centre for Science and Environment (India)
Martin Wolf, Associate Editor & Chief Economics Commentator, Financial Times
SELECTED CONFIRMED KEY SPEAKERS:
Rajendra K. Pachauri, Chair, Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change; Winner of 2007
Nobel Peace Prize
Hans Rosling, Professor of International
Health, Karolinska Institute, Sweden; Director,
Gapminder Foundation
Rahul Bose, Actor
Naina Lal Kidwai, Group General Manager
and Country Head of the HSBC Group in India
Riffat Hussain, Chairman, Defense Studies
Department; Quiad-e-Azam University,
Islamabad
Jim Scott, Professor of Political Science and
Anthropology, Yale University
Jasmine Zerinini, Deputy Director, in charge of
South Asia, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Nurul Islam, Former Deputy Planning
Commissioner of Bangladesh
Jane McAuliffe, President of Bryn Mawr
College
Sheikha Abdulla Al-Misnad, President of Qatar
University
Alison Wolf, Sir Roy Griffiths Professor of
Public Sector Management, King’s College
London
Rita Colwell, Professor, University of Maryland
College Park and Johns Hopkins University
Bloomberg School of Public Health and former
Director of the National Science Foundation
Katherine Pickus, Divisional Vice President,
Global Citizenship and Policy, Abbott
Laboratories
Luisa Prista, Head, Unit for Scientific Culture
and Gender Issues, Directorate General for
Research, European Commission (Belgium)
Vishakha Desai, President and CEO, Asia
Society
Muhammad Yunus, Founder, Grameen Bank,
2006 Nobel Peace Laureate
Margot Pritzker, Chair of the Zohar Education
Project Incorporated, President and Founder
of WomenOnCall.org
David O’Rear, Chief Economist, Hong Kong
General Chamber of Commerce
Amit Chakma, President of the University of
Western Ontario
*Last updated October, 2010

FULL ADMISSION to the conference (January 20, 21, and 22, 2011) and special events
_______ person(s) USD $1,500.00 per person
STUDENT ADMISSION to the conference and special events
_______ student(s) USD $250.00 per student
I/We plan to reserve accommodations for _______ number of guests.
(Please make hotel reservations directly with your hotel of choice.)
Please check your hotel preference:
Radisson Hotel Westin Hotel BRAC Inn Peninsula Hotel in Chittagong
PAYMENT
I/we enclose a check to The Asian University for Women Support Foundation OR
Please charge $_________________to: Amex Visa MC JCB
ACCOUNT NO. EXP. DATE SECURITY CODE
NAME AS IT APPEARS ON THE CARD SIGNATURE
Please note:
The Asian University for Women is not responsible
for reserving or accepting payment for accommodations
at any aforementioned hotels.
Transportation to Bangladesh is the responsibility of
the attendee. AUW will offer transportation to and
from the conference site.
AUW is pleased to provide assistance with visas as
required.
REMINDER CARD:
Imagining Another Future for Asia:
Ideas and Pathways for Change
AUW Hosts International Symposium
in Dhaka, Bangladesh
January 20, 21, and 22, 2011

Imagining Another Future for Asia: Ideas and Pathways for Change
AUW Hosts International Symposium in Dhaka, Bangladesh
REGISTRATION FORM
LAST NAME FIRST NAME MR. MS. DR. other
ADDRESS
CITY STATE ZIP COUNTRY
EMAIL PHONE
I/We plan to attend the conference on the following days:
January 20 January 21 January 22
PLEASE FILL IN THE OTHER SIDE OF THIS FORM; tear; and mail in the enclosed envelope.
For information
visit www.asian-university.org
The Asian University for Women Support Foundation
is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. Your contribution
is tax-deductible to the full extent of the law.
Donors making gifts from within Japan, the United
Kingdom or Australia should visit the AUW website
for special giving instructions.
REMINDER CARD:
Imagining Another Future for Asia:
Ideas and Pathways for Change
AUW Hosts International Symposium
in Dhaka, Bangladesh
January 20, 21, and 22, 2011

Asian University for Women Support Foundation
1100 Massachusetts Avenue, Suite 300
Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Non Profit
Organization
U.S. Postage
PAID
Framingham, MA
Permit No. 179
ASIAN UNIVERSITY FOR WOMEN GOVERNING BOARDS
INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL
OF ADVISORS
RITA COLWELL
DISTINGUISHED UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR,
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND AND JOHNS
HOPKINS UNIVERSITY BLOOMBERG SCHOOL
OF PUBLIC HEALTH, CO-CHAIR
TAYEB KAMALI
VICE CHANCELLOR, THE HIGHER COLLEGES OF
TECHNOLOGY, CO-CHAIR
SARA ABBASI
CHAIRMAN, DEVELOPMENTS IN LITERACY
BRUCE ALBERTS
PROFESSOR OF BIOCHEMISTRY AND BIO-
PHYSICS, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT SAN
FRANCISCO; FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
LUISA BRUNORI
PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY,
UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA
DEBORA DE HOYOS
PARTNER, MAYER BROWN LLP, CHICAGO,
ILLINOIS
VISHAKHA DESAI
PRESIDENT AND CEO, ASIA SOCIETY
LONE DIRKINCK-HOLMFELD
DEAN AND FACULTY OF HUMANITIES,
AALBORG UNIVERSITY
SARAH FIELDS
STUDENT, REED COLLEGE; VISITING
STUDENT, AUW (2009/2010)
MARIKO GAKIYA
ABSHIRE-INAMORI FELLOW AT THE CENTER FOR
STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (CSIS);
SENIOR ACADEMIC ADVISOR OF HARVARD
INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATION INITIATIVE
ANDREA GAVOSTO
DIRECTOR, FONDAZIONE GIOVANNI AGNELLI
WENDI GOLDSMITH
CEO, BIOENGINEERING GROUP
MICHELLE GUTHRIE
FORMER MANAGING DIRECTOR, PROVIDENCE
EQUITY PARTNERS; FORMER CEO OF STAR
STEPHANIE HUI
MANAGING DIRECTOR, GOLDMAN SACHS
SALLY JUTABHA MICHAELS
FORMER ADVISOR TO THE MINISTRY OF
FOREIGN AFFAIRS, GOVERNMENT OF THE
KINGDOM OF THAILAND
MICHAEL (“MICKEY”) KANTOR
PARTNER, MAYER BROWN LLP, WASHINGTON,
D.C.; FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF COMMERCE
YOUNG JOON (“YJ”) KIM
PARTNER, INTERNATIONAL LAW FIRM OF
MILBANK, TWEED, HADLEY & MCCLOY LLP
KC LAM
MANAGING DIRECTOR, EBIZANYWHERE
TECHNOLOGIES LTD
JEFFREY LEHMAN
CHANCELLOR AND FOUNDING DEAN, SCHOOL
OF TRANSNATIONAL LAW, PEKING UNIVERSITY;
FORMER PRESIDENT, CORNELL UNIVERSITY
MARINA MAHATHIR
JOURNALIST; HIV-AIDS CAMPAIGNER
SERRA KIRDAR MELITI
FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR, MUTHABARA
FOUNDATION
SHEIKHA ABDULLA AL-MISNAD
PRESIDENT OF QATAR UNIVERSITY
LULWA S. AL-MULLA
CHAIR OF AUW KUWAIT SUPPORT COMMIT-
TEE; SECRETARY-GENERAL OF WOMEN
CULTURAL SOCIAL SOCIETY
LAUREN KAHEA MORIARTY
DEAN OF ASIA-PACIFIC CENTER FOR SECU-
RITY STUDIES; FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR
AND DIPLOMAT
REGINA PAPA
FORMER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AUW
ACCESS ACADEMY; FORMER FOUNDING
DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF WOMEN’S
STUDIES, ALAGAPPA UNIVERSITY
DEE POON
FOUNDER, DYSEMEVAS
KAVITA N. RAMDAS
FORMER PRESIDENT AND CEO, THE GLOBAL
FUND FOR WOMEN
CHARLES V. RAYMOND
PARTNER, HUDSON HEIGHTS PARTNERS;
FORMER PRESIDENT, CITIGROUP FOUNDATION
CLARE ROSENFIELD
CO-DIRECTOR, GLOBAL HEALING FOUNDA-
TION; FOUNDER, CONTACT HEALING
RICHARD SALLER
DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES AND
SCIENCES, STANFORD UNIVERSITY
BRYAN SANDERSON
FORMER CHAIRMAN, STANDARD CHARTERED
BANK; FORMER CHAIRMAN, NORTHERN ROCK
BANK; FORMER CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, BP CHEMICALS
JAVAID SHEIKH
PROFESSOR OF PSYCHIATRY, WEILL CORNELL
MEDICAL COLLEGE IN QATAR
CATHARINE R. STIMPSON
FORMER DEAN OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF
ARTS AND SCIENCES, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
SAWAKO TAKEUCHI
PROFESSOR OF URBAN ENGINEERING, KYOTO
UNIVERSITY
DIANA TAYLOR
MANAGING DIRECTOR, WOLFENSOHN &
COMPANY, LLC; FORMER SUPERINTENDENT
OF BANKS, STATE OF NEW YORK
M. OSMAN YOUSUF
PRESIDENT AND CEO, SYF GROUP; FOUNDING
DIRECTOR OF THE U.S.-BANGLADESH BUSI-
NESS COUNCIL AT THE UNITED STATES
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
JACK R. MEYER
SENIOR MANAGING PARTNER AND CEO,
CONVEXITY CAPITAL MANAGEMENT; FORMER
PRESIDENT, HARVARD MANAGEMENT
COMPANY; BOARD CHAIRMAN
KAMAL AHMAD
PRESIDENT AND CEO, ASIAN UNIVERSITY FOR
WOMEN SUPPORT FOUNDATION
RITU BANGA
MEMBER OF THE EXECUTIVE BOARD, JOINT
SCHOOLS ACTIVITIES, INC.; MEMBER, AUWSF
ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR CAMPUS DESIGN
AND FACILITIES PLANNING
VIVIAN LOWERY DERRYCK
PRESIDENT AND CEO, THE BRIDGES
INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, DC
M. BERNARDINE DIAS
RESEARCH SCIENTIST, ROBOTICS INSTITUTE,
CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY
MEREDITH DOIG
PRINCIPAL OF MIDLOTHIAN CONSULTING;
COUNCILLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF
MELBOURNE; MODERATOR WITH THE
CRANLANA PROGRAMME, AN INITIATIVE
OF THE MYER FOUNDATION
EZRA S. FIELD
MANAGING DIRECTOR, ROARK CAPITAL
GROUP; DIRECTOR OF JENNY CRAIG, ACCENT
ENERGY, EXCEL POLYMERS AND CORN-
HUSKERS ENERGY
DIPAK JAIN
FORMER DEAN, KELLOGG SCHOOL OF MAN-
AGEMENT, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
KATHARINA KOENIG
MANAGING DIRECTOR, SECURITIES DIVISION,
GOLDMAN SACHS, HONG KONG
JILL LERNER
PRINCIPAL, KOHN PEDERSON FOX ARCHI-
TECTS; CHAIR, AUWSF ADVISORY
COMMITTEE FOR CAMPUS DESIGN AND
FACILITIES PLANNING
KATHY M. MATSUI
MANAGING DIRECTOR, CHIEF JAPAN
STRATEGIST AND CO-DIRECTOR OF ASIA
INVESTMENT RESEARCH, GOLDMAN SACHS
JAPAN CO., LTD
JANET MONTAG
FORMERLY OF JP MORGAN CHASE;
AUWSF BOARD MEMBER AND CHAIR OF
THE 2010-2011 DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
JUDY MOODY-STUART
EDUCATOR, COMMUNITY ADVOCATE AND
PHILANTHROPIST; MEMBER SOAS (SCHOOL
OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES,
LONDON) DEVELOPMENT ADVISORY BOARD;
MEMBER CAMPAIGN BOARD NEWHAM
COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
SANJAY PATEL
MANAGING PARTNER AND HEAD OF
INTERNATIONAL PRIVATE EQUITY, APOLLO
MANAGEMENT INTERNATIONAL
KATHLEEN M. PIKE
SENIOR RESEARCH SCIENTIST, INSTITUTE OF
CONTEMPORARY ASIAN STUDIES, TEMPLE
UNIVERSITY, JAPAN CAMPUS
HENRY ROSOVSKY
LEWIS P. AND LINDA L. GEYSER UNIVERSITY
PROFESSOR EMERITUS, AND FORMER DEAN
OF THE FACULTY OF ARTS & SCIENCES,
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
MARY J. SANSALONE
PROVOST AND CHIEF ACADEMIC OFFICER,
ASIAN UNIVERSITY FOR WOMEN
CATHERINE WATTERS
SASANUMA
FORMERLY OF KEIO UNIVERSITY-GSEC IN
TOKYO; FORMER POLICY ANALYST AND
GRANT COORDINATOR FOR THE WASHINGTON
STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
AUW COUNCIL OF PATRONS
SHEIKH HASINA WAZED
PRIME MINISTER, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF
BANGLADESH; CHIEF PATRON OF THE ASIAN
UNIVERSITY FOR WOMEN
CHERIE BLAIR
MEMBER OF MATRIX CHAMBERS IN LONDON
AND A LEADING HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER,
FOUNDER OF THE CHERIE BLAIR FOUNDATION
FOR WOMEN
EMMA BONINO
VICE PRESIDENT OF THE ITALIAN SENATE;
MEMBER OF THE RADICAL PARTY; FORMER
COMMISSIONER OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
ANSON CHAN
FORMER CHIEF SECRETARY OF HONG KONG,
PREVIOUSLY SERVED ON HONG KONG’S
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
LONE DYBKJAER
MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT AND FORMER
MINISTER OF ENVIRONMENT, DENMARK;
FORMER MEMBER OF THE EUROPEAN
PARLIAMENT
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
SENIOR FELLOW AT THE HOOVER INSTITUTE
OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY, FORMER U.S.
SECRETARY OF STATE AND NATIONAL
SECURITY ADVISOR
BANGLADESH BOARD
OF ADVISORS
CHAIR:
DIPU MONI
HONORABLE MINISTER
MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS,
GOVERNMENT OF BANGLADESH
MEMBERS:
FAZLE HASAN ABED
FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN, BRAC
KAMAL AHMAD
PRESIDENT AND CEO
ASIAN UNIVERSITY FOR WOMEN SUPPORT
FOUNDATION
MONOWARA HAKIM ALI
PRESIDENT, CHITTAGONG WOMEN
ENTREPRENEURS ASSOCIATION
HAMIDA BANU
PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS, CHITTAGONG
UNIVERSITY
BEGUM SHIRIN SHARMIN
CHAUDHURY
HONORABLE STATE MINISTER
MINISTRY OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN’S
AFFAIRS, GOVERNMENT OF BANGLADESH
SULTANA KAMAL
HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER AND CHAIR,
AIN O SALISH KENDRA
MD. ABUL MAAL ABDUL
MUHITH
HONORABLE MINISTER
MINISTRY OF FINANCE, GOVERNMENT
OF BANGLADESH
ROKIA AFZAL RAHMAN
PRESIDENT, WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS
ASSOCIATION, BANGLADESH
GOWHER RIZVI
ADVISER TO THE PRIME MINISTER OF
BANGLADESH FOR INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
HASAN MAHMUD
HONORABLE STATE MINISTER
MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENT & FORESTS,
GOVERNMENT OF BANGLADESH
ABDUL KARIM
PRINCIPAL SECRETARY TO THE PRIME
MINISTER, GOVERNMENT OF BANGLADESH
ABDUS SALAM
CHAIRMAN, CHITTAGONG DEVELOPMENT
AUTHORITY
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