CHICAGO SCHOOL TEACHERS IN INDIA

India continues to be an area of interest and study for educators and students from abroad. The Fulbright Program in India, which is fifty years old, funds summer programs for American teachers to visit India in the summer months during their vacation. It is not the best time to be here, but by July the monsoons have slaked the thirst of the earth and the lush green heralds the awakening of the agricultural season.

This summer two teacher groups, both from Chicago, came to India. ERC assisted the groups in planning, logistics and their program of visits and lectures.

Columbia College, a private college in Chicago offers a Master's course in Multicultural Education. School teachers in the city face classes from an incredible variety of cultures and geographic regions. The course is therefore unique and relevant in the context of Chicago's school population. This year twelve school teachers led by Marilyn Turkovich spent five weeks in India, visiting schools, studying the different dimensions of culture and how it impacts on school education. All the members of the group were women, and women's studies was therefore an important part of the lectures, interviews, and visits to NG0s. Marilyn Turkovich and Peggy Mueller are no strangers to India. They have collaborated on a book for teachers titled 'SHILPA', published in 1979 by ERC, which incorporated the arts in the teaching of India.

The other Fulbright group from Chicago was led by Dr. Sally Noble of the University of Chicago. It included teachers from Chicago as well as outside the city system. This group, also of twelve teachers, both men and women, spent a large part of their stay in the south of India. Dr. Sally Noble, a Fulbright scholar with her research on Tamil studies, was well qualified to introduce her group to Tamil Nadu and extremely happy to return to the region she knows well. Chicago therefore has a strong core group of teachers motivated to teach about India in a variety of schools.

VISIT OP STUDENTS FROM NEW YORK STATE INDEPENDENT COLLEGES CONSORTIUM (NYSICCSI)

Like the migratory birds of the winter months, flocks of young undergraduate students descend on Delhi each year with the monsoon season. The New York State Independent Colleges Consortium for the study of India (NYSICCSI) is a group of five colleges in New York state. The Consortium has provided a semester in India program for undergraduate students from Hartwick, St. Lawrence, Bard, Skidmore and Hobart and William Smith colleges for over ten years now.

ERC arranged the orientation lectures and assisted the students in locating published material and resource persons for their projects. The group's tour started with an orientation in Delhi and then the group travels to Mussoorie for a month of intensive Hindi lessons at the School of Languages before travelling to Jaipur and Varanasi. A Professor of Asian Studies from one of the participating colleges leads the group and supervises their independent study projects which vary from women's issues, environment, to literature and religion. This year Prof. Rob Linrothe from the Department of History at Skidmore College is leading the group.