I've traveled to over 40 countries at

this point and I just love even not even

the kind of what goes on in schools and

what drives my passion for research but

I love just seeing how people live

differently what they eat the way that

they understand the world and I love

taking photos I'm an associate professor

in international and multicultural

education and I also coordinate the

master's program in Human Rights

education which is the first master's

program in human rights education in the

entire country and one of the very few

in the world the University of San

Francisco became the first place to say

you know what people in schools of

Education need to learn how to teach

this in formal and non-formal settings

and that we need a master's program to

prepare people to do that and I had been

working in this field this kind of

emerging field since the late 1990s and

they said hey we've created this

master's program can you please come and

direct it

it's been great any university any

school of education that would see human

rights education as valuable enough to

create a master's program in it is

already doing something very right in

terms of its commitment to social

justice to engage scholarship to

partnering with communities locally

nationally globally there's already

something that allowed that to be

created and that already something is an

amazing environment to work in the

colleagues their commitments their

passion

creating that community in the classroom

where people really get to know one

another really get to support each other

and then also get to really learn from

what's out there so how do you take what

you imagine your aspirations and put it

up against what's already happening the

movements the organizations the schools

that are really innovating out there and

kind of figure out okay what can I take

from that what can I learn from that how

do I engage with that every class will

have a component of sort of

participatory interactive methodologies

that are both for students to really

engage fully in the classes that we

offer in the content that we're offering

but also for them to take that and then

use it in the settings that they go to

so it's not just let's fill you up with

these ideas and these topics we are

exposing students to news new ideas new

concepts new theories case studies of

what's going on all over the world but

also modeling for them ways that you can

use pedagogy and methodologies in the

settings that you want to work in

so the research that I've done is

looking at peace and human rights

education initiatives across the world

so in the you know 15 years I've been

doing research I've done projects and

the Dominican Republic Haiti sub-saharan

Africa India and locally in the US as

well so right now a project that I'm

running with with a research team that's

comprised of students in our programs

master's and doctoral students focusing

on Human Rights education is we run a

weekly Club for high school students who

are refugees and immigrants who've come

from all over the world to the Bay Area

so we run a weekly Human Rights Club for

them and then we also do research on

some of the challenges and opportunities

that schooling provides and how schools

can better respond to these students

people are really accessible and really

good scholars but also genuinely good

human beings who care about their

students there the research and really

are trying to make the world a better

place with what they do so I really

appreciate that about the community here

at USF