My name is Christine Min Wotipka and I'm
the director of the master's program in International Comparative Education and
International Education Policy Analysis at the Stanford Graduate School of Education.
The ICE and IEPA master's program is a multidisiplinary program that allows
our students to explore a range of education topics from a comparative,
cross-national, longitudinal perspective. International comparative education, it's very
broad and so I think this particular program at Sta
nford was appealing to me because
there was a research component involved, where we really could dig into something
that felt particularly of interest to us. Students explore ICE and IEPA through
the writing of their master's paper, which allows them the opportunity to
go deep on a topic of their choosing, either writing a paper on
their own or with a partner. My thesis partner really challenged my
assumptions. It also showed me the value of true collaboration and there's so much synergy
that comes with working with other people. I think that's sort of the ethos of the GSE in general
and it was just a really awesome experience. For me, Stanford is a really great
place to study international comparative education because it's so international.
I feel like being in these classrooms where you're actually sitting and working
with students who are from all around the world and you're learning about the way that
they navigate education systems, the way that they've implemented dif
ferent programming
and done work with different organizations in their respective home countries and beyond
has really made the classroom feel more alive. The small size of our program allows our
students to have individualized experiences, whether it be with their faculty advisors, with
the teaching team which includes me and our two teaching assistants, but also with other
faculty and resources across the university. Our program advisor, Christine, and my thesis
advisor and all of my pro
fessors, honestly, they were just so supportive and you really
felt that they wanted you to succeed. It was an awesome learning experience.
The GSE community is super warm and welcoming. I think what's been really nice is
that everyone across programs, it feels like you get opportunity to get to know one another.
People want to get to know you for you and genuinely want to build relationships and
friendships that go beyond the professional, and I feel like that was something that I wasn't
ex
pecting at all coming into graduate school. Wow, I'm going to be surrounded by some really
special, brilliant, humble people and that's most definitely what I found coming here.
People are so open to discussing what they're doing and they're truly passionate
about it, and I think that really, like, brings a certain energetic quality to it and
you feel it on campus. People are just, like, excited to be doing what they're doing.
Our students realize that the skills that they've gained through t
he program are extremely
valuable for when they go on the job market, not only when they're seeking research-type jobs
but any sort of jobs in which it's important to have both hard skills in research, but also
soft skills in communication and in writing. ICE really emphasizes you being good at everything
that it takes to be in academia but also to be in the professional world. You're learning how
to write and how to research and how to make information digestible to a variety of people
an
d stakeholders and I'm confident that no matter where I go, that these skills are going
to help me take my career to the next level.
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