It’s 10:24:17pm and Countdown to Santiago (Part 1)

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Dr. Lisa R. Brown

It's 10:24:17pm and Countdown to Santiago

Tomorrow I make my long awaited journey to meet with faculty and research volunteers at the University of Chile and UNIACC in Santiago. I promise video, pictures, and hopefully some awesome sightseeing as I update this blog post over the next few days. Please stay tuned! 🙂

Pictures and messages “Memes” at the University of Chile expressing students’ sentiment that their education is non negotiable and a basic human right. I wanted this picture to lead as it reflects my overall mission in Santiago, Chile over the next few days

I am not a morning person… nevertheless, today’s journey for me from Talca to Santiago began with a 5:30am wake-up alarm. This wouldn’t seem all that notable but for the fact I didn’t go to bed until almost 3:00am. I know, crazy right? The trip was made all the more enjoyable after meeting my new friend Blanca. She’ll be featured in an upcoming video piece.

While the airlines are cutting back on snacks during their rides, Paris & Lourdes double decker bus service was there to please. Although, I never could learn what was to go into the other spaces on my food tray. He he

Profesora Jessie Rojas Carrasco, Dean María Eugenia Góngora, and I all met today at the University of Chile to discuss our research plans. Dr. Rojas will be assisting me with graduate students focus groups at the University of Chile. Dean Góngora was very busy with meetings today and I didn’t get a photo with her but that is high on my agenda for our next meeting in November.

Dean María Eugenia Góngora has been amazingly supportive to me and my research and I was so pleasantly surprised and touch when she sent me a message and support for taxi fare (above). That was so wonderful of her to do. I also appreciated and enjoyed conversations with another faculty member (Dr. Marcelo Martínez) who she sent to collect me from the bus station. 🙂 Chileans sure know how to make a Doctoral Candidate feel special. I had a very rich discussion with Professor Martínez regarding the history, present student protest movements, and futures development activities in Chile.

I am skippin’ on cloud 9 today and pinching myself to help me realize that this is really happening. My dissertation research of which I have been so passionate about for over 3 years is really starting to come together beautifully. I got a very frustrating message about a scholarship application today being incomplete because of some late arriving LORs. That was discouraging but, I’m just going to take it as a sign that God has something bigger and better for me and I’m not going to have to beg, plead, nor compromise my dignity to receive my blessing.

La Feliz Académica.

Walking around, meeting students, and filming at the University of Chile. I’m going to need a little more time to edit my video so the promised video post will be slightly delayed. It will be worth the wait as I got some good stuff when walking around downtown Santiago this evening.

Our old friend and staple character… El perro libre.

View of Santiago from my apartment building. Yes, I said apartment and will explain further below.

Mauricio and Pia were just lovely and made my check-in a breeze!

Ok, sometimes I get a little frustrated in trying to orient myself to a new cultural context and more specifically language. So, everyone kept telling me when I asked about hotels in Santiago that I could probably rent an apartment. Therefore, I go on to Orbitz,com, as per usual thinking to myself, “Oh, that must be what they call hotels here.” But no, my “room” was actually really like a nice New York style efficiency apartment. I also was in a great location with easy pedestrian routes, lots of shops, restaurants, and places to explore. Can you say??? Nailed it! 🙂

More pics of my apartment/hotel in Santiago.

Santiago is busy!! This pic above wasn’t even during rush hour traffic. I experienced a couple incidents of involuntarily playing the game “Pedestrian Dodge the Car”. It’s sometimes difficult to know whether to follow the pedestrian crowd or wait for the green dancing man in the pedestrian walk symbol. I’ve gotta get a picture of that little symbol man green light dancin’! Ha ha

There is some very beautiful architecture here in Santiago, often quite breathtaking.

This is where it all went down during the Chilean 9/11 of 1973. I thought I knew that this was Palacio de La Moneda but needed two nearby English speaking Chilean women to confirm it for me. I was in awe for several reasons. The first being that I had watched the film by Patricio Guzmán called The Battle of Chile. The building seemed much smaller in real life and kind of surreal. The events of that day which included a military coup d’état and the removal of the democratically elected President Allende holds painful memories for many Chileans.

This past September 11th marked the 40th anniversary of that event which also ushered in the era of LOCE legislation that led to the privatization of Chilean education. It is an amazing time to be in Chile as there is the remembrance of the Augusto Pinochet military rule, the country’s national election for a new President, along with student protest marches that have garnered international support with their calls for a return to free, high quality public education for all Chileans. See what I’m sayin’??? I couldn’t have imagined having the foresight to myself coordinate all of these conditions during my doctoral research period. Being a part of these happenings will forever be etched among my life’s fondest memories.

Here is a nearby statue in close proximity to La Moneda in honor of former President Salvador Allende.

If you look closely at the foot of the statue on the right you will again see our ole friend Perro Libre resting under Allende. 🙂

The economic, cultural renaissance, and memes of La Buena Vida are all over Santiago as well as Talca from my observations. Chile is quickly and quietly advancing in it’s role in the world as a developing economic powerhouse country.

This was so cool and will be in the film. Random people where coming up to this outdoor piano and entertaining pedestrians and admirers who were either passing by or stopped in order to take in the experience.

I had to include this pic for other Godfather movie fans like myself. Micheal Corleone was reppin’ in Chile. Ha ha

More beautiful shopping spaces and Chilean architecture.

I had to include this image Meme. What does it bring to mind for you?

Another pic of the awesomely amazing random street pianists (will be included in the soon to be posted short movie From Santiago with Love Part 2).

Took this pic for all of my Public Administration and Urban Planning peeps. Yo’ brush up on your Spanish peoples as there might be some opportunities in Chile for you.

This was such a delicious traditional lemonade and mango beverage. I’m going to make these at my next dinner party.

Close-up look at the mango chunks.

Delicious after dinner sweets. I did not partake because I was very full after dinner.

Oh carne de vaca, how I’ve missed you. Now it’s time for sleep and another day of handling business. Hope you enjoyed hangin’ out in Santiago with me today. 🙂

Association of Professional Futurist Publication: Compass

Posted on October 13, 2013 by Dr. Lisa R. Brown

Association of Professional Futurist Publication: Compass

The October issue of Compass welcomes it’s new international membership. I was excited to see my name listed among the new inductees.

It was so wonderful seeing my name listed among the new international members, in the October Issue of Compass, the Association of Professional Futurists publication. This honor, plus the richness of my focus group data I obtained on Friday, and a positive email today indicating how my plans for travel to Santiago for data collection are going forward has me encouraged. Everything appears to be all coming together for the good. God is really blessing my life and giving me favor and vision. I’m so excited! 🙂 Moreover, I finally have post IRB approval DATA!! Now I can start submitting manuscripts based upon the research from my preliminary findings in addition to using the information for grant and scholarship applications, and let me tell you the prelims are rich!

My proposition for my focus group is that the graduate students studying in different educational contexts (public being one and private the other) would evidence very different descriptive differences relative to their civic engagement level as well as their Spiral Dynamic Theory memetic taxonomy here in Chile. The research position appears to be holding very strongly based upon the preliminary data. I am undertaking a Mixed Methods research agenda and am waiting with great anticipation to see how the graduate students represent, in relation to civic engagement and memes, with the quantitative data vis-á-vis the research collections from my Spanish translated survey measuring instrument.

RECOMMENDATION: Please Practice Tests your Protocols

Of course, as a newly “minted” ABD and doctoral candidate, I wanted to hit the ground running as my survey was based on preexisting instruments. However, my committee in their wisdom strongly encouraged me to test my protocols with a smaller sampling of participants before embarking upon the larger Santiago-based research. And boy where they right! This past Friday was my trial run of the protocols in order to, among other things, identify any possible problems in either my technology or research design. Only by doing my trial run (or pilot) was I able to find out that my videotaped focus group recording had a terrible background noise. I thought that my recording equipment was defective and immediately began to have nightmares of how I was every going to replace/repair my camera still under warranty with the disadvantage of currently residing in another country and likely needing to conduct this business in Spanish.

Thanks to my summer course EDIT 6150e Intro to Computers for Teaching, my immediate thought was to look to free troubleshoot advice via the internet. I decided to do a YouTube search regarding my “noise problem” and was able to locate some troubleshooting videos of my exact problem. I was relieved when I learned that the noise was likely due to the malleable cover I purchased designed to protect my Bloggie camera in the event of a fall. The silicon vest was every so slightly covering the three tiny microphones and producing a horrible background noise that distracted from the video record. So, I removed the camera from the protective sleeve, retested the sound quality and it worked magnificently.

Other recording issues arose with a new software I was testing for voice recording that came with the Bloggie recording device. Fortunately, I was familiar with the Audacity open-source audio capturing software so I was able to use that as my back-up and it worked great in large part because of the Yeti microphone. I purchased the Yeti before arriving to Chile as it has an option to record in a 360 degree circumference, ideal for focus group interviews. I also have a Zoom H1 hand held audio recorder that I plugged an external microphone into so as to check the sound quality compared to the Yeti mic. I learned that for face-to-face interviews were speakers are in close proximity to the microphone the Zoom H1 audio quality was good, but unlike the Yeti, it did not have the strength of capacity for record from long distances or in a type of surround-sound quality as did the Yeti microphone.

In conclusion fellow researchers, ABDs, and soon to be out in the field scholar, the lessons are:

1) Select an awesome dissertation committee and Chair from the outset.

2) Listen to your committee, and “go rogue” on a selective bases.

3) Test your protocols in advance of your primary data collection dates.

4) Don’t panic when you run into an unexpected bump in the road, relax, relate, release, and think!!

The last point above I believe is the most important, because we have spent the last few years of our academic journey learning how to think, think critically, and problem solve. No where better to test those skills than doing your field research and if you are blessed to be doing your research within an international context, I would count that as opportunity GOLDEN!! 🙂 Hope you found this blog post helpful.

Chau!

La Academica

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Dr. Lisa R. Brown

La Academica

So yeah, this is really happening! 🙂

So October marks a point of typical doctoral research challenges. It seems I will need a little more time to coordinate my focus group. September was a time of many days off, due to the Chilean Independence Day holiday and next Saturday is another holiday. I planned to have my trial run for the focus group I will later conduct in Santiago, on tomorrow. But, it appears I need a little more time to recruit student who meet my research criteria. My committee told me that these types of unexpected things would occur but I’m always so organized. I was sure they wouldn’t happen to me. But here we are.

I refused to be discouraged because I know God has blessed me to be here for my research and I love all of the new relationships I am forming and grand experiences I am having in Chile. I had hoped to hear back regarding my Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award (DDRA) application by now. I heard rumor that some folks had already received offers but our UGA project director hasn’t’ heard a peep about our campus applications. She is of the position that we should assume the worst. Nevertheless, at least with this particular application we will obtain scores and feedback from the International Educational Exchange (IEE) program committee. I’ll use that information to apply for the Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship due in November. So when handed lemons… make lemonade!!

So above is my new campus ID with my awesome classification of “ACADEMICA”, and it’s really just now starting to sink in for me what a wonderful opportunity this is to develop as a person and academic in this entirely new context. I distorted the actual ID number to avoid identity theft. You know the internet is cray cray. God has so bless my family and me such that I have no anxiety being away from everyone back in the states. Everyone is Chile is so helpful and people are starting to really warm up to me and make me feel like a part of the community. I really like that. 🙂

So going into October my graduate assistantship work is picking up at the same time that my research is moving forward. It’s also scholarship application time and trying to do the things I typically run around campus trying to complete (e.g., LORs) is tough. However, I am so grateful for the course I took earlier this summer, EDIT 6150e Using Computers for Teaching. That class was completely asynchronous and I had to basically learn to conduct all of my affairs in a virtual environment (i.e., online). It’s always encouraging to realize how your education is starting to actually pay-off dividends for you! Hah!!

UPDATE

This evening via email, Dr. Víctor San Martín Ramírez Director Académico Programa de Magíster en Educación informed me that we had 5 additional commitments for the focus group next week. Seems like I’m going to have a good weekend after all. 🙂

The Chilean Chronicles Blog (The US Return Extended Version)

Proverbs 4:7 Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.

Tag Archives: Civic Engagement

It’s 10:24:17pm and Countdown to Santiago (Part 1)

Association of Professional Futurist Publication: Compass

La Academica