What should I research for my dissertation?

After 3.5 years of night classes in downtown Chicago and then reading for and writing my comprehensive examinations (all while working full-time and having one then two and now three kids) I have been at the dissertation proposal stage for sometime now. However, I changed my topic a little over a year ago because I turned it into a chapter entitled “Qualitative Standards and Learning Outcomes for Study Abroad” for the upcoming book A History of Study Abroad: 1965 to Present to be published in March 2010 by Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad (I believe that everyone attending the upcoming Forum on Education Abroad conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA will get a copy of the book).

If I was explaining my current idea for a dissertation topic in a Twitter post it would look something like this: “Dissertation to be: Towards the Development of a Methodology to Measure Public Diplomacy Outcomes of International Education Programs”. I’m not trying to minimize a dissertation by talking about it in 140 characters. It’s just that this is all I have right now…an idea that is very interesting to me but now I need to figure out if this is a good idea for a dissertation topic and, if so, how I would even go about researching this.

Anyone have thoughts on this?

Okay, back to my lunch hour of reading all the resources on the Interagency Working Group (IAWG) on U.S. Government-Sponsored International Exchanges and Training website at http://www.iawg.gov/. Maybe I can focus my dissertation somehow on IAWG???

Photo credit: ionntag

The Interagency Working Group (IAWG) on U.S. Government-Sponsored International Exchanges and Training

During my recent research efforts on international education and public/citizen diplomacy efforts in the United States I came across a very interesting website for the Interagency Working Group (IAWG) on U.S. Government-Sponsored International Exchanges and Training.

The work of the IAWG is not new to me as I have found and perused a few of their annual reports and inventories of programs that I have randomly come across online in the past. However, while the IAWG website might not be new to some IHEC Blog readers it’s new to me and it is a discovery I’m very happy about as I imagine I will consult it frequently during the research for and writing of my dissertation (working title is Towards the Development of a Methodology to Measure Public Diplomacy Outcomes of International Education Programs).

Here is a very brief description of the IAWG copied from their website and a listing of what is currently available on their website:

“The Interagency Working Group (IAWG) on U.S. Government-Sponsored International Exchanges and Training was created in 1998 to make recommendations to the President for improving the coordination, efficiency, and effectiveness of United States Government-sponsored international exchanges and training.”

Available on the website:

- Annual Reports FY 1997 to 2008
- Country Field Studies for Georgia (May 2000), Morocco (May 2000), Thailand (May 2000), Poland (May 1999), South Africa (May 1999) and the Dominican Republic (April 1999)
- Inventories of Programs VY 1997 to 2007
- Regional Reports
- Special Reports
- Public-Private Partnerships which includes several case studies as well as extensive listing of non-governmental partner organizations with external links.

You can access the IAWG website here.