At the 6th Global Service-Learning Summit at Clemson University, the Plenary Panel on Monday, November 4, will advance next steps and insights following concerns raised through Professor Judith Lasker’s Hoping to Help: The Promises and Pitfalls of Global Health Volunteering. The panel also builds on The University of Minnesota’s Ethics of Help Symposium, Dr. Jessica Evert’s keynote presentation at the October 2018 Association of American Colleges and Universities Global Learning Conference, and Globalsl’s research insights overview video regarding possible benefits and clear risks in global community engagement.  Conference attendees will benefit from hearing lessons learned while considering organizing strategies for their home campuses.View the panelists’ complete bios below!

Join the conversation at the 6th Global Service-Learning Summit at Clemson University from November 3 – 5. Spaces are disappearing; register now.

New to experiential, global, and civic learning? Enroll in the Pre-Conference, GSL 101, with Richard Kiely and Jessica Friedrichs, co-authors of Community-based global learning: The theory and practice of ethical engagement at home and abroad (Stylus Press, 2018). 

Nancy Glass, PHD, MPH, RN, FAAN, is the Associate Director of Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health and the Independence Chair in Nursing Education. Dr. Glass conducts clinical and community-based intervention research with diverse populations across multiple settings domestically and globally. Since 2002, Dr. Glass has served as Principal Investigator of nine federally funded multidisciplinary research projects (NICHD, NIMHD, CDC, NIMH, NINR, OWH) to improve safety, health, and economic security and address gender inequity in diverse community and clinic settings. Dr. Glass has also collaborated with global experts and donors (UNICEF, World Bank, U.S. Department of State, PRM) to implement and evaluate innovative primary prevention programs that challenge social norms that sustain violence against women in humanitarian settings (Somalia and South Sudan). She has also helped examine the prevalence of gender-based violence (GBV) in the three regions of Somalia (South Central, Puntland, and Somaliland) to inform GBV programs and service. Dr. Glass works to improve health care systems’ response through a partnership that examines the feasibility and acceptability of ASIST-GBV to identify survivors of GBV in health settings with displaced and refugee populations in Kenya after developing the screening tool in Ethiopia, Uganda, and Colombia. All research collaborations have used mHealth technologies to deliver programs and to collect confidential and secure data, reach diverse populations, and provide tools and resources to health and social service providers. Dr. Glass is committed to collaborating with and mentoring colleagues, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students globally as well as partnering with community experts and organizations to improve health, safety, and economic stability for women, families, and communities.

Jessica Evert, MD, straddles international education and the medical profession.  As Executive Director of Child Family Health International (CFHI) she leads one of the largest and most well-respected Global Health experiential learning organizations, with over 40 programs in 11 countries, and over 200 collaborating universities.  Dr. Evert is Faculty in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where she instructs in Global Health and community-based underserved care and helped develop, as well as completed, the Global Health Clinical Scholars residency track.  Dr. Evert is a graduate of the Ohio State University College of Medicine and is a longtime advocate for health-related international education quality and ethical standards. She is author and editor of multiple chapters, articles and books in global health with a focus on education, ethics, and asset-based engagement, including the seminal texts, including Global Health Experiential Education: From Theory to Practice,  Developing Global Health Programming: A Guidebook for Medical and Professional Schools, 2nd Ed, Global Health Training in Graduate Medical Education, 2nd Ed and Reflection in Global Health: An Anthology. She helped develop the Forum on Education Abroad’s Standards for Health-Related Undergraduate Programs. Dr. Evert is a recipient of Global Health Education Consortium’s prestigious Christopher Krogh Award for her dedication to underserved populations at home and abroad.  Dr. Evert’s research and advocacy areas of focus are the ethics of global educational engagement, competency-based international education, health disparities, asset-based programmatics and reflection.

Virginia Rowthorn, JD, LLM (Global Health Law), is the Executive Director of University of Maryland, Baltimore’s Center for Global Education Initiatives (CGEI) and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Maryland, Baltimore Graduate School.  She is also the Program Director for the Global Health Innovation Program at the UMB Graduate School.

In her role as executive director, Rowthorn oversees the activities of CGEI, the campus-wide center that serves as the hub of interprofessional global health and education activities on the primarily graduate UMB campus.  CGEI provides university-wide leadership to build and sustain global education at UMB; nurtures strategic global partnerships; creates and manages student, faculty, and staff mobility programs; promotes collaborative international research; develops curricula designed to build global competency; and delivers educational and professional services that support sustainable global programs.

Rowthorn has led national workshops and written articles and book chapters on ethical global health engagement; legal aspects of global experiential education; legal barriers to reverse innovation; interprofessional global health; and bi-directional global learning.  Rowthorn is leading the global strategic planning process on campus and recently developed the innovative GLOBALtimore Fellows Program to encourage faculty to include global concepts in their courses and clinics. Rowthorn co-developed the Maryland Carey Law collaboration with Chancellor College Faculty of Law in Malawi.  She serves on the Board of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health.

Rowthorn was Managing Director of the Law and Health Care Program at University of Maryland Carey School of Law for 10 years. Before joining Maryland Carey Law in 2006, she was an attorney in the Legislative Division of the Office of General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and an associate at the law firm of DLA Piper. In addition, Rowthorn spent several years as a legislative assistant for the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and two years as a health educator in the Marshall Islands as a Peace Corps volunteer. Rowthorn is an Honors graduate of Maryland Carey Law and completed her LLM in Global Health Law at Georgetown Law Center.

Tricia Todd, M.P.H. is the Director of the Pre-Health Student Resource Center at the University of Minnesota and an instructor in the School of Public Health.  She is responsible for the Administrative oversight the Center that serves the UM system and over 10,000 people a year. She leads the creation of new educational programming and was the lead designer for the Global Ambassadors for Patient Safety online educational module used in multiple countries, and has developed multiple global experiences for students.  She also serves on the Center for Global Health and Social Responsibility Leadership Team.