The Fletcher School

Susan Banki arrived at Fletcher in the fall of 1999 with a knapsack full of interwoven life experiences that would inevitably shape and enhance not only her academic studies but also her life after graduation. Her journey began when she graduated from Amherst College in 1991 and immediately set about garnering solid experience in community development and intercultural communication all over the world. First, she spent a year in Israel, where she designed civic events and created cultural programs for Ethiopian immigrants. Later, she lived in Bulgaria, where she developed social action projects, conducted leadership seminars, and directed summer camps for hundreds of children.

In addition, Susan spent several years in New York City working in various capacities. She spent three years in New York as the National Director of the Oren Institutes, where she marketed and promoted seven overseas programs through campus visits and public relations campaigns. During her tenure, she succeeded in increasing overall program participation by an astonishing 120 percent. She spent a year as a prestigious Coro Foundation Public Affairs Fellow, during which she fine-tuned her skills in research and analysis, negotiation, consensus-building, and project management while working for such clients as the American Museum of Natural History and the New York City Police Department.

Finally after spending six years working with matters related to community development, outreach, civic education, and project management, she took her knapsack of skills and successfully transitioned into the role of Executive Assistant for Programming at the 92nd Street Y. There, she was responsible for planning, budgeting, and implementing concerts, lectures, and programs at this renowned community and cultural center. She spearheaded fundraising campaigns and served for a time as an adjunct instructor at Ramapo College.

All of these interconnected skills and experiences helped Susan find her calling at Fletcher. She became interested in refugee and migration studies after taking a course with Professor Jacobsen. Susan said, “My father is a refugee from Hungary, and although before coming to Fletcher I vaguely understood the reasons for which he came to the US during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, I never considered the impact of refugee flows on the host communities and the refugees themselves.”

She was hooked. Susan capped off her first year at Fletcher by winning the Stewart Award for Outstanding First Year Student, and with encouragement from faculty, used her Fletcher connections to find a summer internship in the Mae La refugee camp in Mae Sot, Thailand. “Gaining access to refugee camps is often very difficult because of security,” Susan said. “One of my classmates was from Thailand, and when I told him that I was eager to spend time in a refugee camp, he used his connections within the Thai Ministry of the Interior, and soon I had a signed form from the right authorities. Without such a form, I never would have been able to conduct my research.”

Here, Susan brought to bear those refined skills she had developed before coming to Fletcher on her new responsibilities in the refugee camp. She worked with an educational NGO to develop educational curricula for Karen refugees from Burma, and she designed and implemented English lesson plans for the Thai camp commander. At the end of her time there, she researched and authored a report concerning educational policy in Thai refugee camps over a 30-year period.

Susan says that she was drawn to Fletcher because its mix of scholarly and practical pursuits of knowledge is perfect for her. “I wanted the theoretical basis to understand what patterns have challenged refugees and policymakers in the past, but I also wanted to interact with people who had the benefit of years of experience in the field who could coach me on appropriate ways for interacting with refugees in a sensitive manner. At Fletcher, I found both.”

Susan returned to Fletcher and found just as much success her second year as in her first. She used her experience in Thailand to write her M.A. thesis on the challenges of refugee camp education. She also won the Gullion Award for Outstanding Second Year Student. As a Ph.D. student, Susan has served as a teaching assistant in both Tufts’ Department of Political Science and Department of Economics. She has presented two papers related to her work with humanitarian assistance, development, and migration issues. The first, which she presented at the University of Alcala in Madrid, in June of 2001, concerned the role of the ocean as a medium and barrier to migration. The second, presented in January 2003 at the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration in Chiang Mai, Thailand, was entitled “Conflict, Crisis, and the Absence of the Development Enterprise: A Study of Burma/Myanmar.”

Susan’s dissertation compares the quality of lives of refugees who have status with those who do not, and she focuses on the refugees from Burma in Japan and Thailand. After she graduates, she has three aims “First,” she says, “I'd like to work with refugees in the field, whether that means in a refugee camp in Asia, in a rural settlement in Africa, or in a resettlement agency in the United States. Second, I’d like to work in advocacy on behalf of refugees, helping to shape policy decisions in the US and in the UN. Third, I'd like to teach. A Fletcher degree offers me the opportunity to work in all of these fields. [Fletcher’s] emphasis on academic research and the opportunities it has given me to serve as a teaching assistant have prepared me to teach. Fletcher's network is dispersed throughout the NGO community and in all parts of the world, giving me that crucial foot in the door when I want to work in the field. Finally, my research and writing skills have been finely tuned through Fletcher's rigorous papers and assignments, giving me crucial skills for advocacy work.”

Without a doubt, Susan Banki clearly understands where she is going and how Fletcher can help take her there. Anyone who knows her will tell you that whether she is singing in the Ambassachords, (Fletcher’s a capella singing group), editing The Fletcher Ledger, or pulling a late night in the Mugar computer lab, her passion for humanity, cultural and religious dialogue, and her sense of optimism make her a remarkable asset to the Fletcher community and the world at large.