Close Up
Providing access from Buffalo to Tanzania
Mara Huber poses with children from the John Boscoe School in Musoma, Tanzania, during a visit this summer. Photo: KATIE BIGGIE
-
Print -
Comments
-
“There is absolutely no reason why we can’t do great things together in terms of really making a difference in a sustainable way.”
As director of UB’s Center for Educational Collaboration (CEC), Mara Huber has helped build a university partnership with the Buffalo Public Schools to prepare Pre-K through 16 students for academic and professional success. Now she would like to apply the success of that model to a dire educational need in a remote region on the other side of the world.
Huber and an interdisciplinary team from UB and the community—including Brian Carter, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning; Mary Gresham, dean of the Graduate School of Education; Kathleen Kost, associate dean for academic affairs in the School of Social Work; Brenda McDuffie, president and CEO of the Buffalo Urban League; and Katie Biggie of the CEC—recently returned from a fact-finding mission to the rural Mara region of Tanzania to see first-hand the urgent need for secondary education for girls beyond age 12. This was the result of a notion put forth to Huber during a chance meeting with a nun whose order has been desperately trying to improve the situation in this region near Kenya. It soon became a cause consistent with UB’s world outreach.
“Everybody has talked about the sea of need, so I was prepared intellectually but I didn’t necessarily understand that the needs were so complex,” Huber recounts of the trip. “Yes, there is a need for schools, but that need is framed within other complex socio-economic needs—health care, economics, infrastructure. Many of these villages don’t have water—even parts of the city have no water or electricity or roads. That’s what really struck me, and that has been emerging in my mind as the appropriate level for the university to engage with.”
The need for secondary schooling for girls is compelling, with only one school in a very large area with up to 90 spots available each year for about 1,000 applicants. “For those girls who don’t get in, there are literally no options,” Huber relates. “When they are done with primary school at about age 12, they are often sold into marriage, traded for cattle, literally, and often they’re the second, third or fourth wife, and their job—their whole existence—is about work. There are very few clinics and so many women die during childbirth. We learned that female circumcision is very prevalent in these regions. Many girls die as a result of bleeding. HIV/AIDS is still not controlled, and malaria is a problem. And so education is really the only vehicle out of these realities and it is not accessible to many. Because of the deep tribal practices and beliefs, many of the families don’t necessarily even value the education for girls. So access is a big issue, but it goes even deeper than that. It’s also cultural.”
The next step, according to Huber, will be on research and mapping out a strategy for support. “As a major research university, we have the opportunity to do outreach, but more importantly, we have the capacity to study models of outreach and the ability to pull all these diverse areas of resources and expertise together through our Civic Engagement and Public Policy strategic strength. We are about reaching others, but we are about doing it in a research-based, impactful way.”
Huber feels that the role of the CEC from its inception two years ago has been about facilitation—aligning resources with needs for the greatest impact, laying the foundation according to areas of focus, similar to a research project.
This approach has held the CEC in good stead. The center has offered science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) opportunities for about 1,000 students in the Buffalo schools. “One of the things I’m very proud of is that we’re making a difference on multiple levels,” says Huber. “Not only is it affecting those students, but it’s affecting the graduate students who are working with the students, as well as the faculty members who are contributing their time. It’s crossed the boundaries of not just being outreach. There are people throughout the university who do very, very rigorous research related to outreach who are working with us. There are many people in our community who are engaged as well. I’ve been overwhelmed by the support.”
Huber’s passion to change the educational system happened at an early age. Growing up in the Fredonia area where her father was a college administrator and her mother an occupational therapist serving handicapped children, she was immersed in the learning culture and raised with the idea of being a steward of your community. “I was taught that because I had such a good childhood, more was expected of me. There was a strong focus on civic responsibility.”
When it came time to choose her career path, she picked cognitive psychology—the study of the mind.
“What I believed at the time, and still believe, is that if you want to help children maximize their learning, you have to understand how learning happens. And I believed that it was through the application of research as a process to the world of education that would initiate changes. I’ve always been drawn to research because it’s a process that leads to good, solid decision-making. I believe strongly in good process, making sure that all of the systems, programs and projects in education are aligned tightly with goals, objectives, visions and needs. It’s about creating processes that will get you to where you want to go.”
Huber knew where she ultimately wanted to make an impact. She initially became an assistant professor in the School of Education at Fredonia State College. “I loved teaching and found that very fulfilling, but I immediately became itchy to make those connections to the broader aspects of education,” she recalls.
After three years, she had an opportunity to come to UB’s Graduate School of Education, working for the dean. “I became involved with accreditation—essentially using research to improve one’s teacher education programs—and partnership work, primarily with the Buffalo schools. Again, I was antsy to take it to the next level.”
She seized an opportunity to work with James Williams, superintendent of the Buffalo Public Schools, after he made the observation he would like somebody to help coordinate higher education potential with Buffalo students. At that point, she divided her time between UB and the Buffalo schools. “I call it my residency because it was through that opportunity that I got to really understand what the district was trying to do and the complexity of the problems and challenges. It was an absolute pivotal experience for me,” she says.
At the same time, UB President John B. Simpson was formalizing the university’s partnership with the Buffalo Public Schools and elevating it to a presidential initiative, enabling Huber to assume her current position. “I’ve had a very unique opportunity to follow partnerships at the department level in the Graduate School of Education, at the superintendent level and at the presidential level, and to create the CEC, which is essentially an infrastructure to develop and support our models for collaboration. It’s been quite a journey.”
Huber’s professional life is very closely tied to who she is as a person. As a parent, she tells her children that her primary job as a mother is to help them discover and develop their gifts and how they can use them to make the world a better place. “I feel the same for the university. I feel the same for our center. It’s knowing what we are, knowing what we do, knowing what we want to contribute, and then finding ways to make those contributions,” she states.
As might be expected, Huber is a member of a close-knit family. Husband John operates a long-time family clothing business, O’Connell Lucas and Chelf, in University Heights. “He’s a strong advocate, loves the city and is a big UB Believer in terms of UB’s impact on the community,” Huber says of her husband. They live in a large Victorian home in the Elmwood Village with their children, Elena, 8; Owen, 7; Claire, 4; and Natalie, 2, along with a big furry dog named Puck.
“When we got the dog before we were married, my husband suggested the name and I immediately thought of (the character in) “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and then I found out he was thinking of hockey. It was the first shared fallacy,” she laughs. “Our life is focused on hockey. We have an ice rink in our backyard in the winter, with lots of children always over.”
For Huber, education is the portal to everything meaningful, a belief that she has always held dear. And that’s what she hopes to develop with the Tanzania project.
“We plan to have a community group visit within a year, both to get researchers—students, faculty—who are interested in engaging in the research opportunity, but also to get community members who are interested. Just as we have an amazing relationship with the Buffalo schools that we’ve cultivated, we have the ability now to develop a similar environment with this community.
“It’s one of those projects that if you lay it out the right way, you know it will be successful because we have amazing expertise here. There is absolutely no reason why we can’t do great things together in terms of really making a difference in a sustainable way.”
Reader Comments