After my first “COVID edition” virtual short-course showed that it could be done (hosted by Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología for students in Peru), I selected another location where I previously had a well-organized in-person teaching experience with a dedicated and suitable audience: The Philippines. In 2018, De La Salle University hosted a weeklong visit, where my data science (formerly “big data”) short-course boasted the largest class size of the Instructional Odyssey to date: well over 400 participants. …

I had a busy and exciting travel-teaching schedule planned for this summer: short-courses and workshops at Universidad de las Americas in Ecuador, Javeriana University in Colombia, the Asian Institute of Technology & Management in Nepal, and an unprecedented third visit to the Royal University College of Science & Technology in Bhutan. As usual, there had been a great deal of communication and advanced planning. Preparations were well underway when, like so many other endeavors across the globe, plans were entirely upended by the coronavirus.

An obvious alternative was to offer my short-courses virtually — after all, the entire world was…

To take advantage of a short gap between my visit to Kazakhstan and the start of Stanford’s academic year, I initially planned to add a few days of teaching in Turkey on the way home. When those arrangements fell through, my host in Kazakhstan suggested I visit their neighbor country Kyrgyzstan, and she introduced me to some acquaintances at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek. One criterion I have when confirming a teaching location (in addition to those mentioned at the end of the Kazakhstan blog) is that prospective hosts should be communicative and proactive, instilling confidence that…

Kazakhstan is still considered by some to be a developing country, but you wouldn’t know it from the capital city. I was surprised to find ultra-modern buildings, sports arenas, and monuments — some by famous architects. And the building spree isn’t finished; cranes are everywhere. The lavish attention and rapid expansion followed the city being named Kazakhstan’s new capital only 20 years ago, an act of president Nursultan Nazarbayev. Long known as Astana, this past spring the city was renamed Nur-Sultan, in honor of the president stepping down after a whopping 29 years.

I didn’t get a chance to visit…

I’ve visited Bosnia and Herzegovina once before, just a couple of years ago on a family trip. We spent most of our time in the mountains, though we did stop in the main cities, including Sarajevo. It was a very different experience visiting Sarajevo to teach, and in the process learn a bit about what’s going on there in my familiar territory: higher education.

Overall, Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereafter BiH, the official abbreviation) is a country still trying to find its footing after a devastating war in the early 1990’s. Unemployment is extremely high (though apparently not as high as…

Following my return visit to Bhutan, it was a short hop to Delhi, India for a four-day Big Data short-course at Ashoka University. Technically India was also a return visit — Hyderabad and Chennai were early stops in the odyssey. But India is so large and diverse, it hardly counts as going back to the same place.

Ashoka University is a unique experiment in India: Founded in 2014, it’s a philanthropically funded private university modeling itself after American liberal arts colleges — students choose from an array of majors after they arrive, receive a broad education, and the residential campus…

Although my sabbatical is in the distant past now, I periodically sneak away from the dean’s office to indulge my hobby of teaching short-courses in developing countries. Having taught in 18 different countries to date, I made a first return visit, to one of my favorites: Bhutan. When I visited two years ago I was enchanted by a tiny Himalayan kingdom that had only recently opened its doors to the world, a warm and selfless Buddhist people, and a technical college with dedicated students and faculty eager to make the most of my stay. It’s always risky to go back…

Almost 20 years ago, Patrick Awuah was rising the ranks at Microsoft when he decided to return to his home country of Ghana. Influenced by his undergraduate years at Swarthmore (and with an MBA from Berkeley under his belt), Patrick set out to create sub-Saharan Africa’s first liberal arts university. Fast-forward to now, and Ashesi University appears to be thriving. “Liberal arts” should be taken, um, liberally, as the only majors at Ashesi are computer science, management information systems, business, and as of very recently, three flavors of engineering. …