MSU Partners

Sarah K. Blom is the executive director of individual giving for Michigan State University (MSU). She directs MSU's individual giving program which is comprised of regional major gifts, gift planning, and special gifts. Ms. Blom provides leadership for the development of individual gift prospects from a central, University Development perspective. Ms. Blom has over 20 years of direct fundraising and management experience in all areas of advancement, from development to alumni relations and marketing. Prior to joining the executive management team for University Advancement, she served as the senior director of development and alumni relations for the College of Social Science, MSU's director of special gifts and associate director of annual giving programs. Previously, she was the director of annual giving at California State University in Northridge. In addition to managing a portfolio of major and principal gift prospects, Ms. Blom works in close collaboration with deans, faculty, senior administrators, alumni volunteers, and fundraising staff across campus. Ms. Blom holds a bachelor's degree in English and a master's degree in higher, adult, and lifelong education from Michigan State University.

David Campbell is Professor of Geography and African studies at Michigan State University. Prior to joining MSU, he held appointments at the University of Nairobi, the University of Zimbabwe, and at the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry. He has conducted research in Africa since 1975 on land use change and the interaction between socioeconomic and biophysical processes, including a study of data needs for natural resources management in Rwanda; strategies for coping with severe food shortage and of community-based famine early warning systems in Niger, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, and Kenya; land use and farming systems in Cameroon and Kenya; and an ongoing, long-term study of land use problems in semi-arid areas, with particular reference to southern Kenya.

Rolf Dietrich was appointed Director of Development for International Studies & Programs in April 2008. Before this appointment, Rolf served as a Corporate & Foundation Relationship Officer at MSU's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Rolf has a Masters Degree in Asian Studies from Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany and has spent a number of years living overseas, including China and South East Asia. His professional background is in banking. He worked for Deutsche Bank in China and in other international branches for this multinational institution dealing in trade finance, interbank lending and with foreign direct investment issues. The ISP Development Director is tasked to identify and to generate additional resources for the partnership and for global education, research, and outreach that is taking place at Michigan State University.

Robert Glew is Co-Chair of the Tanzania Partnership Project. Dr. Glew is the Director of the Center for Advanced Study of International Development and Associate Professor at Michigan State University. He has 20 years of experience working on issues of international development in Africa in the areas of coping and livelihood strategies, health, education, religious change, social change and identity politics. He has studied, taught and conducted research in Africa drawing upon his language skills in Hausa, Fulfulde and French. Dr. Glew is currently co-PI of a National Science Foundation award for research in East Africa and currently co-directs three U.S. Department of State-funded Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs grants for Nigeria, Mali and China.

Gretchen Neisler is the Director for the Institute of International Agriculture Dr. Neisler works to actively maintain relationships with the various partners of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (CANR) to expand the global focus of MSU through the expansion of internationally and nationally funded work. Previously Gretchen has worked as the Assistant Director for the Global Institute for Higher Education working with higher education institutions, governments and international organizations worldwide to strengthen the quality of higher education institutions and systems. As the Project Director for the Pakistan PreSTEP project she was able to improve the quality of primary and secondary education in Pakistan by improving teacher education training. Likewise, Gretchen lead the Egypt Education Reform Project as the Project Director to strengthen teacher education at seven Egyptian universities through short-term, in-service training and technical assistant for Egyptian university faculty members. Gretchen received her Ph. D. (2009) from Michigan State University in Higher Adult and Lifelong Education and a M.S. (2002) from Michigan State University in Agriculture Extension Education.

John Kaneene is Co-Chair of the Tanzania Partnership Project. Dr. Kaneene is professor of large animal clinical sciences and director of the Center for Epidemiology. He is recognized nationally and internationally as a leader in both the application of epidemiological methods to improve the understanding of disease processes in animal populations and the use of these methods to design, implement, and evaluate prevention and control strategies. With this work as a foundation, Dr. Kaneene has been instrumental in building a unique three-way intellectual bridge at Michigan State University involving the College of Veterinary Medicine, the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and the College of Human Medicine. His interests have ranged from the economics of animal disease to the epidemiology of zoonotic diseases and the safety of animal-origin foods. .

Jennifer Olson is the Research Coordinator for TPP and an Associate Professor in the College of Communications Arts and Sciences. Dr. Olson is interested in the interaction between changes in the environment and society. Understanding the causes of environmental trends and how they affect society leads to important policy implications from the national to the international level, and Dr. Olson regularly works with policy makers, United Nations officials and others to develop effective methods of communicating science results. Research topics that she has focused on include the socioeconomic causes of land degradation, the effects of environmental change on human health, the interaction between land use and climate change, and the impacts of land use change on biodiversity. Jennifer has over fifteen years of living and working experience in Africa, including research in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda funded by NSF, UNEP, GEF, CIESIN/NASA, USAID and others, and as a Peace Corps and a U.N. volunteer in rural Burkina Faso, Republic of the Congo and Central African Republic.

Patricia Peek is an Associate Professor and coordinator for the Nurse Practitioner (NP) program in the College of Nursing. She is a board certified pediatric nurse practitioner with a broad range of clinical expertise. For 14 years she was the NP in the Pediatric Pulmonary clinics at MSU and the regional Cystic Fibrosis treatment center. At that time she also had a joint appointment with the College of Human Medicine Department of Pediatrics. Professor Peek practiced in pediatric primary care in a rural community and also became involved in international medical mission work. She has lead more than 30 medical teams to provide health care in Siberia, Jamaica, Ukraine and South Africa. For the last 3 years her focus has been in the Limpopo/ Mpumalanga areas of South Africa where she has worked to develop school based primary care clinics for orphans and vulnerable children. She has been the recipient of the President's Award for Outstanding Community Service as well as the Distinguished Faculty Award at Michigan State University. Professor Peek was named core faculty in the MSU African Studies Center in 2009.

Kristin Phillips is an Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. She joined the faculty in 2009 after completing a joint Ph.D. in the departments of Anthropology and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A sociocultural anthropologist, Phillips studies education and development in rural Tanzania. Her work examines how interventions in schooling, food security, health, and natural resources shape teaching and learning in rural areas. Phillips is also a core faculty member in African Studies, Peace and Justice Studies, the Center for Advanced Study of International Development (CASID), and the Center for Gender in Global Context.

James Pritchett is the Director of the African Studies Center and Professor of Anthropology. Dr. Pritchett was at Boston University from 1991-2009 with appointments in the Anthropology Department and the African Studies Center. He long served as a research officer at the University of Zambia, Senior Africa Advisor to Oxfam America and member of the Boards of Directors of the African Studies Association, TransAfrica (Boston) and founding Director of the Boston Pan African Forum. He has conducted anthropological fieldwork in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Angola and Congo; experimented with tropical agriculture in Guyana and Brazil; and has studied communities of the African Diaspora in the Caribbean, and South and Central America. His scholarship is principally concerned with the ways in which social change is interpreted and validated in accordance with pre-existing belief systems. He has taught courses on contemporary Africa, global cultures, anthropological theory, economic development and symbol, ritual and myths.

Jack Schwille is a professor and the Assistant Dean for International Studies in Education, responsible for developing an international dimension in research, teaching, and service throughout the MSU College of Education since 1984. This work has contributed in important ways to MSU's winning the Goldman Sachs Foundation Higher Education Prize for Excellence in International Education in 2004. Dr. Schwille's own specialization is in comparative education and the sociology of education, with emphasis on comparative understanding of teaching and learning as these are influenced by their institutional and organizational contexts. His experience includes qualitative as well as quantitative research in a variety of international and domestic settings. In recent years, his geographic focus has been on international development in Africa.