Dr. Rima Karami Akkary in Paris, Oct. 5, 2022
On World Teachers’ Day, Portland State University alumna Dr. Rima Karami Akkary received the 2022 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) – Hamden Prize. The global award, presented in Paris on Oct. 5, was in recognition of the TAMAM project, an acronym from the Arabic translation of the phrase, “school-based reform” (Al-Tatweer Al-Mustanid ila Al-Madrasa).
“I am particularly proud that TAMAM is led by a group of women educators,” notes Dr. Karami Akkary, Program Advisor for the Educational Management and Leadership program at the American University of Beirut and chairperson of the department of education. She received her Doctor of Education at Portland State University in 1997 in the Doctoral Program for Educational Leadership in the College of Education, and was also previously an adjunct lecturer at PSU.
The $300,000 UNESCO-Hamden Prize was shared between TAMAM in Lebanon, P4Global (Haiti), and Graines de Paix (Switzerland/Benin). The winners are chosen by an international jury of professionals. TAMAM is an education reform movement across nine countries in the Arab region combining research and development for sustainable school improvement. The project was initiated as part of a memorandum of understanding between the American University of Beirut and the Arab Thought Foundation in 2007.
Writing from Beirut, Dr. Rima, as she prefers to be called, shared her thoughts about her scholarly research at Portland State University as foundational to her work leading the TAMAM project today. Her doctoral focus at PSU was Educational administration K-12 and policy studies. Her thesis research was about the Role and Work Context of Lebanese Principals.
PSU: First of all, congratulations on the UNESCO-Hamden Prize!!!!! We are all so very proud of you here in Portland.
Dr. Karami Akkary: “I am touched by your words and happy to hear that I triggered a cause for celebration in the PSU College of Education that had a considerable impact on my professional career by offering me a unique learning opportunity and most of all the best lifelong mentors that anyone can wish for (Drs. Bill Greenfield and Joan Strouse).”
PSU: Is there an aspect of the TAMAM project that you connect with your doctoral work at Portland State University?
Dr. Karami Akkary: “Actually yes. When I was a student at PSU my program advisor was Dr. Tom Chenoweth. At that time, he was part of a Stanford-based project called the Accelerated Schools. The project was about helping schools improve by inducing school-level, inquiry-based improvement projects that teams of teachers engage in. I got to explore and learn about this project first hand as part of the practicum requirements in the program and this learning inspired my work in TAMAM.”
PSU: Could you describe your experience in the doctoral program at PSU and what direction it led you to follow that comes to this point in time of the UNESCO-Hamden Prize?
Dr. Karami Akkary: “I joined PSU with an ambitious agenda in my mind: I wanted to learn from the experiences and knowledge in the US to help reform the educational system in my country. The program content, with all it details helped me move towards that goal. It was designed to leave me some flexibility to take tutorials in the areas I was most interested in. The best part though was its balance between offering theoretical knowledge and practical experiences. The latter proved to be extremely helpful in my future career, and until this day, I have lessons I learned during that year-long practicum that I build on as an action researcher working in TAMAM. The program at PSU also offered me the opportunity to be part of an amazing cohort of seven women educators (we called ourselves the seven sisters of success) who were and have remained till now my professional support group. We have written a book about our amazing experience together.”
PSU: Who at PSU encouraged you early in your career in education?
Dr. Karami Akkary: “In addition to the opportunity above, my most influential learning was from my mentor and thesis advisor Dr. Bill Greenfield whose work and teaching have shaped who I am as a scholar-activist, coach and most of all mentor. My learning experience with Dr. Greenfield helped me become more nuanced about the complexity of the work context of school administrators. Moreover, his cultural sensitivity as a mentor allowed me the space to explore the work of school principals in my own cultural context and to become aware of its importance in understanding leadership and policymaking. His vast knowledge in the field coupled with his generosity in the time he gave me to engage with him in long conversations and his mentoring allowed me to navigate the Western-based literature. His approach kept me anchored in my cultural heritage and able to celebrate its assets while learning how to become part of the international scholarly activities in our field. I also attribute my skills in combining a very strong theoretical background with practical actionable applications to his guidance. Without this ability that I developed throughout the years under his mentorship, I would not have been able to design the TAMAM capacity-building program in a manner that is both grounded in the sociocultural context of the Arab region and informed by the international knowledge base. Dr. Greenfield has been my role model as a mentor and scholar.”
PSU: What would you say to inspire educators around the world to emulate what you have done with the TAMAM project?
Dr. Karami Akkary: “I would say that those of us who made it to be in Doctoral programs in Education ought to be aware of our privilege to have reached that far in deepening our knowledge of the field, and also of the immense responsibility to be impactful in helping schools and schools’ practitioners to do the best job that can be done. We operate in a value-laden profession and while this complicates our work and creates obstacles that we have nothing to do with, the potential for influence and making a difference because of that is immense. So, I will tell fellow doctorate students who will join PSU College of Education: take on the wonderful opportunity PSU offers to help you stay anchored in your communities, practice-oriented, teacher and students centered. I will also encourage them to invest their growing knowledge in designing strategies in collaboration with practitioners that build on assets while challenging them to improve what they are doing.”
Video from the Paris UNESCO ceremony: Dr. Rima Karami Akkary, TAMAM project director, UNESCO Hamdan Prize for Teacher Development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7ffKXkZ0kw
###