The Foreign Service Journal, June 2016

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2016 9 LETTERS Mentoring for the Deep Bench In her April President’s Views column, “Building the Deep Bench,” Ambassador Barbara Stephenson estimates that lead- ers are produced roughly in accordance with the following “rule of thumb”: 70 percent on-the-job experience, 20 percent mentoring and 10 percent formal training. It would be interesting to delve more deeply into the mentoring component of the foregoing formula. For example, is “mentoring” a formal component of a supervisory FSO’s job description? In other words, does it actually take place? Furthermore, is the deputy chief of mission (or USAID’s equivalent) at post responsible for ensuring that junior FSOs are properly mentored by their supervi- sors, or even occasionally by the chief of mission? Just as importantly, is feedback on the adequacy of their mentoring expe- rience actively solicited from junior FSOs? Without such formal mentoring desig- nations and responsibilities, and an effec- tive feedback loop, the early on-the-job experiences of first- and second-tour FSOs may amount to little more than an implied edict to “sink or swim!” Fred Kalhammer SFS USAID, retired Sun City Center, Florida Universities for Africa I greatly appreciated Don Lotter’s April article on the need to help Africa develop its university system as a better way to develop the continent in general (“Devel- opment Aid to Africa: Time for Plan B?”). During my 20-plus years of service in Africa at eight posts, I was continuously frustrated by our ever-changing develop- ment policies and priorities. The only constant was that Africa was forever developing, but never quite getting to “developed”—despite the countless Western experts and consultants who were there to show the way. Since retiring from State I’ve now spent 13 years at Texas Tech as vice provost administering inter- national programs, and I heartily endorse most of Lotter’s points. The best example I can offer is Ethio- pia—once the poster child for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—a country where I served twice and still visit every few years to help establish partnerships between American and Ethiopian univer- sities. When I arrived there as ambassa- dor in 1999, the literacy numbers were abysmal—especially for girls. Thanks to a national policy that first promoted pri- mary education, and later extended that to high school, current estimates are that more than 50 percent of women and two- thirds of men can now read and write. Ethiopia is now undertaking an even more ambitious campaign to go to the next level: building from scratch a network of universities across the country. In 2000 Ethiopia had just three national universi- ties—today it has 31, and the country is spending more than a quarter of its national budget on education. But while Ethiopia is graduating thou- sands with B.A. degrees, they desperately need M.A. and Ph.D. degree-holders to serve as faculty in their new universities. This is where U.S. universities can help—by establishing partnerships with Ethiopian universities to collaborate on degree programs (here, there and by dis- tance), faculty training, curriculum design and academic management. Also appealing is the idea of helping establish U.S.-style universities across Africa. For example, a first-rate compre- hensive university to serve the Horn of Africa, one that conferred U.S.-quality degrees on students from the region, would be a positive force in many ways.