In an effort to expand educational horizons for those less fortunate, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has gone global with its Emerging Talent program. The initiative, which has seen participants from 24 countries, is on a mission to build technical and employment skills in places ravaged by instability, warfare and political unrest.
One such participant is Eric Tuyizere, a Rwandan entrepreneur, who found more than just academic rigor in the program's curriculum, he discovered a sense of community. "Apart from being my colleagues on the Emerging Talent program, we are friends," Tuyizere told MIT News. The program seeks to nurture such bonds, bridging gaps between different cultures amid shared experiences of turmoil and displacement.
The brain behind this operation, Admir Masic, understands the plight of the displaced first-hand. A Bosnia and Herzegovina native, Masic fled to Croatia as a teenager during the war in the 1990s, eventually becoming an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at MIT. "There are millions of people forcibly displaced every year — for political, economic, social, or, more recently, climate change-related reasons," Masic explained to MIT News, emphasizing his personal impetus to give back.
The U.N. High Commission on Refugees has alarmingly reported the number of displaced individuals worldwide to exceed 110 million as of May 2023, a figure symbolizing immense global distress. These include learners from Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar, and Afghanistan, among others, all yearning for a lifeline like the one Emerging Talent provides. Somaia Zabihi, a computer science instructor for Emerging Talent and a former dean at the University of Herat in Afghanistan detailed the educational retrogression in her home country, "Going to college for a girl used to be as strange as planning a trip to the moon," Zabihi remarked to MIT News.
The certificate in Computer and Data Science is the cornerstone of the program, providing a top-quality MIT education through edX. Opportunities are further fostered by strategic partnerships offering English training, mentorship, tech access, and employability skills. Megan Mitchell, associate director for Pathways for Talent at MIT, expresses confidence in the learners' potential, "They will be actively pursuing job opportunities that will allow them to put to practice what they have learned and bring extensive value to the companies they join," she conveyed to MIT News.
Emerging Talent embodies MIT's belief in equal opportunity education. Pavel Illin, a program graduate from Russia, now employed at the New York City Mayor's Office, credits the program for recognizing his potential and not just his paperwork. "I was seen for who I am, without proof or requirement to show my hard copy diploma evaluated by some other agency," Illin described in an MIT News interview. The program, which continues to accept applicants, is a beacon of hope for the disadvantaged, dispelling the darkness of displacement with the light of learning and growth.
