The Department of State announced Tuesday the appointment of Dawn L. McCall, formerly a senior executive at Discovery Communications, as Coordinator of the Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP) within the Office of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs:

The Alliance is very pleased to announce that Ann Stock, Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs, will be the keynote speaker at the 2010 Alliance Membership Meeting. The meeting is scheduled for October 5-6, 2010, in Washington, DC. Assistant Secretary Stock will speak at the opening luncheon on October 5.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report this week titled “Engaging Foreign Audiences: Assessment of Public Diplomacy Platforms Could Help Improve State Department Plans to Expand Engagement.” The report recommends that the Secretary of State and the Office of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs “conduct an assessment of the relative effectiveness of each of State’s overseas outreach platforms, such as by measuring how each platform has expanded engagement with foreign audiences.”

Mobility International USA produced a ten-minute video (below) highlighting the success of high school students with disabilities who are participating in international exchange via the Youth Exchange and Study (YES) program. The video includes interviews with several YES participants, as well as their American host families, teachers, and classmates, who all note what a positive experience hosting exchange students in their homes and communities has been.

Ann Stock was sworn in yesterday as Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs in a ceremony in the Benjamin Franklin Room at the Department of State. The event was presided over by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Farah Pandith, Special Representative to Muslim Communities at the Department of State, engaged in a web conversation focused on U.S. engagement with Muslim communities last Friday with Steven Clemons, Director of the New America Foundation’s American Strategy Program.

“It's definitely encouraging to be around people who speak many different languages. It makes me want to be more worldly,” said Maddy Lafuse, a high school student in Columbia, Maryland, participating in STARTALK, the newest component of the National Security Language Initiative (NSLI). The Baltimore Sun profiled this week the students participating in STARTALK at Howard Community College (HCC):

During a meeting of civil society and youth leaders in Baku, Azerbaijan, on July 4, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with three representatives of the FLEX program, including the Azerbaijan alumni coordinator, Leyla Aslanova (FLEX ’07). Aslanova asked Clinton what role she sees U.S.-educated exchange alumni playing in Azerbaijan society. Clinton responded that alumni should continue to foster ties between Americans and Azerbaijanis by sharing their experiences and encouraging more students to apply to study in the U.S.

The Department of State's proposed rule on the high school category of the Exchange Visitor Program, published on May 3, includes a provision prohibiting single parents without school age children in the home from hosting exchange student students. The proposed regulations suggest that single host parents put students at risk, but do not offer any data to support this conclusion. 



“The United States will spend $165-million over the next five years on programs to help strengthen higher education in Indonesia through educational exchanges and university partnerships,” the Chronicle of Higher Education reports. President Obama and Indonesia's president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, announced this initiative yesterday at a meeting at the G-20 summit in Toronto.