Revealing our Roots: A Conversation with Caitlin Osorio Ferrarini

Caitlin Osorio Ferrarini is former research assistant and GES director of the global engagement survey and current action team member (advancing community benefit assessment models research working group) with the Collaborative. Caitlin recently joined Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Global School as an Assistant Teaching Professor. She is a PhD graduate of the University of Massachusetts Boston's College of Education, and has worked in the field of global experiential learning in Colombia and the United States as a field director, student advisor, professor, and researcher.

Recently we sat down with Caitlin for a conversation on her Collaborative origin story. The following was edited lightly for our blog.

I first learned of the Collaborative when I was the director of a program in Colombia called World Teach. I was very deeply on the ground, making partnerships with different schools and host families, different government entities. I was looking for some sort of framework or guidelines, for equitable and ethical community partnership development.

Eric [Hartman, Collaborative co-founder] was leading a webinar and I attended and I learned about fair trade learning. I found them online. During the workshop I asked him, “Are there any tools for assessing impact of programs on communities?” I was really interested in community impact and measuring that and improving that in  my practice. That's how I became involved.

While I was in Colombia, Eric invited me to join the Collaborative’s steering committee. I became more involved – first in the community impact and fair trade learning side, and then with the student learning outcomes part and assessment. I then translated a portion of the GES (Global Engagement Survey) into Spanish with a Colombian professor, and I gave it to professors who were co-teaching English with our students. We led a co-teacher training, and I had them complete the GES pre-survey, with the idea that I was going to do the post survey at the end of the program. The government changed over and our program ended, and I never gave it to them. I sometimes forget that that happened!

Then I came to the US for a PhD in the College of Education at UMASS, Boston. There I began to work as Nora Reynolds’ research assistant with the GES, which was really a great introduction for me. I spent a lot of time with the qualitative data analysis and learned a lot from Nora about that, as well as data management, working with big data sets. That's how I came to start to work with the Collaborative. After serving as Nora’s research assistant I became the Collaborative’s director of assessment for global learning. That was exciting, because I got to dedicate my time and energy to the global engagement survey, which needed that time and attention.

One of the great things there was that we initiated the community of practice (CoP) group and sparked more engagement there. Nora began that group during the COVID pandemic, and then I structured it more based on Nora’s main recommendations. The CoP was my favorite part of working with the survey.

The survey is such an interesting tool to use, because, in a way, it's somewhat driven by participatory action ethos. The members who are using the survey give input – for example on updates to the demographic factors that we're interested in looking at. We discuss what are additional questions and modifications that we could make to the GES? It's really interesting to me that this group comes together to think about shared research questions in this global civic learning space. It was great to meet people from all of the different universities and programs and nonprofits, learning about the unique programming that they're doing. There is a lot of really unique and innovative programming going on among GES users.

Learning about mixed methods research has been super impactful for me. Through my PhD program, the training there, and also through Mat Gendle’s guidance and mentorship, I learned a lot about the quantitative side. I started being drawn much more to the qualitative. I learned to pull those two sides together. I usually did quantitative first, and then qualitative, and how those can inform one another.

It is really fascinating to me. It's more convincing to see both numbers and words, and I think it can be more convincing to a wider audience of people, too, when you're trying to present your findings and your analysis. I love mixed methods research, and I learned a lot of qualitative from Nora and quantitative from Mat. I'm so grateful for that. That is the kind of research that I want to do moving forward.

It feels like 10 years ago, but I just graduated last year from the PhD program. Critical global citizenship is something that I learned from the Collaborative before I even entered my program, and maybe even influenced the type of graduate program that I decided to join.

That “critical” word didn't mean anything to me until I learned more about it through the Collaborative and critical service learning. The Collaborative has been so useful for me articulating a connection between global and civic learning. Sometimes even for people in higher ed, who are either in the civic or global learning space, it is sometimes difficult to give some language and credibility to this intersection. Eric especially has done a really good job of that.

Thinking more deeply about power and privilege and how that impacts relationship building – I think that really came from just engaging with the Collaborative. I remember my students in Colombia would sometimes say to me, “Does the head office know you're asking us these kinds of tough questions about power and privilege?"

Critical global citizenship, the framework for ethical engagement with fair trade learning, the mixed methods research – they are all really, really important pieces to my growth as a scholar. Nora's mentorship also was really pivotal for me. She was someone in academia who I really respected and whose work impressed me. It didn't feel intimidating, as someone who was new to academia, to be talking with her and to be asking questions and working together.

I always felt very invited in the Collaborative space. When I was a new PhD student I wrote an article together with Eric and Nora and others. I felt very respected and invited to work together. People in the Collaborative are like that, so warm, welcoming, encouraging.

Sometimes, when I'm now in an academic space – academics are trained to be critical and there's a space, there's an appropriateness for that. But I feel like people who are in the Collaborative are also really encouraging, and looking for these spaces that are also hopeful and joyful. The organization is very important to me, and why I continue to be involved.