top of page

Wright College is the ONLY Community College in the United State’s Department Diplomacy Lab Program

Wilbur Wright College is now the only community college in America that is partnered with the United State’s Department Diplomacy Lab Program. This program was launched in 2013 by Secretary Kerry, and is a public-private partnership that is focused on the foreign policy challenges. Professor Merry Mayer discovered the partnership, “Well, I stumbled across it. I’m the service learning coordinator along with the Political Science faculty. I actually stumbled across it because I was doing research for my political science class.”

In the mission statement from the Diplomacy Lab’s website, it states the general overview of the partnership, “Diplomacy Lab is a partnership between the Department and U.S. colleges and universities. Partner schools participating in Diplomacy Lab conduct research around various topics presented to them by the State Department in areas including climate change, democracy and human rights, counterterrorism, global health, and energy security.”

Within this partnership, there are two main “pillars”. The first being the engagement between colleges/universities and the State Department. The second being the education that the students receive while under the guidance of the faculty members that will also be participating in the partnership.

This means that as a partner, the Wright faculty members will bid on the State Department’s research project. If the bid is accepted, the faculty members and the students will then research the said topic over the course of a semester and complete the research. During this time, both students and faculty will be in communication with the State Department officials for further guidance.

The partnership has an array of over one hundred forty projects that cover different topics such as anthropology, business, biology, computer science, media studies, government, etc. The four faculty members from Wilbur Wright college are Professor Merry Mayer, Dr. Sydney Hart, Dr. Beverly Bennett, and Dr. Lidia Dobria. These four professors teach subjects ranging from Statistics to Political Science. Currently, all four teachers are waiting to hear if the bids for the research projects were accepted to move forward for planning their fall coursework.

Professor Mayer had placed a bid on the Namibia research project that was suggested by the United States Embassy, which is focused on the records of the African country. These topics of research will be incorporated into the courses and students will have around three conferences with either someone from Africa or Washington, DC.


bottom of page