Alumni Educators
Honored With
Medallion Awards
Global Classrooms
THEY WERE YOUNG, brash, and convinced that
one of the best aids to a developing nation
was a school with a 0 percent dropout rate
and a place where every student was expected
and encouraged to succeed. Jim Gilson ’56
and Duane Root ’57 nursed their dream
against improbable odds, and today there isn’t
just one school, but 33 of them educating
3,200 children in 25 nations.
For their vision and tireless commitment
to international education, Gilson and Root
have been honored with the Medallion Award
by the Seattle Pacific University Alumni They were young, brash, and convinced that
one of the best aids to a developing nation
was a school with a 0 percent dropout rate
and a place where every student was expected
and encouraged to succeed. Jim Gilson ’56
and Duane Root ’57 nursed their dream
against improbable odds, and today there isn’t
just one school, but 33 of them educating
3,200 children in 25 nations.
For their vision and tireless commitment
to international education, Gilson and Root
have been honored with the Medallion Award
by the Seattle Pacific University Alumni Association. To engage multiple cultures and
negotiate with foreign governments has
required an enormous personal investment
from not only the two founders, but also their
wives, twin sisters Margery Carper Gilson ’59
and Margaret Carper Root ’58.
Quality Schools International (QSI), a
K–12 educational phenomenon headquartered
in Ljubljana, Slovenia, has penetrated
the independent republics of the former
Soviet Union, the heart of communist China,
and the emergent republics of Afghanistan
and East Timor. Because most of the organization’s
growth came at the request of the
U.S. State Department, 21 QSI schools are
located in cities that have American embassies
or consulates.
“We’re known for the quality of our schools
and the risk we’re willing to incur,” explains
Gilson, QSI president, who was on the SPU
campus in July for the organization’s 10th
annual administrative conference. And talk
about risks: QSI has weathered civil war, the
sudden evacuation of threatened personnel,
and, in one difficult case, the destruction of a
school. The most recent emergency evacuation
happened in May, during a violent uprising in
the capital of East Timor.
Gilson believes the schools and their staff
members are excellent representatives of the
United States. “Even though we are international
schools that attract students of many
nationalities, we are known inside these countries
as American schools,” he notes. “The
people recognize the wholesome atmosphere
we create for their children. The values we
hold and teach, contrary to Hollywood-style
immorality, are very compatible with what
tend to be the more conservative societies in
which we operate.”
That the presidents of Muslim Yemen, the
first country to host a QSI school in 1972,
have thus far entrusted 15 of their children to
Gilson’s teachers does not surprise him.
“Whether a person is an atheist, a Bible Baptist,
or a Hindu, they are not going to have a
problem with the honesty and integrity that
we teach along with science, communication,
and math skills,” he says.
“We care about what kind of people we
develop,” adds Root, QSI’s vice president.
“We’re like Seattle Pacific in that regard, and
no wonder. SPU is where we both got our
vision for education. Success of the whole person
was modeled for us daily.” He remembers
being instilled by his professors with an important
lesson: Life is about much more than our
own wealth and comfort. “We’re here,” he says,
“to make the world a better place.”
Says Gilson: “We look back upon our years
at Seattle Pacific as years in which the college
had a major part in developing our life goals.”
It makes sense, then, that QSI teaches
responsibility and concern for others while
encouraging computer proficiency and high
academic standards. The measurable outcomes
are often impressive. QSI graduates
can be found at such prestigious higher education
institutions as Harvard and Stanford.
Several have become respected government
leaders. But in the belief that there are no “disposable”
students, the words “failure” and
“flunk” don’t exist in the Gilson/Root vocabulary
— no matter how academically challenged
a student may be.
“We help those who struggle to see time,
not as a boundary, but as a resource,” says
Root. “Some may have to stay an extra year
but they learn that learning is not a matter of
slipping by, but of knuckling under.”
For Gilson, two trips around the world are
required each year to oversee the management
and operation of QSI schools. A former teacher
in Jordan and Tanzania, and principal of Nairobi
International School in Kenya, he established
QSI with plenty of experience in the
ways of overseas bureaucracies. Because funds
were so tight in the beginning, he had to take a
teaching job with Aramaco in Saudi Arabia to
finance the startup.
Before launching QSI, Root wore many
hats: school band director, high school principal,
and a superintendent of schools in Idaho
— all important skills for overseeing the complex
logistics of providing nearly three dozen
schools worldwide with the best equipment
and supplies. He also takes the lead in recruiting
approximately 75 new staff members each
year and is especially delighted by several
Seattle Pacific graduates who have joined the
faculty. Mark Boyd ’76, for example, was QSI’s
pioneer teacher in Yemen.
“We’re always looking for more,” says Root.
“It’s a huge world out there, and we need people
who want to change it for the good.”
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