Keith Davis Watenpaugh, Professor and Director of UC Davis Human Rights Studies and Director of Article 26 Backpack™, pens IIE (Institute of International Education) Networker article with Article 26 Backpack™ colleagues.

McAllister’s work in Lebanon is just one way she takes on human rights issues. A fourth-year design major and human rights minor, McAllister says she encounters human rights issues every day in every corner of her life.

The Article 26 Backpack™ was developed as a new human rights tool for vulnerable student academic and employment mobility. The team behind the backpack, Dr. Keith Watenpaugh of the University of California Davis, working in collaboration with experts at the American University in Beirut, and the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, has extensive experience working with university-age refugees, especially refugee populations in Lebanon.

Last month, AACRAO staff traveled to Lebanon with human rights experts from University of California-Davis to discuss the development of a cloud-based academic credentials “backpack” to help students fleeing war, economic collapse, or natural disasters.

Over the course of six days in mid-November, 2017, the University of California, Davis, in collaboration with the American University of Beirut and the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, conducted the first exercise of the universal academic mobility tool, the Article 26 Backpack™ at three locations in Lebanon.

The University of California, Davis, will use a $500,000 core grant from the Ford Foundation to develop Article 26 Backpack, a cloud-based “ecosystem” to help refugees and other vulnerable young people reclaim their education.

Want to find your calling? Study abroad. So says contemporary Middle East historian Keith Watenpaugh, professor and founding director of the Human Rights Studies Program at the University of California, Davis.