Mary Ann Tetreault, associate professor of political science, recently returned from Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. She leaves next Tuesday for a three week visit to Kuwait.

Tetreault is on her second trip sponsored by the 50 year old Fulbright-Hayes Program which sends faculty and graduate students abroad to study. “It is one of the best ways to travel abroad and get to know a foreign country because you’re attached to the embassy. They are really wonderful,” she said.

Tetreault has traveled to Vietnam, China, Peru, Mexico and many Middle Eastern countries.

“I’ve used every place I’ve gone to expand my knowledge and experience of what’s going on,” Tetreault said. “I can’t imagine going someplace and not having a program where you actually learn something coherent.”

Tetreault’s experiences have enriched her work as a faculty member, as a member of the Women’s Studies Program Committee and as a former director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics.

“I have nothing but the greatest admiration for Mary Ann. She has scholarly international interests and expertise that we want to develop at ISU,” Linda Galyon, an associate professor of English, said.

“She will teach a women’s study course in the spring, and we are delighted to have her,” she said. Galyon has chaired the Women’s Studies Program Committee for the past three years.

Tetreault is going to Kuwait as part of her continuing research on the middle eastern gulf region.

“I recently finished a monograph on democratization in Kuwait,” Tetreault said. Kuwait is having an election and Tetreault wants to update her information before publication.

Tetreault will also study the oil market. “I think there will be structural changes in the energy market over the next few years as we begin to come to grips on a global basis with the things like global warming and other impacts on fossil fuels,” Tetreault said.

“I really think we’re going to see some changes, a very different kind of politics, and a very different kind of economy,” she said.

“I’ve never lived in a world in my country where people said, the hell with kids, just let them starve. Their parents are no good, we don’t care,” Tetreault said. “I can’t believe this is happening in my world.”

Tetreault said that she sees people in the middle east and in Slovakia dealing with extremely high unemployment rates (14% in Slovakia) and are fearful about moving from socialism into a market economy.

“These kinds of anxieties and real pressures lead to a great deal of violence. They lead to organizations that aren’t productive,” Tetreault said.

The external spaces also suffered as entire populations of agricultural villages were forcibly transported into other areas to work at filthy, contaminating factories and live in cheap mass-produced housing.

When asked what she, as a political scientist, would do to improve Iowa State University, Tetreault replied, “I think that I would spend a lot more time thinking about the university as a community and less about thinking of the university as a business.”

“Jane Smiley wrote about it in “Moo”,” Tetreault said, “the idea that students are customers. But the students aren’t even well treated as customers.”

“I was really shocked when I came here, for example, to see what a student had to go through to graduate— to take that piece of paper to be checked off. It’s degrading,” Tetreault said. “People have computers…you don’t have to send people around.

“There’s more to the bottom line than money. I think you could make a better argument to the state if you could show other things on your bottom line besides surpluses and deficits,” Tetreault said.

“I love Iowa. I love my students, they’re so prepared they always surprise me. It’s a great place to work, but people are unhappy a lot of the time. These are serious issues that need to be carefully thought about,” she said.

Brenda Daly, associate professor of English and Women’s Studies, said, “Professor Tetreault is an excellent scholar with a gift for making her scholarship understandable and not arcane to a wide audience.”