{"id":3054,"date":"2019-05-13T12:15:27","date_gmt":"2019-05-13T16:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/?p=3054"},"modified":"2025-01-28T09:18:36","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T14:18:36","slug":"a-different-kind-of-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/2019\/05\/a-different-kind-of-service\/","title":{"rendered":"A Different Kind of Service"},"content":{"rendered":"
Despite ingrained expectations about the profession he\u2019d pursue, Erick Agbleke, M.A. \u201919 has found his calling in international affairs.<\/div><\/div>\n

\u201cIn the immigrant community,\u201d says Erick Agbleke, M.A. \u201919, \u201cwe have a little joke that says you either become a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or a disgrace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talk about pressure. Agbleke was fully aware of those deeply ingrained expectations when he enrolled in Seton Hall\u2019s graduate program in Diplomacy and International Relations, a course of study that was likely to propel him toward a career in an entirely different direction. No matter, because Agbleke has developed a new perspective on what it means to be successful, a reimagining rooted largely in the 10 weeks he spent last summer as an intern at the U.S. Embassy in Togo.<\/p>\n

His deployment in the tiny West African nation was no coincidence. Agbleke was born in Togo and spent the first 13 years of his life there before his family moved to the United States, eventually settling in Ohio. He earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in criminal justice from the University of Cincinnati, enlisted in the Ohio Army National Guard, and still serves as an intelligence officer in the Army Reserve. But it was a brief career in corporate America \u2014 where he discovered that it wasn\u2019t for him \u2014 that led Agbleke to Seton Hall and his passion for international affairs. \u201cThe way they designed the program was what attracted me to the school,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause not every school gives you that flexibility to design a program for yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Upon arriving at the embassy in the capital city of Lom\u00e9, Agbleke was assigned to write a report on the problem of wildlife trafficking in Togo. Because of its location on the Gulf of Guinea, its porous borders, and its advanced transportation system, Togo is a hub for illegal trafficking of elephant ivory, leopard skins, and all manner of ill-gotten game.<\/p>\n

Agbleke\u2019s supervisor figured the assignment would take three weeks, but Agbleke invoked the same research and project-management skills he\u2019d honed in the military and the working world. He finished the report in three days. His supervisor took note.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe what helped me was having the professional background that I\u2019ve had for many years working different jobs, different projects,\u201d Agbleke says. \u201cI was able to bring all the stuff together and that\u2019s when he saw, well, this wasn\u2019t just a regular intern. This was someone that I can actually use.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those traits have also impressed his professors at Seton Hall. \u201cHe has a keen mind,\u201d Father Bryan K. Muz\u00e1s, an assistant professor in the School of Diplomacy and International Relations, says of Agbleke, \u201cand his military background gives him an outlook that has enriched many a class discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n

By summer\u2019s end, Agbleke had also contracted a local nongovernmental organization to create a recycling program for high-school students. And on a one-week trip to northern Togo to inspect infrastructure projects, he met Togolese women who each day collect water from the single pump that supplies their entire village.<\/p>\n

For Agbleke, those 10 weeks shook his world, and the lessons learned continue to resonate. \u201cI don\u2019t think you can beat the practicality of having an internship,\u201d he says. \u201cWe can sit in class and I can read the books about development, but it was a different experience going there, putting the water on top of my head, talking to those ladies, understanding what their struggles were every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

As graduation approaches, Agbleke has set his sights on a career as a State Department diplomat and, perhaps someday, an ambassador. He hopes to focus on African affairs, but wherever his career takes him, he will carry his embassy internship with him because his experience in Togo redefined his notion of success.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, we all want to change the world in some way,\u201d Agbleke says. \u201cBut the way I look at it, anywhere I am, that is my world. So I\u2019m not trying to change the whole world, I\u2019m just trying to change everywhere I find myself. And by doing what I\u2019m supposed to be doing, doing what I\u2019m called to do at that moment, for me, that is being successful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Christopher Hann is a freelance writer and editor in New Jersey.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite ingrained expectations about the profession he’d pursue, Erick Agbleke, M.A. ’19 has found his calling in international affairs. <\/p>\n

Continue ReadingA Different Kind of Service<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4073,"featured_media":3071,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247,258,12,8,15,17,6],"tags":[239,237,238],"class_list":["post-3054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2019-2022","category-articles-2015-2019","category-features","category-leadership","category-pirates-in-print","category-scholarship","category-students","tag-diplomacy-and-international-relations","tag-erick-agbleke","tag-international-affairs","entry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4073"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3054"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3469,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3054\/revisions\/3469"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}