Elisabeth Fost Maring is a clinical professor in the Department of Family Science within the School of Public Health at the University of Maryland (UMD). Maring completed a Fulbright Fellowship in Varanasi, India, and has traveled extensively through India. As the faculty advisor for Public Health Beyond Borders (PHBB), she has traveled to Peru, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia and India with UMD students. She has also led a Maryland Education Abroad program in Northern India during summer term. 

Maring’s areas of research include community violence, substance abuse, at-risk youth, and cross-cultural and international research on families. She has worked as a healthy homes specialist with University of Maryland Extension and as a direct service provider to low-income, high-risk adolescents and their families.

A skilled qualitative researcher, Maring  is interested in resilience research, looking for opportunities to broaden protective factors that lead to positive health outcomes for individuals and families. She earned her doctorate in family science from UMD in 2006 and her Master of Education from Harvard University in 1996. She enjoys running, yoga, traveling and, most of all, spending time with her husband and two children.

Madhu Kushwaha is a Professor in the Faculty of Education, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India, and a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of Maryland, USA in 2019-20. She has a Master’s degree in Sociology and a Ph.D. in Education. Her specialization includes Sociology of Education, and Gender Issues in Education.  She has designed courses on Gender Issues in Education for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Education at Banaras Hindu University, India.  Her research focuses on equity issues in education and documentation of gender discrimination in teachers’ classroom practices in Indian and American social contexts to improve teacher education practices. She has published a self-instructional module on menstrual education in Hindi for Indian adolescent girls.

She has been awarded a Global Classroom Initiative of UMD, USA to co-teach a course in the cycle of three spring semesters from 2022 to 2024 along with Prof. Maring, School of Public Health, University of Maryland, USA. The course, Teaching Menstrual Health: Dispelling Myths and Misconceptions is multidisciplinary in its orientation and caters to the intersectional needs/areas of pedagogy, public health, and gender equity. It facilitates to achievement of the United Nations Organization’s Sustainable Development Goals of quality education and gender equality.

She has publications in leading national and international journals of education and gender studies and has authored two books on Gender Issues in Education. She has completed four research projects including one international project. She is currently working on a research project on public health education under the Institute of Eminence scheme of BHU. She is actively involved with several nongovernmental organizations working in the field of education and gender equality.