Teaching, Consultancy, and Learning Solutions
My work seats where education, organizations, and public service meet. For more than two decades, I have designed curricula, advised institutions on their education systems, and taught adult learners across policing, security, vocational teacher education, and higher education. Below is a description of that work by institution.
Beveiligings- en Bijstandsdienst Suriname (BBS)
CURRICULUM DESIGN AND INSTRUCTION
For the Security and Assistance Service of Suriname, I developed competency-based training frameworks that translated the organization’s operational strategy into structured, teachable learning pathways. The work covered the full design cycle: analyzing the tasks and standards the job actually demanded, defining competencies and learning outcomes, sequencing course content, and building the assessment logic used to determine whether an officer was ready for duty. The result was a curriculum that connected classroom instruction directly to field responsibility rather than treating the two as separate worlds.
Korps Politie Suriname (KPS)
CURRICULUM LEADERSHIP ACROSS ALL TRAINING LEVELS
Within the Suriname Police Force I led and contributed to curriculum development across every level of police education, from entry-level recruit training through advanced and command-level programs. As Deputy Head of the Suriname Police Academy, I shared responsibility for the governance of a national training institution, including education policy, curriculum renewal, faculty and staff development, and quality assurance. This work required aligning what officers learn with what the organization needs, and building coherent progression routes so that officers could advance through clearly defined stages of professional qualification.
Alongside curriculum design, I served in senior command roles that gave me a practitioner’s view of how training performs once officers are in the field. That combination, designing the education and then living with its consequences, continues to shape how I approach professional learning.
Ministry of Justice and Police, Suriname
ADVISORY AND CONSULTANCY
I served as a consultant to the Minister of Justice and Police on the education system of the ministry. The assignment concerned the architecture of professional education across the ministry’s institutions: how training was organized, how it was governed, where the gaps and duplications were, and what would be required to bring the system into line with the ministry’s mandate. My advice covered education policy, institutional structure, curriculum standards, and the development of the people responsible for delivering training.
Lerarenopleiding Beroepsonderwijs Suriname (LOBO)
VOCATIONAL TEACHER EDUCATION AND PEDAGOGY
At Suriname’s teacher training college for vocational education, I taught and coordinated the Department of Educational Science and Pedagogy for eight years, and advised on the development of several curricula in pedagogy for vocational education. The work centered on preparing teachers to teach: instructional design, learning theory applied to practical settings, assessment, and classroom practice in technical and vocational fields. It gave me a close understanding of teacher professionalization and of the daily realities that determine whether a curriculum survives contact with a classroom.
Michigan Technological University
RESEARCH COLLABORATION AND FIELD-BASED LEARNING
As part of a research team led by Dr. Wayne Gersie, I contributed to a Suriname-based study of a multidisciplinary, field-based experiential learning program in natural resource sustainability. My role spanned research design and data collection through analysis and manuscript development, working with both qualitative and quantitative strands and integrating them. The study examined how structured field experience shapes students’ research skills, technical competence, ethical awareness, and readiness for professional work, and it drew on my knowledge of the Surinamese context to support fieldwork with local institutions and participants.
The Pennsylvania State University
TEACHING, PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT, AND GRANTS
At Penn State I teach a First-Year Seminar in the Smeal College of Business, where I work with students on the transition into university learning, academic and professional decision-making, and the habits that carry them through a degree.
Within Penn State Global, I work on grant development for international education initiatives, identifying funding opportunities, building proposals, and supporting institutional partnerships with universities and organizations abroad. I also serve on the curriculum committee of the Global Careers Institute and co-lead the Global Career Mobility Lab, work that brings my curriculum background into the design of programming that prepares students for globally connected careers.
Marcha Reumel is a scholar-practitioner in workforce education, organization development, and leadership, with more than two decades of senior public-sector leadership experience.
Her career began in practice: leading teams, developing people, and building training and education systems in demanding institutional environments. That experience shaped the questions she now pursues as a doctoral candidate in Workforce Education and Development at Penn State, where her research focuses on how organizations prepare their people to lead, decide, and perform.
Marcha Reumel