Dr. Niroj Bhattarai received his undergraduate degree from Hiram College in Ohio and his PhD in Economics from Colorado State University. He is a Professor of Economics at Front Range Community College, and a founding member/Research Associate at the Poverty Action Center, Department of Economics, at Colorado State University. His research is primarily in the field of education and its role in development. Dr. Bhattarai and his students at FRCC, in partnership with Rotary, built gender-specific toilets in a village in Nepal, where they were able to document increases in both enrollment and attendance, particularly for girls. His recent research, along with Drs. Anita Alves-Pena and Alexandra Bernasek, both Professors at from Colorado State University, focuses on factors affecting school attendance in rural and urban Nepal, where they discovered that menstruation, and lack of facilities, played a major role in girls’ attendance and experience in school.