The office of Latin American programs in education has been awarded a four-year, $200,000 grant to facilitate the exchange of 21 students from three universities in Canada and three in Mexico to study at UNM.
The grant, funded through the Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education, will support the North American Student Mobility Project, a cultural exchange program for graduate students in educational research.
"This program fosters a really important two-way understanding between participating countries on issues that impact them," said Julia Sherba de Valenzuela, an assistant professor in education specialties who has worked within the Latin American program at UNM.
"UNM gains as much from the international students in terms of their different life experiences and beliefs as the they do from us."
Students enrolled in the program spend a semester at a host school in the United States, Canada or Mexico as part of their current program of study.
"These projects are more important now than ever," said Guillermina Engelbrecht, director of the office of Latin American programs in education, in a UNM news release. "The world is changing very fast, and in the case of North America, rapid economic integration is being achieved in many areas, yet when it comes to improving mutual understanding, our educational systems lag far behind."
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Two UNM graduate students in language, literacy and cultural studies have been selected to participate in the Fall 2003 program. Shannon Reierson will travel to the Universidad Pedag¢gica Nacional in Mexico City and Deoksoon Kim will study at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
"I'm very excited to immerse myself in a different culture and look at the world and my life through different perspectives," Kim said. "Not only will this opportunity benefit my education and my life, it will help me in my studies tremendously."
A student from Universidad Pedag¢gica Nacional and another from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver have been selected to come to UNM for the 2003-04 academic year.
Other participating institutions in the program include the University of California at Los Angeles and Arizona State University, in Canada, McGill University; and in Mexico, Universidad Nacional Aut¢noma de MÇxico and Universidad Aut¢noma del Estado de Morelos.
"Our expectation is that students and faculty participating in these mobility projects will enrich their understanding of educational issues through learning each other's perspectives," Engelbrecht said. "We also anticipate greater participation in new joint research and teaching projects."
