College of Education among recipients of 100,000 Strong in the Americas Innovation Fund Grant
by Emma Carberry
Outreach Coordinator, College of Education
November 19, 2018
At a bilateral event promoting international exchange held in Santiago de Chile, U.S. Ambassador Carol Z. Perez announced that Texas State University College of Education faculty were named among those awarded a 100,000 Strong in the Americas Innovation Fund Grant. The 100,000 Strong in the Americas Innovation Fund is the public-private sector collaboration between the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Embassies, Partners of the Americas, NAFSA, corporations, and foundations working together to stimulate new higher education partnerships between the United States and the rest of the Western Hemisphere.
The grant competition, sponsored by the MetLife Foundation, sought out higher education institutions that would provide shorter-term academic exchange opportunities between the United States and Latin America to students who traditionally lack the resources or are underrepresented in international mobility programs. Among the nine teams to receive the $25,000 award was the Migration, Inclusion & Diversity in Texan and Chilean K-12 Schools and Local Communities: MID Texas-Chile Project, a partnership between Universidad Alberto Hurtado and Texas State University.
The MID Texas-Chile Project is reflective of the College of Education’s commitment to the university’s Latin Engagement Plan and its interest in bilingual and bicultural education. The project continues the established partnership between Texas State University and Universidad Alberto Hurtado (UAH) in Chile, which launched Project LEARN-Chile in 2015, another project funded through the 100,000 Strong in the Americas Innovation Fund. While Project LEARN-Chile provided study and research abroad experiences for doctoral students, the MID Texas-Chile Project implements a new bidirectional study abroad model for undergraduate teacher education students. In this model, students from both universities will participate in a seminar together that explores issues of migration, inclusion and diversity. One of the program’s objectives is for Texas State and UAH students to engage in binational dialogue about the education implications of these issues and how to best serve diverse communities in both countries. The initial implementation of the MID Texas-Chile Project will provide academic exchange opportunities for nine undergraduate UAH students, one UAH professor and three Texas State professors. It will establish an ongoing study abroad course in Chile for Texas State’s teacher education students, and a similar model in Texas for UAH students who are studying to be teachers of the English language.
The project will be carried out by Drs. Jesse Gainer, Minda López, Kiyomi Sánchez-Suzuki Colegrove, and Michael O’Malley in the College of Education, as well as Manuel Goel, the Director of Latin American Engagement in the International Office, who will be working with their Chilean counterparts at Universidad Alberto Hurtado. College of Education Dean Michael O’Malley is excited to continue the university’s partnership with UAH through the support 100,00 Strong in the Americas. “I’m grateful for this significant opportunity,” Dean O’Malley said, “to build sustainable international exchange programs in teacher education that will strengthen our relationships with Latin America and better prepare new teachers from both countries with the vision and skills for transforming educational systems in a spirit of cooperation across the Western Hemisphere.”
Texas State was represented at the awards announcement in Santiago by Amy Biedermann, Coordinator of Texas State COE Programs in Chile, and Doctoral Research Assistant in the Adult, Professional and Community Education doctoral program. Biedermann is headquartered in Santiago for five months.
The announcement of the Innovation Fund awardees coincides with International Education Week, which is a joint initiative between the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Embassies, the U.S. Department of Education, NGOs, higher education institutions and other entities working to promote and recognize the benefits of international education and academic exchanges worldwide.