FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - The University of Arkansas signed its first formal agreement with a Latin American University this summer when a team of faculty and administrators visited the Universidad Autónoma de Puebla in Mexico. They plan to expand on the groundwork laid during previous UA study missions to Puebla that have involved Fulbright College faculty from Latin American Studies and Foreign Languages as well as the College of Architecture and the Walton College of Business.

"The opportunities for combining faculty expertise to create strong research teams are tremendous," said Charles Adams, associate dean of international programs in Fulbright College. "On this trip, for example, we took biologist Kimberly Smith, who for years has studied the migratory patterns of birds at risk in Latin America, using geographic information systems and geo-spatial data to set priorities for conservation."

The new Agreement for Cooperation and Exchange builds on an ongoing collaboration begun in 1998, when Puebla University’s Language Center began hosting the UA’s annual Summer Study Abroad Program in Mexico. Last year, recent graduates from Puebla University came to the U of A for the first time, as teaching assistants in master’s degree programs.

"As we expand our curriculum, we plan to involve new and different groups of faculty in this partnership. Puebla faculty will in turn will visit our campus, with the goal of strengthening programs through connecting faculty expertise on both campuses," said Steven Bell, director of the Latin American Studies Program.

A $130,000 Department of Education Title VI grant awarded in May 2000 has invigorated the Latin American Studies Program: in addition to supporting this new partnership, additional interdisciplinary courses are now being offered, a new faculty position has been created, and a web site, listserv, and newsletter are being added to increase awareness of program offerings.

The agreement assures that the U of A will also be able to build resources for the many Hispanics who have immigrated to northwest Arkansas in recent years. Bell says that the program will continue to offer plays and other cultural activities in Spanish as well as lectures featuring prominent Latin American scholars and specialists.

"One of our first objectives will be to establish undergraduate exchanges. Our students need to discover how their disciplines actually live, breathe, and work in other languages and cultures, to see how Spanish, for example, has a real and vital everyday existence. The key to being bilingual and multicultural is to actually experience firsthand the culture you are studying and hear speakers fluent in the language," said Bell.

Also accompanying Bell and Adams on the trip to Puebla were James Horton, principal investigator of the DOE grant, Raymond Eichmann, chair of foreign languages, and Cindy Sagers, a faculty member from biological sciences. They held several meetings with leaders and faculty at the Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, including the Chancellor, the Honorable Enrique Doger Guerrero, the Dean of the School of Humanities, Dr. Roberto Hernández Oramas, and faculty in the College of Business Administration.

They discussed possible joint research interests, such as using advanced spatial technologies to solve problems in historical preservation and urbanization. Biology chair Gonzalo Yanes Gómez gave Professors Sagers and Smith a tour of the science facilities.

The Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP) is one of the oldest and largest state universities in Mexico, created in 1578 as the Colegio de la Compañía de Jesús de San Gerónimo. Today the university has 26,688 students in 55 undergraduate programs and 2,069 students in master’s and Ph.D. programs. The Institute for Scientific Information has recognized BUAP as one of the 10 most productive research institutions in Mexico. The University seeks to lead the push among Mexico’s public universities to promote international exchange and to modernize programs of study.

"This agreement reflects our ongoing commitment to international exchange and education," said Adams. "Historian Arnold Toynbee once observed that the Fulbright Scholarship Program was one of the really generous and imaginative things that have been done in the world since Word War II," said Adams.

"In the spirit of the Fulbright legacy, we see partnerships and exchange programs with other universities as a vital part of our mission and as key to promoting tolerance among different cultures."