UFV in the program 100K Strong in the Americas
In 2014, UFV started a project funded by the program 100k Strong in the Americas, entitled “Improving student exchange between UFV and American universities”. The main goal of the project is to increase the number of exchange students between UFV and American institutions. The key partners in the U.S. are: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Iowa State University, University of Kentucky, Purdue University and Texas A&M University.
Several activities were proposed, divided into 4 groups:
- Implementing classes in English at UFV.
- Improving Portuguese training for the American exchange students.
- Organizing a group of volunteer UFV students to help the American students in Viçosa (called “UFV Ambassadors”).
- Offering English training and English proficiency tests to UFV students.
This page presents pictures, links to news and other information about the development of the project.
Additional information:
- Information about American exchange students who studied at UFV in 2014 and 2015 can be found here.
- Information about UFV students who had an exchange experience in the U.S. in 2014 and 2015 can be found here.
In April 2014, a contract was signed between UFV and Partners ot the Americas. UFV would received U$25,000 for the project. The President of UFV signed the document together with the director of Funarbe, the agency that manages project resources at UFV.
Details were published in the UFV web site (in Portuguese).
One of the most important activities of the project is the implementation of classes in English at UFV, especially for undergraduate students. In July 2014, a training was offered to UFV faculty members in order to enhance their abilities to teach subjects in English. The training used a methodology known as CLIL (Contente and Language Integrated Learning) and was given by an instructor from the University of Queensland (Australia).
Details were published in the UFV website (in Portuguese) and also in the local TV (the interview with the instructor is in English).
A final report from the University of Queensland can be found here.
Classes in English for undergraduate students is a UFV pioneer initiative among the Brazilian public universities. This initiative was discussed by the most important Brazilian newspaper (paper and online, in Portuguese) and also by the most important Brazilian TV channel (in Portuguese). In both cases, the Director Vladimir Oliveira Di Iorio was interviewed.
<The TV link is a little unstable. You may have to click more than once in order to access the information.>
In April 2015, the Director of International Affairs, Prof. Vladimir Oliveira Di Iorio, attended the annual conferece of FAUBAI (http://www.faubai.org.br/conf/
An abstract of the presentation can be found here.
Details were published in the UFV website (in Portuguese).
The team of the Office of International Affairs worked hard in 2014 and 2015 to offer over 13,000 places of TOEFL tests for the UFV students, in the 3 campuses of the university. Over 6,000 students actually registered for the tests. A complete report can be found here.
Some of these applications were published in the UFV website (in Portuguese).
In May 2014, UFV received 7 students and 1 professor from the Dance program of the Illinois State University, for a 2-week program. The American visitors had several classes and other activities related to Brazilian and American dance, together with professors and students from the UFV Dance program, .
Details were published in the UFV website , and one more time (in Portuguese).
In May 2014, UFV received a delegation of 20 students and several professors from the Iowa State University and the University of Kentucky, for a 1-week program. Details were published in the UFV website (in Portuguese).
Not everything went well during the execution of the project. In May 2014, UFV received 5 students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and 2 students from Purdue University, for a 8-week program. They worked with research internships and had Portuguese classes. In June, the student Richard Fu, from UIUC, drowned when he was in a beach, during a trip in a long holiday. His parents came to Brazil a few days later, but the body was never found.
This incident became news at UFV, in several Brazilian media (1, 2) and also internationally.
In July 2015, the remaining funds of the project were used for producing printed material for the exchange students and uniforms for the UFV volunteers students of the program “UFV Ambassadors”.
In June 2015, UFV received 20 students and 3 professors from the Texas A&M University for a 3-week program. The sudents followed 2 courses in English together with 40 UFV students: NUT385 (Special Topics on Nutrition and Food) and TAL493 (Special Topics on Food Science and Technology). The courses included visits to several sites related to food production. They also received Portuguese training and classes of Brazilian typical dance.
Details were published in the UFV website (in Portuguese). A Facebook page was created for communication between the participants.
Several pictures of these activities are presented below.
