Engage globally

FIU's international community engagement efforts challenge students and faculty to work in meaningful ways with communities around the world to exchange knowledge that improves quality of life for all.

With faculty who are leaders in their respective disciplines, engaged students, and a commitment to translating theory into effective practice, FIU is contributing vital research and on-the-ground support to communities across the globe. Collaborations with partner institutions around the world are key to our ability to create mutually transformative relationships. The university is moving ever-forward in nurturing these relationships and encouraging collaborative solutions to global problems.

Below is a brief sampling of some of our international initiatives, which are helping to enhance the FIU community's global perspective.

 

Economic Development

Eugenio Pino and Family Global Entrepreneurship Center

• Connecting large companies and investment firms with emerging ventures in South Florida and Latin America
• Nurturing innovation based firms

The Eugenio Pino and Family Global Entrepreneurship Center provides the community with resources and contacts that enable them to reach their entrepreneurial objective of designing and launching successful new ventures based on innovative concepts.

The center organizes the Americas Venture Capital Conference, a unique forum for innovative enterprises in South Florida and Latin America to showcase their ventures, and to meet established firms and potential investors.  

Read press releases in English and Spanish regarding the 2011 Americas Venture Capital Conference hosted by Eugenio Pino and Family Global Entrepreneurship Center and the College of Business Administration.

Click here for the press release in English.
Click here for the press release in Spanish.

Founded in 2003, the Pino Center received a prestigious $3 million grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City to promote entrepreneurship activities on a multi-disciplinary, university-wide basis, The Kauffman Foundation grant has been instrumental in helping the Center to launch core programs.

The Kauffman Professors Program has brought 35 full-time faculty members to FIU, each receiving awards of up to $15,000 to foster entrepreneurial activities, research, and courses within their home disciplines.

In the iEntrepreneurship Lab, FIU students are paired with students in one of the Latin American university affiliates to perform a joint project on an emerging Latin American or South Florida venture.

The GIVe Knowledge Base is a clearinghouse that matches promising, emerging companies from South Florida and Latin America with established firms in the Americas. The industries targeted range from agriculture and water quality to consumer products. The GIVe Knowledge Base attracts the attention and participation of some of the world’s most respected corporations seeking to co-venture with South Florida and Latin American firms. 

Read more about the Eugenio Pino and Family Global Entrepreneurship Center. 

Education

COLLEGE OF EDUCATION AND MISSION INTERNATIONAL RESCUE CHARITIES DOMINICAN REPUBLICAN PROJECT

 

Florida International University's (FIU's) College of Education faculty worked to transform the school culture and improve educational outcomes through professional development of teachers at three Mission International Rescue (MIR) schools in La Romana, Dominican Republic on August 1-5, 2011. Instructors from Primaria MIR (elementary school), Politécnico Fundación MIR (girls' middle and vocational school) and Politécnico MIR Esperanza (boys' middle and vocational school) participated in the week-long workshop. During an initial assessment in April 2011, MIR administration, FIU faculty and MIR educators agreed there was a need for professional development to enhance teaching and consequently, improve student learning.

The FIU team, led by Assistant Dean of Community Engagement Dr. Deborah Hasson, Associate Chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning Dr. Maria Fernandez, Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education Dr. Laura Dinehart and Instructor and Partnership in Academic Communities (PAC) Coordinator Dr. Maria Vazquez steered the learning process. Professional development was centered on the research developed by Dr. Fernandez on Micro-teaching Lesson Study. Micro-teaching Lesson Study is a collaborative and reflective planning process that requires teachers to be familiar with a number of pedagogical theories and strategies. All instruction, materials and activities were conducted in Spanish.

Each FIU presenter used one cooperative learning activity; therefore, participants could experience the benefits of the learning modality. "The need for different approaches to teaching and student management in the classroom is very important. Many of the MIR teachers were only doing direct instruction and did not implement strategies to engage students in the learning process," said Dr. Fernandez.

The principals from the three schools have maintained a relationship with Dr. Fernandez and Dr. Hasson, sending pictures and video clips which show the instructors applying what they have learned in the various professional development sessions. "I think it is wonderful and demonstrates that they implemented what they learned during the week. We continue to respond to their questions and see that they continue to grow beyond what they learned during the week-long professional development," said Dr. Fernandez.

The MIR Foundation has expressed a desire to continue the partnership with FIU and expand the project to include FIU students at the undergraduate and graduate levels who will travel to La Romana and continue working with students and teachers at the schools. FIU's College of Education faculty will provide continuous support throughout the academic year with repeat visits to La Romana. "We plan to go back during the spring semester to follow up and provide continuous support for a couple of days to observe and give feedback. Part of our visit will also include implementing service-learning and other engagement activities," said Dr. Fernandez. FIU students will visit MIR Esperanza school from March 10-18, 2012 as an Alternative Spring Break, a program that gives students a chance to volunteer in other countries.

Learn more about the three MIR schools at http://www.mircharities.org/.

Digital Library of the Caribbean

1. Provides access to Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials held in archives, libraries and private collections
2. Facilitates digitization training for teachers and scholars

The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is an international collaboration of 18 educational, research, governmental and non-governmental institutions. Limited access to resources and lack of lesson plans covering the Caribbean in K-12 and higher education prompted dLOC to create this digital collection of more than 1.25 million pages of Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials held in archives, libraries and private collections.

The initiative helps educators navigate dLOC resources and incorporate them into their curriculum. The project also teaches the local partner institution to digitize resources fo r preservation. Project staff have trained approximately 350 library and archive staff at 14 Caribbean institutions since 2007, and digitization is now included in government plans of at least five member institutions.

Current partners include the Archives Nationales d'Haïti, Biblioteca Nacional Aruba, Belize National Library Service and Information System, College of The Bahamas, and the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela, among others. FIU partners include the Latin American and Caribbean Center, the FIU Libraries and contributing faculty from across several academic disciplines. Approximately 120 FIU students contribute annually.

After the devastating earthquake in Haiti, dLOC initiated the Protecting Haitian Patrimony Initiative. The goal is help the country’s three largest heritage libraries and the National Archives, which suffered significant damage, protect the already-brittle rare books and documents left in piles and covered in debris.

 

Environment

Free Environmental Summer Camps in the Bahamas

• Providing Bahamian campers with their first experience with local ecosystems
• Engaging graduate students in outreach training opportunities

FIU faculty, in partnership with Abaco’s Friends of the Environment, helped develop and now help run local, free summer environmental camps in the Bahamas. The camps are held simultaneously in north, central and south Abaco as well as a traveling camp that visits the surrounding Cays. Approximately 100 local children participate each year.

The camps engage students ages 7-13 in activities that teach them about local terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Field trips to coral reefs, sinkholes and pine forests are paired with classroom instruction that reinforces the importance of these critical Bahamian ecosystems. For many students, the Friends of the Environment summer camps provide their first experience with local Bahamian ecosystems. Simultaneously, these camps provide an excellent outreach training opportunity for graduate students.

 

Shark Bay Ecosystem Research Project

• FIU professor Mike Heithaus leads the Shark Bay Ecosystem Research Project in Australia
• The project’s goal is to determine how the system works and how mankind can protect it and other marine communities

Since 1997, professor Mike Heithaus, the director of the School of Environment, Arts and Society, has led the Shark Bay Ecosystem Research Project (SBERP) in Australia.

SBERP is an international collaborative project involving researchers from FIU and Simon Fraser University. Heithaus and his colleagues have been using the Shark Bay, Western Australia, seagrass ecosystem as a model system for determining the ecological role of tiger sharks.

Since man is quickly changing the marine landscape, seagrass beds are disappearing and populations of sharks, turtles, and sea cows are declining, the team strives to find ways to protect and restore these critical coastal ecosystems. To that end, they need to understand these species’ ecological roles and determine how these ecosystems functioned before people intervened.

The SBERP team disseminates the results of its work to a wide audience through their Web site, documentary films and curriculum and teacher resources for secondary schools.

Read more on the Shark Bay Ecosystem Research Project.

 

Protecting Marine and Terrestrial Environments

• Through his Burkepile Lab, FIU professor Deron Burkepile seeks to mitigate the effects of mankind on nature
• Groundbreaking research is conducted in North America and South African savannas

Biology assistant professor Deron Burkepile’s research explores how humans impact marine and terrestrial ecosystems and what we can do to ultimately mitigate the resulting damage. To this end he ventures into the Florida Keys reefs to study the role of herbivores in driving seaweed dynamics or travels to South Africa to observe exotic animals in their natural grassland communities.

Burkepile’s research uses experimental, observational and statistical techniques to ask basic and applied ecological questions about how biotic and abiotic forces determine community structure and ecosystem processes.

Off Key Largo, he does research in the Aquarius – a 40-foot underwater lab similar to a stationary submarine. He also spends three or four weeks every year in Kruger National Park in South Africa, where he focuses on what happens to the ecosystems of grassland communities when overhunting and poaching put different groups of large herbivores – such as elephants, wildebeest and impala – at risk.

Read more on the Burkepile Lab.

 

Saving the Rivers

• FIU professor Michael McClain specializes in watershed science and the integrated management of freshwater resources in the developing world
• A $4.5 million USAID grant has helped him develop water management initiatives in South America, Africa and Asia

Environmental Studies associate professor Michael McClain’s research focuses tropical river basins, as well as the links between natural ecosystem processes, human activities and water resources.

McClain is especially interested in how humans depend on the integrity of natural systems and how we can capitalize on ecosystem services to improve the management of our environment. Together with his students, he investigates these interactions through combined field sampling, community surveys, laboratory experiments, satellite image analysis and computer modeling.

For the past decade, his work had initially focused in the Amazon River basin, but through a $4.45 million grant from the United States Agency for International Development, he expanded his research to include Asia and Africa through the Global Water for Sustainability Program.

The goal is to design ways to implement water resources management plans that address a variety of needs in these areas.

Read more and on the Global Water for Sustainability Program.

Health

Project Hope

• Medical mission to Indonesia a collaboration between Project Hope and the U.S. Navy
• Five-week adventure included FIU students and faculty

In the summer of 2010, two nurse practitioner students and one faculty member at FIU boarded the USNS Mercy, a naval hospital ship in Singapore, bound for a five-week medical mission to Indonesia. The mission is a joint effort between Project HOPE and the U.S. Navy as part of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Partnership 2010.

Project Hope began in 1958 as a volunteer effort with the goal to "make health care available for people around the globe."  For many years, Project Hope consisted of a floating hospital ship staffed with volunteers that traveled around the world providing medical care and education. It eventuallly became a land-based organization, but after the tsunami in South East Asia in late 2004, Project Hope returned to the seas by joining efforts with the U.S. Navy. Project Hope and the U.S. Navy now sponsor yearly medical missions to both South East Asia/Oceania and to Haiti/CentralAmerica/South America.

Check out the FIU Project Hope blog kept by the FIU contingent here.

Law

College of Law wins $22 million damage award
for victims of Liberian torture

• Defendant Chuckie Taylor, son of former Liberian dictator, headed infamous Liberian Anti-Terrorism Unit
• Clinic allows student attorneys to act on behalf of disadvantaged immigrants from around the world
• Immigration clinic is one of six in-house clinics in the College of Law

In 2009, College of Law students in the Carlos A. Costa Immigration and Human Rights Clinic took on an international case of historic significance. They represented five Liberians in a 13-month-long civil trial that argued Chuckie Taylor, the son of the former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, had brutally tortured them leaving irreversible physical and psychological damage. In February 2010, the students celebrated justice when they won a $22 million verdict for the torture victims.

Students who participate in this clinic intervene on behalf of vulnerable immigrants of all nationalities. Student attorneys represent refugees seeking asylum in this country as a result of political persecution in their countries of origin; Cuban and Haitian nationals seeking relief under country-specific immigration legislation; immigrant workers who have been victims of wage theft; and other vulnerable populations, such as abused spouses and children, unaccompanied minors, and aliens subject to immigration detention. Representation occurs in trials before immigration judges; in non-adversarial agency interviews; in appeals to the Board of Immigration Appeals; and in appeals to the federal courts.

In recent years the Clinic has expanded its advocacy to include international human rights work. This work includes international fieldwork and investigation; litigation before foreign courts; proceedings before international bodies such as the Organization of American States; and in litigation in U.S. federal courts on behalf of victims of human rights abuses abroad. 

Read more about the $22 million verdict by College of Law.

 

PRESENTATIONS

Click here for the Florida International University: International Expertise presentation.

Click here for the Global Learning for Global Citizenship: FIU'S Worlds Ahead Contribution to International Development presentation.