Back to Table of
Contents
GRADUATE PROGRAMS IN LATIN AMERICA:
AN
INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION
Margarita Zapata-Turcotte, James T. Canning, William Moloney, and Charles
Steele,
University of Massachusetts Lowell
This paper reports on a project to improve the engineering education infrastructure in Latin America. A number of Latin American universities wish to start graduate programs in computer science and engineering, but that do not have sufficient research faculty to do so. To meet the needs of these universities, the University of Massachusetts Lowell has created a program to help them develop a critical mass of research faculty. We describe our lessons learned about the development of relationships between a US university and Latin American universities, about recruitment and retention, about the cost-effectiveness of the program, and about the kinds of logistical support that students entering the program require.
The goal of the Graduate Latin American Recruitment Program is to improve the engineering education infrastructure in Latin America. In order to meet the needs of Latin American universities that wish to start graduate programs in computer science and engineering but that do not have sufficient research faculty to do so, the University of Massachusetts Lowell has created a program to help such universities develop a critical mass of research faculty.
The program has three overlapping activities: (1) bringing faculty members from Latin American universities to UMass Lowell to earn advanced degrees in computer science and engineering; (2) offering UMass Lowell courses on site in Latin America to faculty members who will then have a head start on their degree programs before coming to UMass Lowell; and (3) helping returning faculty members to start advanced degree programs of their own at their home universities.
In this paper, we describe the program and its history. We also provide quotations from interviews with participants in the program (including faculty from Latin American universities who have come to UMass Lowell to study, an administrator from the home institution of some of those faculty, and UMass Lowell faculty and administrators), and offer advice to other US and Latin American institutions that might want to embark on a similar program. In particular, we describe our lessons learned about the development of relationships between a US university and Latin American universities, about recruitment, about the cost-effectiveness of the program, and about the kinds of logistical support that students entering the program require.
During the 1993-1994 academic year, Margarita Zapata-Turcotte (Director of Extemal Programs) and faculty members of the UMass Lowell Department of Computer Science created a special outreach program aimed at Latin American academics. Their initial goal was to recruit five students from Latin America into the computer science doctoral program by the fall of 1994. That effort has grown into the Graduate Latin American Recruitment Program (GLARP).
The goal of the program is to improve the engineering education infrastructure in Latin America by increasing the number of faculty with advanced degrees and thus with the credentials to start advanced degree programs of their own.
The program has three components. The first is a partnership by which Latin American faculty members pursue advanced degrees at UMass Lowell. The second is an arrangement for offering UMass Lowell prerequisite and core courses on site at host universities in Latin America. The third is the establishment of new advanced degree programs by faculty who complete their degrees at UMass Lowell and retum to their home universities. In this section, we describe each of these components.
Latin American Faculty Earn Degrees at UMass Lowell
Since the program's modest beginnings in 1994, 19 university faculty members from Venezuela, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, El Salvador and Mexico have entered the program. All are enrolled at UMass Lowell as full-time graduate students pursuing Master's and doctoral degrees in computer science and other technical disciplines. Fifteen are fully-funded by their home institutions and governments, and are committed to returning to their home universities to develop advanced degree programs of their own.
"A program like this is of great value to us. It's like having our own branch in the U.S.A. It's a direct contact with a person who speaks our language and knows our culture. It's an instrument of induction to help our people to incorporate quickly and effectively into a totally different environment. It saves us time and a lot of pain. We would rather send our people to a place where we know there is someone there taking care of them and helping them to succeed."
Prof. Rolando Smith, Vice Rector Academico,
Universidad de Carabobo, Valencia, Venezuela
Dr. Jerome Hojnacki, Dean of the Graduate School
University of Massachusetts Lowell
In addition to these 19 faculty members, eight other students from Latin America who are not faculty members have been attracted to UMass Lowell because they learned about the program and its nucleus of Latin American graduate students.
Of the 19 faculty members in the program, 13 have completed Master's degrees and eight have completed the doctoral qualifying examinations to date.
UMass Lowell Courses Are Offered in Latin America
For a Latin American university, sending a faculty member to UMass Lowell for an entire degree program entails considerable cost, especially if the participant has prerequisites to fulfill before matriculating into the degree program. One way to minimize this expense is to have professors from UMass Lowell travel to a host university in Latin America to offer courses, rather than having a group of faculty move to Lowell to take them. Starting in the summer of 1997, UMass Lowell will offer the Computer Science Certificate Introductory Program on site at Latin American universities. In the near future, the Graduate Certificate in Computer Science Core Course Program is also expected to be offered.
For both of these certificate programs, instruction will be offered in English by UMass faculty. Teaching assistants will be bilingual (English/Spanish). At least two courses will be offered during a two-week period to two groups of 15-30 students each. Each group will meet Monday through Friday for a four hour period of instruction and a four hour period of assisted lab and coursework. During the eight to ten week period that follows, students will complete tests and projects and submit them electronically to the faculty members who have returned to UMass Lowell
The Computer Science Certificate Introductory Program is designed for professors who would like to acquire the foundations of computer science in preparation for beginning graduate studies The certificate is a six-course program, consisting of
The Graduate Certificate in Computer Science Core Course Program is designed for professors who want to get a head start on the core courses for the Master' s degree in computer science before leaving for UMass Lowell. Participants will be able to transfer 12 credits toward the required 30 credits for the degree. The four courses in this certificate program are
These two certificate programs will enable Latin American faculty members to take six of prerequisite courses (18 credits) and four Master's degree core courses (12 credits) before leaving home. Upon arriving at UMass Lowell, they can then complete the Master' s degree by taking only six additional courses (18 credits). If they are pursuing doctorates, they will have taken the core courses that constitute preparation for the doctoral qualifying examinations before leaving home.
The savings in tuition costs and in time spent away from home and job is substantial, and may equal a year' s tuition at the "foreign student" rate, living expenses, travel, and time away from the students' home universities. For students pursuing a Master's degree, the savings is on the order of 50%, depending how many prerequisite courses they need. For students pursuing a doctorate, the savings is on the order of 25%. In the subsection called "Cost Effectiveness," below, we give more detail about the savings. These savings will allow universities to put a larger number of their faculty members through the program.
Latin American Faculty Start Their Own Advanced Degree Programs
The true pay-off from the program will come when the Latin American faculty members return to their home universities and establish new advanced degree programs of their own. In order to offer a doctoral program, a university needs a critical mass of faculty with doctorates. The Graduate Latin American Recruitment Program is helping to develop that critical mass. Several of the current participants in the program have plans not only to create new programs, but to help their universities develop strategies for fostering new programs. UMass Lowell expects to be in a long-term collaborative relationship with these universities, serving as academic and technical consultants, in order to help them get their new programs off the ground.
Pablo Medina, Professor, Mathematics Department
Universidad Nacional del Nordeste, Corrientes, Argentina
"When I visited UMass Lowell, I found a person who picked me up at the train station, gave me a tour of the city and the campus, spoke my own language, and had interviews set up for me. It was just wonderful! I felt at home. By April of 1994, I sent the first of my colleagues to UMass Lowell. In the summer of the same year, I joined him, along with another colleague. "
Hyxia Villegas, Professor, Electrical Engineering Department
Universidad de Carabobo, Valencia, Venezuela
The Concept
The program evolved from a confluence of two situations. One was that the teaching assistantship budget in the Department of Computer Science was drastically cut, prompting the department to create ways to keep a steady flow of capable graduate students in the program. The second was that Margarita Zapata-Turcotte, who already knew the computer science program, was bilingual, and was aware of the needs of Latin American universities to train faculty, became available to champion the recruitment program. The department would not have had the time, energy, and talent to create and maintain the contacts with Latin American faculty and administrators without her.
Recruiting the First Students
In October 1993, the Director of External Programs in the Department of Computer Science sent a one-page fax to several universities in Latin America introducing the graduate recruitment program. Approximately three dozen faculty members responded with expressions of interest.
The Director of External Programs then directly contacted those faculty members and personally helped them with the application process and with the paperwork for their scholarships. The Director offered a kind of assistance that is generally characteristic of expensive private universities, not more-affordable public universities. Program participants say that the direct contact and assistance was in large part responsible for their decision to attend UMass Lowell.
Once the students arrived, the Director of External Programs helped them to land on their feet. She arranged housing for them, gave them transportation until they acquired cars, took them to the bank to open savings and checking accounts, helped them enroll their children in school, and taught them how to find medical services. She also offered them a class in US cultural issues and arranged an English as a Second Language course for them.
Building relationships
The current focus of the recruitment program is to work directly with universities, rather than with individual faculty members, to identify program participants and funding mechanisms. The
Coordinator of Intemational Programs (formerly the Director of Extemal Programs) is, for example, working with authorities at universities to identify entire groups of faculty to earn advanced degrees. In addition, the Coordinator is arranging for the universities to funnel funds for the program participants through UMass Lowell, so that the participants will be research assistants, rather than scholarship students. This model is more cost-effective for the home universities because research assistants receive a tuition waiver.
In this section, we review the lessons we have learned about developing relationships with Latin American Universities, cost effectiveness of the program, and logistical support for recruitment and retention of students.
Developing a Relationship between US and Latin American Universities
The key to developing a relationship between US and Latin American universities, as with any other international venture, is building confidence and trust. It is important for the US university to have an individual who is responsible for developing such relationships and who can work directly with administrators in Latin America.
The relationships can be fostered by inviting Latin American administrators to the US campus to meet their counterparts face to face, present their needs for educating faculty, discuss the mechanisms they need to use to fund participants, meet the people who will be educating and taking care of the faculty members they send, interview students who are already participating in the program, tour research labs, and discuss ways to foster cooperative research projects.
Cost-effectiveness
From the point of view of a Latin American university which is trying to serve a huge population of students (some Latin American universities have as many as 300,000 students), sending faculty members to a US university to earn advanced degrees is an investment in the infrastructure that will permit them to educate more students, develop more research programs, and offer training courses to local industries. It is advantageous for them to send faculty to a program like UMass Lowell's, which provides extensive logistical support to participants upon arrival, thus assuring their quick assimilation into the life of the university and the city and into their advanced degree programs.
"The Graduate Latin American Recruitment Program is a source of full-time, fully funded, dedicated graduate students for departments whose funds for students have been greatly reduced. It is a way for us to respond to a great demand for our programs by Latin American students. Latin American universities have the pressure to upgrade the academic level of their faculty due to a large population of students and the need for the implementation of new programs. We are glad to be part of the solution."
Dr. Robert Tamarin, Dean of Sciences,
University of Massachusetts Lowell
"At the time I was considering graduate schools, I was intrigued by the description of the program that Margarita Zapata was creating at UMass Lowell. While I am a US citizen, I am also a first-generation Chilean immigrant. I felt this would be an interesting opportunity of meeting and working with students from Latin America. I have found the experience rewarding and it has deepened my own cultural identity."
Guillermo Zeballos, Doctoral Student
University of Massachusetts Lowell
The cost effectiveness for Latin American universities will increase when the UMass Lowell certificate programs are offered on site. The cost per student per course is projected to be on the order of $800. Thus, a program participant can take the 10 courses in the two certificate programs for a cost of approximately $8,000, far below the cost of sending a participant to Lowell to take the same courses.
From the point of view of a US university, such as the University of Massachusetts Lowell, the program is cost-effective in both the short term and the long term. In the short term, the fully funded graduate students bring funds to the university. Most of the program participants bring scholarships with them, averaging $35,000 per year. In the long term, the US university develops an international network of loyal alumni.
From the point of view of the departments within UMass Lowell, which have experienced drastic cutbacks in funding for teaching and research assistantships, program participants ensure the viability of the full-time doctoral programs and enable faculty to extend their research projects .
The program participants also contribute to the local economy. According to data from the Coordinator of International Programs, each of the students is required to provide proof of financial solvency of $20,000 (plus $2,000 for an accompanying spouse and $1,000 for each accompanying child) per year to get a student visa. The participants rent apartments, pay their living expenses, buy cars, and have family visitors from Latin America who spend money while they are here.
Lessons learned: Logistical support for participants
Recruitment and retention of program participants is closely tied to the logistical support that they receive for entering the program and for getting oriented to the university and to life in the US
Before program participants arrive at the US university, it is important to provide logistical assistance to get them through the application procedure and to help them gather the necessary paperwork for securing their funding.
"The presence of the international students has doubled the number of full-time doctoral students in our program, thus enabling faculty to meet their research agendas."
Dr. James T. Canning, Chair, Department of Computer Science
University of Massachusetts Lowell
Our first participant got caught up in a Catch 22 where UMass Lowell's international officer. would not issue an I-20 form without proof of funding and the student's funding agency in Venezuela would not release the funds unless the student had proof of acceptance. The chair of the computer science department became a legal sponsor for the student, and the I-20 was issued. For subsequent students, funding agencies a-greed to accept an unofficial departmental letter of acceptance as sufficient documentation for releasing funds.
Before arrival, the students need assistance in finding housing and need to be briefed about conventions of US life. For instance, it can be a surprise to a newcomer from Latin America that bills can be paid by mail instead of in person, or that New England weather changes drastically from day to day.
After arrival, a campus tour, including interviews with the department chair and advisor, is critical to the participant's quick assimilation into campus life. Similarly, an orientation tour of the city is tremendously advantageous to the program participants. They can learn the location of the supermarket, bank, elementary school, etc.
Some participants need ESL instruction. All benefit from instruction in US cultural mores. In addition, making sure that the spouses and children of program participants get to know each other means that they will have a social network that may reduce stress within families and allow the participants to focus on their academic commitments. Assistance with issues like registering the children for school also ensures that the families are integrated into the community.
Faculty, administrators and other interested persons from Latin America, the US and elsewhere are invited to request more information about the Graduate Latin American Recruitment Program from the Coordinator of Intemational Programs in the UMass Lowell Graduate School: