At end-August, Columbia students interning at Chile’s Universidad Católica (UC) in the Undergraduate Internationalization Program presented their research to improve the university’s Higher Education International Mobility Programs.
Focusing on internationalization policies, all four interns worked under the guidance of Maribel Flórez, UC Director of Global Learning and Mobility Programs.
Arooba Ahmed and Jia Jun Joel Wen presented their research on higher education mobility between Asia, Latin America, and Canada. Their findings revealed that there is great importance in fostering connections between cultures through education, which would then open barriers between countries.
Anne Nguyen and Jolene Singh worked with Julio Gulin, assistant director of foreign exchange students, to investigate what kind of emergency prevention and mitigation strategies are effective in aiding higher education international mobility programs. Ultimately, they saw that programs that accounted for culture shock better helped their international students and attracted more students as well.
Lillian Ferrer, UC Director of International Affairs at the School of Nursing, who also worked with the interns, was particularly impressed with their research and commented, “These students from around the world created their own project… were presented with a problem, and used the scientific method to get answers.”
Pedro Iacobelli, the director of the Center for Asian Studies at Universidad Católica, said of the connection with the Santiago Center that he is “looking forward to the continued partnership, for there are more questions to explore” regarding university mobility programs.
