The University

I have spent the last week attending meetings at the university with faculty and students. Such an impressive, enthusiastic and bright bunch! Each faculty chair is also in charge of functions such as marketing, computer systems and networking, outreach, involvement in the community, etc. There are no counselors. Faculty are the front line – advisors as well as instructors.Students are always putting on events.

The nursing program put on a demonstration at the college entrance for checking blood pressure and literature about dengue fever (which is a big problem here). In this foto a student is showing recycled toys she made. In every classroom there is the college mission and values, indicating an envolvement with the Amazon region and protecting its resources.

Everyone at the college walks the talk, as the mission states, and seems to have a commitment to the region, to recycling and protecting the environment.I will be in Brazil three months altogether. This month I will be doing informal sessions with faculty who want to learn English as well as help out in some English classes. English is a class in the tourism department. Here is the tourism class on an outing where they practice being tour guides in English.

I will be involved this month through August at the University, the Pastoral do Menor and in August teach a semester marketing class in one month!

Yesterday I attended a seminar at the University put on by a bauxite mining company Mineracao Rio de Norte. Bauxite is used to make aluminum. They try to be a cocially responsible company by providing community services – 1) send a boat from the Fundacao Esperanca (institution where I am staying) to Quilombo, a remote community living in the mining area to provide health services, 2) enhance education services in the area, 3) plant renewable trees and 3) teach farming methods to the poor in the region. 4) They also partner with a museum to have native people make replicas, for sale, of pottery (Tapijonica ceramics) discovered in this local area. The museum put on a display at the college in this foto. This pottery is known to be the earliest (8000 years ago) of both the north and south hemispheres, perhaps indicating a civilization before the Incas. Hand prints on local rocks indicate a people who lived here 10,000 years ago.