Global Partnership Services

Associate Professor, Zachary Department of Civil Engineering and Environmental
College of Engineering
 
Maria Alves, Ph.D.
Senior Director for Halliburton Engineering Global Programs
College of Engineering
 
Sonia Garcia, Ph.D.
Senior Director for Access and Inclusion
College of Engineering
 
John Walewski, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Practice Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
College of Engineering
 
Brendan Roark, Ph.D.
Associate Professor & Director of Environmental Programs
College of Geosciences
 
Luis Ribera, Ph.D.
Professor & Extension Specialist
Agricultural Economics
 
Katy Lane
Director
Center for International Business Studies
Mays Business School
 
The College of Engineering’s Introduction to Research (ELCIR) course, targeted towards first year students and held abroad since 2015, prepares students to work and innovate in a multidisciplinary, multinational environment. Given the ELCIR’s transformative success, the objective of this Global Engagement Grant project – Introduction to Research Abroad Program – (IRAP) is to integrate students and faculty members from the colleges of Geosciences, Agriculture & Life Sciences, the Mays Business School and possibly the Education and Human Development into the ELCIR program to allow freshman and sophomore students to work in collaborative and multidisciplinary teams to address global problems.
 
IRAP is unique in that it will engage freshman and sophomore students from the very onset of their undergraduate careers in four rich experiences: 1) hands-on research class, allowing students to identify their own research problem with the support of faculty and researchers, 2) high impact global experience, 3) engagement with first-class researchers and research centers, and 4) requirement to develop and create a poster presentation on their research proposal results at the end of the course to peers, faculty, and administrators. As part of the IRAP program, students register and enroll in a one-credit research course during the Spring semester, travel to Mexico in May to become immersed in binational research projects in major research labs and write a research proposal at the end of the research course. In addition, another unique attribute of this program is the synergy with the Yucatan Initiative, a collaboration effort between researchers from the College of Engineering that has already engaged faculty members from the College of Agriculture, the College of Geosciences and the College of Education at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, and researchers from SIIDETEY, the Yucatan Research Consortium sponsored by the Yucatan government, which focuses on the development of solutions to global problems present in Texas and Yucatan.

Social Entrepreneurship Program - Brazos Valley & Global Artisans
William A. Brown, Ph.D, PI
Professor
Bush School of Government and Public Service
 
John T. Manhire, Ph.D, PI
Assistant Dean and Chief of Staff
School of Innovation
 
Andrew P. Morriss, Ph.D, PI
Professor, Bush School of Government and Public Service
Dean, School of Innovation
Vice President for Entrepreneurship and Economic Development
 
Robert Shandley, Ph.D, PI
Professor, College of Liberal Arts
Associate Dean, School of Innovation

Program Summary
The Social Entrepreneurship Program creates student learning experiences by connecting the 2nd largest pathway from poverty to prosperity in the world, the artisan sector, with student ingenuity and innovation. There are two phases to this program. The first is essentially a marketing/sales/ promotion educational opportunity for international artisans to be hosted in Texas, educate our local citizenry on their goods and business models, and establish direct sales with supporters/purchasers. The second phase involves curated teams of students and faculty from multiple disciplines across Texas A&M to establish a relationship with each entrepreneur through the artisan’s time in Texas, and ultimately facilitate multiple group field trips for students to the artisan’s home community around the world to survey the most pressing social needs of the community and develop practical solutions for these problems. The intent will be to develop long term, multi-experiential opportunities for students, artisans and faculty to connect real world learning with social entrepreneurship in practice. This second phase is a global community engagement complement to the I-School’s established Innovation [X] program. The program will eventually establish an annual artisans fair with community support, bringing dozens of accomplished artists and artisans to campus.  A percentage of the proceeds of their sales will then, in turn, be used to address needs in their native communities. This is both an opportunity for artisan entrepreneurs to market their products internationally, and for students and faculty to engage in real-world, multidisciplinary projects with significant social impact.
 

FORWARD: Toward Resilient and Food Secure Communities in the Face of Global Threats – Lebanon and Qatar
Valentini Pappa, PhD, Lead PI
Assistant Director of Education
Texas A&M Energy Institute
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Biological and Agricultural Engineering

Rabi H. Mohtar, PhD, PI
Dean, Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences
American University of Beirut

Michelle Meyer, PhD, PI
Director and Assistant Professor
Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning
 
Co-PI:  Ahmed Abdel-Wahab, Mirella Aoun, Bassel Daher, Ghada Salma
 
Summary
FORWARD offers a one-month transformative international experience in which Texas A&M students will acquire the knowledge and tools to impact and improve the resilience and food security of communities under different natural hazards scenarios. The Student Research Experience will occur in either Lebanon (AREC at AUB) or Qatar (TAMUQ). These two locations, which have functioning MOUs affirming their institutional commitment to working together will also support the attendance at WEF and Food Security conferences in the Middle East. The program also includes the opportunity to attend never-before-offered courses at Texas A&M and taught by AUB and TAMUQ faculty members. Students will participate in a “Special Topics Seminar Series” offered by speakers from across the world. Top performing students will receive financial support to attend a special food security conference; all students will present their brief communication paper at the new “Disaster PRIMR Conference”, taking place at Texas A&M, USA. The requested funding for FORWARD will establish a program that will become self-sustaining and self-funded through the continuing recruitment support of the Institute of International Awareness. FORWARD is open to students currently earning a Master of Science in Energy or following the Certificate in Energy, or Certificate in Environmental Hazard Management, or the successful completion of any graduate degree program at Texas A&M.  The Texas A&M Energy Institute will do the recruitment in cooperation with the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, the Institute of International Awareness, and the College of Architecture. 

Educator Network Grant for Aggies in a Global Environment – South Africa
(E.N.G.A.G.E. – SA)
Cassidy Caldwell, PI
Graduate Student, Multicultural Education
Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture (TLAC)

Garth V. Crosby, Dip. Ed. Ph.D, PI
Associate Professor & Program Coordinator
AggieTEACH-Engineering, Multidisciplinary Engineering Technology
Department of Engineering Technology & Industrial Distribution

Rebecca Hankins Ph.D, PI
Certified Archivist, Librarian/Curator                                    
Affiliated Faculty: Interdisciplinary Critical Studies             
Presidential Appointee: National Historical Publications & Records Commission, Nat’l Archives

Valerie Hill-Jackson, Ph.D, PI
Assistant Dean, Educator Preparation and School Partnerships
Clinical Professor, Teacher Education
Office of the Dean

Laura Wilding, PI
AggieTEACH-Science, Program Coordinator
Dean's Office, College of Science

Melanie Moser Ph.D, PI
Chair of Foundational Sciences |Advisor
AggieTEACH-Galveston

Jemimah L. Young, Ph.D, PI
Multicultural Education Program Coordinator
Associate Professor, Multicultural Education and Urban Education
Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture (TLAC)
 
Summary
The Educator Network Grant for Aggies in a Global Environment, South Africa (E.N.G.A.G.E. – SA), an innovative experiential initiative, utilizes the best aspects of the College of Education and Human Development’s (CEHD) clinical teaching practices and elevates the experiences for prospective science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) educators.  The aim of this project is to develop an innovative STEM ‘tutor/teach abroad’ program for AggieTEACH students in partnership with the University of Cape Town (UCT) – a world-class institution. The CEHD, Africana Studies program in the College of Liberal Arts (CLA), AggieTEACH programs affiliated with the Department of Marine Biology at TAMU Galveston, College of Science, and College of Engineering, as well as the Schools Improvement Initiative (SII)2 at the UCT, South Africa. All entities are collaborating to offer future AggieTEACH students from STEM-related colleges and South African teachers a transformative field experience. Through coursework and early field teaching experiences, prospective secondary STEM teachers will become familiar with theories and issues related to diversity, globalism, culture, intercultural sensitivity and communication. These cultural competency skills for educators impact the teaching and learning process (Bottiani, Larson, Debnam, Bischoff, & Bradshaw, 2018; McAllister, & Irvine, 2000) are often overlooked in the STEM fields (Joy, Aryana, & Leonard, 2019; Santiago, 2017). During their international practicum experience, prospective AggieTEACH educators will apply these theories while tutoring a group of diverse learners in South African classrooms and reflect on their efforts.


The Growing Importance of Global Health Security - Rio Grande Valley & Nicauragua
Christine Crudo Blackburn, Ph.D, PI
Deputy Director, Pandemic and Biosecurity Program
Assistant Research Scientist
Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs, The Bush School of Government & Public Service
 
Rebecca Fischer, Ph.D, PI
Assistant Professor
Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics
School of Public Health
 
Leslie Ruyle, Ph.D, PI
Associate Director, Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs
Associate Research Scientist
The Bush School of Government and Public Service
Adjunct Faculty, Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology
 
Summary 
The ongoing COVID-19 outbreak has demonstrated the way in which infectious diseases move fluidly across borders. An emerging infectious disease can easily spread across the globe in a matter of weeks. Our modern-day interconnectedness makes the interface between science and policy increasingly important and requires innovative strategies to protect human health. Well-designed, scientifically-based policy can make an important difference in our ability to identify and contain infectious diseases. For this reason, understanding the intersection of science and policy, as well as the borderless movement of infectious disease, is vital to global health security.  This project aims to introduce students to the growing importance of global health security by increasing their knowledge about the epidemiology of vector-borne diseases impacts through personal engagement with public health leaders and research from local (Texas-Rio Grande Valley) and international (Mexico and Nicaragua) importance.  Students will gain an understanding of the interaction between humans, animals, and the environment—Global One Health—and learn about how policy and science intersect.  To meet these goals, students will study one of the most widespread vector-borne diseases in the world – Dengue fever.  Students will learn about disease epidemiology, vector ecology, and vector-control policies, as well as an appreciation for challenges to controlling spread of infectious diseases across international borders through social science fieldwork. They will also identify and articulate differences in these factors between individuals in endemic countries and the United States of America. 

A5: The Augmented Atlas for Architecture and Landscape Architecture Abroad 1
Dongying Li, Ph.D., PI
Assistant Professor
Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning
College of Architecture

Co-PI: Galen Newman, Ph.D., Amir Behzadan, Ph.D., Shinjiro Sueda, Ph.D., Ture Petersenn, M.A.

The aim of this project is to develop and evaluate an innovative method of architectural study abroad via “human-digital-context-time” interaction (HDCTI). This platform, referred to as the Augmented Atlas for Architecture and Landscape Architecture Abroad (A5), will transform the traditional passive field study experiences using virtual reality (VR) and location-based augmented reality (AR) technologies. The project facilitates information acquisition and the horizontal sharing of information among both affluent students (who can afford to participate in trips abroad) and financially disadvantaged students (who may not be able to afford such international trips); the information will also be shared and acquired vertically among students and study abroad instructors across multiple years. We will use the established Bonn, Germany Study Abroad program as the test bed. A digital spatial model of Bonn will be created using a hierarchy of high, medium and low attribute resolution areas. Based on the structure, we will develop a 3- dimensional VR experience for immersive architectural visits, and a mobile augmented reality (AR) system for on-site interactivity and content embedment during students’ study abroad experiences. Our project is a collaborative effort across several programs from two Colleges, benefiting around 20 students from College of Architecture who participate in the Bonn program, more than 1000 students who take architecture and landscape architecture history classes each year, as well as 20 students from College of Engineering who are involved in the platform development. Beyond the Bonn program itself which concentrates on design-related disciplines, the A5 platform could be applied in a wide variety study aboard programs within the College, such as the UK program offered in the Department of Construction Science, as well as field studies in a variety of other disciplines across campus. This project also presents an innovative approach toward equity in education by enriching the immersive learning opportunities provided for disadvantaged students.
 

Global Engagement Grant--Germany Biosciences Semester Program
Virginia Fajt DVM, PhD, PI
Clinical Professor
Department of Veterinary Physiology & Pharmacology
College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences

Co-PI:  Saurabh Biswas, PhD; Jeremy Wasser, PhD

The Germany Biosciences Semester Program is an already existing, highly successful, study abroad program with a strong interdisciplinary element with close collaboration between the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and the Dwight Look College of Engineering. Our program provides an immersive academic and cultural experience for students designed to be transformative, both professionally and personally. A critical element of the program is the semester- long design project carried out in collaboration with our German partner, the biotechnology firm, enmodes, GmbH. Students work on a real-world biomedical design project in an international milieu with implications for real patients. We propose to build on the success of this program by:
(1) engaging additional TAMU faculty from both of the participating Colleges by bringing them to Germany for site visits with our students and industry partners
(2) engaging additional European academic, clinical and industry professionals to present guest lectures and hold workshops throughout the semester abroad
(3) expanding intercultural awareness and communications training for our students
(4) continuing to provide and to build on opportunities for graduate students to participate in the program as instructors
(5) introducing the students to a nationally adopted training platform -- I-CorpsTM (Innovation Corps) started by National Science Foundation and developing our program further as an "incubator" for preparing students for international internships with European companies, governmental and non-governmental agencies by establishing further relationships with
these entities and facilitating students entry into the international scientific and
technological arenas
(6) establishing and formalizing a "pipeline" program for undergraduate and recent graduates to intern with enmodes GmbH.
 

Revolutionizing Science & Engineering Education in Food Engineering - A TAMU-UPV Collaboration
Rosana G. Moreira PhD, PI
Professor, Food Engineering
Department of Biological & Agricultural Engineering
College of Agriculture & Life Sciences
 
M. Elena Castell-Perez, PhD, PI
Professor of Food Engineering
Department of Biological & Agricultural Engineering Department
College of Agriculture & Life Sciences
 
Maria Barrufet, PhD, PI
Professor of Petroleum Engineering
Department of Petroleum Engineering
College of Engineering
 
The proposed global engagement initiative is designed to provide 21st century education to students in Engineering, Food Science, and Agricultural Business Management fields. The Mission is to provide valuable experiences to TAMU students focusing in part on the future domains of Food Science and Engineering education. Through culture awareness and creativity, our students will improve technical and soft skills essential to compete in a globally integrated society. The students will learn the most recent advances in food engineering and technology in the area of enginomics, innovations in food engineering, cultural awareness, and social responsibility. Students will understand how food science and engineering impacts new knowledge and tools to excel in a highly-competitive global economy and changing markets and consumer needs. TAMU students will interact with Spanish undergraduate peers as part of multidimensional teams. This experience will prepare the students to succeed in international careers.
 
 
McFerrin Center for Entrepreneurship Global Entrepreneurship Initiative (GEI)
Donald Lewis, MBA, PI
Executive Professor
Department of Management Director
McFerrin Center for Entrepreneurship
Mays Business School

Patricia Thornton, PhD, PI
Professor
Department of Sociology
College of Liberal Arts
 
Janet Parish, PhD, PI
Clinical Professor; Associate Department Head; Director of Professional Selling Initiative
Department of Marketing
Mays Business School

The McFerrin Center for Entrepreneurship’s Global Entrepreneurship Initiative (GEI) seeks to provide students with high impact entrepreneurial experiences in multiple locations, including programs in Belgium, Chile, and Cuba, and potentially expanding to Ireland, Eastern Europe, and Central America. The Initiative goes beyond traditional study abroad by simulating international business scenarios by teaching students using innovative results-oriented pedagogy developed by Texas A&M professors and staff that aims to transform students into global entrepreneurial thinkers. For student participants, the 1-year, 3-credit, faculty-led study abroad program consists of three phases that focus on providing a unique experience working with foreign entrepreneurs.

The first phase takes place at Texas A&M University and begins with research and goal-setting, including pre-departure meetings and courses with faculty covering topics including entrepreneurship, socio-cultural factors within business, problem recognition, and personal reflection. During phase one, students will build relationships with pre-selected startups by contacting agents of the businesses and reading about their company. The second phase involves travel to the respective country for a cross- cultural immersion experience. Students connect with startups abroad with the goal to assess and advise these startups and businesses. Groups will critically evaluate these startups with instructor guidance and offer specific recommendations based on a set of problem statements. The third phase takes place at the end of the program, where students provide feedback to improve the program’s quality and help its perpetuation.

On completion of all three phases, interested students will apply for another year of the program to assist with recruiting new students and serve as mentors, leaders and teaching assistants. Students’ performance in the first year of the program and demonstrated leadership potential determines their selection for the second year of the program.

While initially the students will do exercises evaluating the startups and businesses, the long- term vision for the program is to expand in two ways: Working with foreign startups and businesses to import products for sale in a student-run retail lab on the Texas A&M campus and adding a language component with the College of Liberal Arts. Through the import process, students identify products that have market demand in the U.S., and then conduct a business deal with them by purchasing products to import to the United States for sale at a student retail lab. Currently no program at Texas A&M University allows students to have hands-on experience conducting international business and importing products for sale. Incorporating students in various language courses as live translators throughout this exchange will offer another dimension to the GEI. The GEI aims to work closely with the College of Liberal Arts to offer an additional learning experience for their language studies students to apply their studies to a real-world scenario.

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