The Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad (GPA) Program in the U.S. Department of Education has awarded a $90,859 grant to the Center for Latin American Studies. The grant will be used to fund a seminar for K-12 educators, titled “Teaching the Andes: Redefining the Common Good and Reclaiming the Public Square.” The seminar will be led by Terrell Morgan, director of the Center for Latin American Studies and a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Ohio State, and Michelle Wibbelsman, an assistant professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Ohio State.
This project will take 12 K-12 educators in various disciplines to Ecuador and Peru, June 17 – July 16, 2017, and will include a pre-departure orientation, four weeks of overseas travel and post-travel summary activities. The scope of the seminar includes Otavalo, Ecuador and Cusco, Peru, as well as their respective highland and lowland landscapes and cultures, emphasizing the shared values and interaction along the Andean corridor and across regions.
Fifty-seven percent of the total cost of the seminar program is funded through the GPA, with the remaining 43 percent funded by nongovernmental sources. Activities begin November 1, 2016 and end January 16, 2018.
The project will take advantage of innovative programming and cutting-edge research happening at Ohio State on the Andes and Amazonia that point to the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach to teaching and studying the region.
Ultimately, the goal of the project is to equip teachers with multidisciplinary content, curricular resources and methods of inquiry for deploying that approach themselves in their K-12 classrooms, creating an innovative model to K-12 education.