SPAP Hosts Ecuadorian Business Scholars for Workshop

Ecuadorian Graduate Students and Faculty Visit UMD for Business Administration Workshop

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese held a week-long Workshop on Latin American Business Administration from April 4-8, 2016 for twenty-two Ecuadorian graduate students and two accompanying faculty members from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos of Lima, Peru. Through diverse workshops, in-class activities, and lecturers, the visitors were introduced to U.S. pedagogical methods in their area of study in addition to sharing their professional experience and expertise related to business administration. Their participation was tailored to the content of syllabi for SPAN 422: Cross-Cultural Communication and SPAN 415: Commercial Spanish, two of our department’s most popular courses. SPAP graduate students including Ginette Eldredge, Christopher Lewis, Aída Garcia, Sebastián Bartis, Mariluz Bort, Daniela Bulansky, and Macarena García-Avello lead a variety of activities involving such topics as pedagogical practices, new technologies for the classroom, engaging student participation, and teaching portfolio design, among others.

SPAP PhD candidate María Cristina Monsalve organized this event with participation from The Graduate School, Education Abroad, Latin American Studies Center, the Language House, the Robert H. Smith School of Business, the Humanities and Social Sciences Librarians, and the Embassy of Ecuador in Washington, D.C. In August of 2015, María Cristina received support from a Graduate School’s International Graduate Research Fellowship to conduct research in Lima where she was hosted by the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.