NAU has been awarded a grant to increase educational collaborations between students in North and South America as part of the university’s Global Science and Engineering Program. The $25,000 award from 100,000 Strong in the Americas, an organization created to facilitate the international educational exchange of 100,000 young people, will be supplemented by funding from NAU’s Center for International Education and the School of Earth Sciences and Environmental Sustainability.
The Geology and Policy: Energy Resources in the Americas, Now and In the Future project will begin this fall with a field course studying and touring energy sites in Arizona and New Mexico. Participants will do a similar field course in Argentina the following spring.
A group of four NAU students and faculty members Michael Ort and Erik Nielsen is partnering with a group of peers from Argentina’s Universidad Nacional de Tucuman. The Geology and Policy project will create the first direct bilateral exchange with a university in Argentina and the initial field course is expected to facilitate a sustained flow of student exchanges between institutions.
The Geology and Policy project will examine multiple traditional and renewable energy sources and provide networking opportunities and research collaborations between countries. “We hope that beginning a bilateral exchange in Argentina based on geology and energy policy will have implications for powering our nations into the future,” said Melissa Armstrong, project leader and associate director for the Global Science and Engineering Program, which is housed within the Center for International Education.
Students in NAU’s five-year undergraduate Global Science and Engineering Program have foreign language requirements and participate in study abroad opportunities.