International Symposium – Day 1
Tuesday, February 25, 2020
The full schedule for day 1 (Feb 25) is listed below with descriptions and bios for the presenters. Please be aware that there are two sessions scheduled in each time block.
9-9:50 a.m.
Session 1: Multimodal Multilingualism: Globalization and Language Vitality in the Uruguayan Deaf Community
Location: Room 322
Description: This project explores the nuances and complexities of language and cultural engagement in the Uruguayan deaf community. More specifically, we explore the current language vitality of Lengua de Señas Uruguaya (LSU) in its current social context and work at the invitation of local organizations to explore the feasibility of transnational, media-driven educational initiatives in American Sign Language (ASL) in primary/secondary educational contexts within Uruguay. ASL is often used as a lingua franca in the international deaf community.
Our ultimate goal is to cooperatively engage local communities to create recommendations, regarding how to best proceed with a nationwide bilingualism initiative that benefits local deaf communities without threatening the vitality of LSU and indigenous Uruguayan deaf culture. This project relies on extensive review of existing literature regarding LSU’s history, teaching, and standardization, interdisciplinary knowledge about bilingualism in signed languages, and ethnographic fieldwork in Uruguay in 2020.
Bios of presenters: Elizabeth Parks, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of communication studies and dialogue and diversity specialist of the Center for Public Deliberation. Her scholarship blends social scientific and humanistic methods to improve ethical listening across difference. Parks has served as an American Sign Language interpreter since 2001, taught in colleges and universities on both coasts and the Midwest since 2004, and worked on international sociolinguistic research and development in Latin America and the Caribbean between 2006-2012.
Jesús Calderón (B.A., communication studies, Colorado State University) is a first-year graduate student in the Department of Communication Studies and a research assistant with Elizabeth Parks, Ph.D.. He is interested in Latin American representation and identity composition in North American multimedia and currently focuses his scholarship on meaning-making processes in media surrounding social issues. Throughout his academic career, Jesús has been active with CSU’s Center for Public Deliberation as a trained facilitator.
Session 2: Could a Successful Role Model Close the STEM Gender Gap in the Arab World?
Location: Room 312
Description: Despite much progress having been achieved to close the gender gap in education in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields in the Arabic world (Jordan in particular), this has not been reflected in women’s participation in the work force. Arabic women lean towards clerical jobs with short working hours and lower pay, mainly because of the traditional view of gender roles. Jordanian women’s participation in the work force remains the lowest worldwide. Women are less likely to secure a job in STEM-related fields and once they are hired, they suffer from inequalities in terms of financial entitlements, salaries, incentives, and promotions. The majority of institutes and companies around the Arab world are practicing discrimination against women. Working women are still being marginalized from administrative positions and they suffer from behavioral, verbal, and sexual harassment.
This session will discuss the causes of the gender gap in STEM fields and provide some solutions to reduce this gap, such as recognizing and mitigating unpaid care, reforming gender roles, and providing adequate legal protection. In addition, the session will show personal stories of successful Arabic women who challenged the stereotype and pursued their passion and dreams in STEM fields.
Bio of presenter: Lubna Tahtamouni, a visiting senior research scholar, is an associate professor in the Department of Biology & Biotechnology, at the Hashemite University, Jordan, where she has been a faculty member since 2005 and served as a chair for two terms. Her research studies cellular alternations leading to cancer for a better understanding of its initiation and development. Due to her work calling for the support and empowerment of Arab female students and scientists, Lubna has been awarded several national and international awards, such as the 2016 BBC List of the World’s 100 Most Inspirational and Influential Women; the 2015 Women in Science Hall of Fame, US Embassy, Amman, Jordan; the 2013 Colorado State University Distinguished International Alumni Award; and the 2011 L’OREAL-UNESCO For Women in Science Pan-Arab Regional Fellowship.
10-10:50 a.m.
Session 3: UNPACKING Experiences of International Students at CSU!
Location: Rooms 308-10
Description: This session will explore the internationalization efforts at CSU through the lens of the international student experience. Some of the major themes discussed will be academic cultural differences and integration, advisor/advisee relationships, programming within CSU, and community engagement with Fort Collins residents.
Topics such as cultural adjustment issues, language barriers, academic integrity, punctuality, assimilation vs. identity conservation, and interpersonal communication will be analyzed. Other topics like physical and mental well-being, religious belonging, political headwinds, career trajectory, and uncertainty will be examined. Experiences, stories, and testimonies from international students and the presenters’ personal journey also will be shared anonymously to help give real-life examples of what an international student must go through in the day-to-day.
Bio of presenter: Gaurav Harshe completed his master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering at CSU in Spring 2019. He serves on the board of the Fort Collins International Center as a volunteer and engages with community initiatives for international students. He previously served as a senior student coordinator at OIP for over two and a half years coordinating programming and other large-scale events.
Session 4: Colorado River: United States and Mexico
Location: Rooms 304-06
Description: In the last few years, two unique agreements between the United States and Mexico address the catastrophic current drought and a drought management plan on the Colorado River. The successful negotiation of Minutes 319 and 323 have been recognized around the world as a template for cooperative action to address drought and environmental issues between two countries.
Bios of presenters: Jennifer Gimbel is a senior water policy scholar at the Colorado State University Water Institute. She is currently focused on Colorado River issues, with an emphasis on the Upper Basin. She spent three years in Washington, DC, where she was the principal deputy assistant secretary for Water & Science at the Department of the Interior, overseeing the U.S. Geological Survey and Bureau of Reclamation. She also was deputy commissioner for the Bureau of Reclamation and Counselor to the assistant secretary. She was the upper Colorado River compact commissioner while working as the director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board and participated in the negotiations for Minute 319. She dealt with numerous Colorado River issues working for both Colorado and Wyoming Attorneys General.
Steve Mumme is political science professor at Colorado State University where his research centers on U.S.-Mexico environmental diplomacy with an emphasis on transboundary water management. He has authored many peer-reviewed journal articles, serves on several editorial boards, and been a consultant for the International Boundary and Water Commission and the Commission for Environmental Cooperation.
Ted Kowalski is a senior program officer, leading the Walton Family Foundation’s Colorado River initiative. Prior to joining the foundation, Ted was the chief of the Interstate, Federal and Water Information Section, for the Colorado Water Conservation Board. In this role, Ted represented the State of Colorado in state, federal, inter-state, and international negotiations. He has testified before the U.S. Congress and before the Colorado General Assembly, and spoken at dozens of conferences. He started his career in the Colorado Attorney General’s office working on water law issues. Ted has a law degree from the University of Colorado and an undergraduate degree from Cornell University.
11-11:50 a.m.
Session 5: One World Health: IDRC Engagement in Stemming the Tide of Disease on a Global Basis
Location: Room 322
Description: We will present information on several international programs that the Infectious Disease Research Center at CSU is engaged in that involve international collaborations with global impact. Rebekah Kading, Ph.D, will describe her research efforts on Rift Valley Fever, a disease that affects human and animal populations in Africa and the Middle East, which threatens emergence in other parts of the world. Building on this, John Wyckoff, Ph.D, will present on an international program funded by CEPI for the development of a vaccine for Rift Valley Fever, a project that will take place within the BioMARC operation at CSU of which Wyckoff serves as the director. Finally, Dr. Shirley Owusu-Ofori will present ongoing work on prevention of transfusion transmitted diseases in sub-Saharan Africa, including programs in which the IDRC is participating in Ghana and Uganda.
Bios of presenters: Dr. Raymond Goodrich is the executive director of the Infectious Disease Research Center (IDRC) at Colorado State University, and has responsibility for oversight of the Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing and Academic Resource Center (BioMARC), the Regional Biocontainment Labs (RBL) and the Research Innovation Center (RIC). Dr. Goodrich has worked in medical research for over 30 years in both the public and private sector. He has been awarded over 58 patents and has co-authored over 200 peer reviewed articles and abstracts. He is a 2018 recipient of the Order of Military Medical Merit (O2M3) for his work on programs of importance to the U.S. Army Medical Command.
Rebekah Kading, Ph.D., obtained her B.S. in entomology/wildlife conservation from the University of Delaware, M.S. in entomology from the University of Arkansas, and Ph.D. in molecular microbiology and immunology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. At the CDC Division of Vector-borne Diseases Arbovirus Diseases, Kading led studies on mosquito blood feeding behavior and West Nile virus (WNV) ecology in Colorado and Guatemala and the genetic basis for replication and transmission of Rift Valley fever virus in mosquitoes.
John Wyckoff, Ph.D., serves as the director of the Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing and Academic Resource Center (BioMARC) at Colorado State University. After receiving his Ph.D. in veterinary parasitology and immunology from the University of Florida, he spent nearly 20 years as a professor of immunology at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Oklahoma State University. After leaving OSU in 2008, Wyckoff served as the director of research projects at Merial and the associate director of companion animal biologics research and development for Boehringer Ingelheim VetMedica, Inc.
Dr. Shirley Owusu-Ofori currently serves as the head of Transfusion Medicine Unit at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital. Her work includes evaluating adverse events associated with transfusions including disease transmission of agents such as malaria and HIV. She has led clinical trials evaluating intervention methods to prevent disease transmission including novel diagnostic approaches and photochemical blood treatment systems to inactivate pathogens and white blood cells in blood products. Her work as the PI of the AIMS study (African Investigation of the Mirasol System) has been the subject of a publication in The Lancet.
Session 6: International Students: Let’s Invite Them to the Party!
Location: Room 312
Description: As part of its goal to enhance its diversity, CSU increased the percentage of international students from 4.23 percent in Fall 2011 to 6.72 percent in Fall 2018 (CSU Factbook 2018-19). Although these efforts, which are not unique to CSU, are a good start, they have to go beyond numbers and move towards a qualitative, critical transformation of the way we engage with students whose linguistic and cultural backgrounds are different from our own.
In this interactive presentation, participants will analyze critically the daily challenges international students face as they navigate the American university system and they will recognize the benefits of internationalizing the curriculum and the student body (Haan et al., 2017). Attendees will also participate in group activities facilitated by current international students and explore ways in which the CSU community can support international students as they acclimate to their new academic and social surroundings.
Bios of presenters: Evelyn Pierro is the academic English program supervisor at INTO CSU. She has master’s degrees in English (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and German from CSU. She taught English in Japan for four years and has been working with international students at INTO CSU for almost 20 years.
Maite Correa has served as academic director at INTO CSU since October 2018. She is also an associate professor of (Spanish) applied linguistics in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Colorado State University since 2008. She has a B.A. in English linguistics and literature (2000) from University of Deusto, and an M.A. in hispanic linguistics (2003) as well as a Ph.D. in second language acquisition and teaching (2008) from the University of Arizona.
BREAK: 11:50 a.m. – 1 p.m.
1-1:50 p.m.
Session 7: Best Practices in International Service Learning
Location: Rooms 308-10
Description: Over fourteen years (in CSU’s longest running spring break trip), groups of CSU students and staff have spent an alternative spring break working in a tiny village in Panama, on the edge of a U.S. military base that was turned into a rainforest national park. Much has been learned over the years by participants, who now number in the hundreds.
Join us for a discussion of best practices in international service-learning using this 14-year partnership between Colorado State University’s alternative spring break program and the village of Achiote, Panama. Via a guest panel, we will share the various perspectives of student participants, trip leaders, faculty/staff, and community partners. Attendees can expect to leave the session with an appreciation for the power of the cross-collaborative nature of long-term, mutually beneficial, university and community partnerships to change the lives of individuals and communities.
Bios of presenters: Panamanian Community Participant: Charlotte Elton has lived in Panama for fifty years, after arriving from England as a recent graduate to be a volunteer with the United Nations Development Programme. She is a founding member of the nonprofit organization CEASPA (the Panamanian Center for Research and Social Action) and coordinated activities with communities around the San Lorenzo National Park for seven years. She promoted the construction by CEASPA of the Centro El Tucan in Achiote, where CSU has been involved since 2005. In 2008, she established a network of all the visitors’ centers and museums in Panama’s canal area. She is passionate about biodiversity conservation and citizen participation.
Student Trip Leader/CSU Alumna: Ashley Withington was a student site leader for the Panama trip in 2006. She now works as a nurse in Denver, Colorado. Her commitment to adventure and cross-cultural understanding were evident as a student, and continue in her life now.
Faculty Trip Leader: Zachary S. Johnson is a professor in the Landscape Design and Contracting program at Colorado State University. He teaches classes in design, construction, project management, and water management. In addition to his work at CSU, Zach owns a consulting business specializing in appraising trees and plant material, as well as providing litigation support for court cases involving landscape construction.
Trip Founder/Faculty Trip Leader: As a faculty member in the Landscape Architecture Program, Paul Cawood Hellmund organized and took the first group of CSU students (and Fort Collins community members) to Achiote, Panama, in 2005. A native of Panama, he has found it inspiring to see how much CSU students can learn from and with the villagers of Achiote. Currently, he is an instructor in the School of Global Environmental Sustainability.
Program Coordinator: Michael Buttram currently oversees the Alternative Breaks Program at CSU. Michael’s experience includes TRIO and GEAR UP programming, and a decade of nonprofit and service-learning related work in Central America. Michael received an M.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College and a B.A. in music and mass communications from Texas Tech University. Michael was the recipient of a Fulbright Study Grant for work in Comparative Educational Practices at the Pädagogishe Hochshule in Weingarten, Germany.”
Community Member: Carolina “Caro” Bañuelos is the program manager for the School of Advanced Materials Discovery at CSU and a part-time Ph.D. student in sociology. Caro is getting ready to head on her 4th Panama alt break as a community member. As a sociologist and materials engineering staff member, she enjoys guiding students into their understanding and application of how the environment shapes us and how we shape the environment.
Session 8: Fort Collins Global History Connection
Location: Rooms 304-06
Description: In this session, four participants will discuss how they connect Fort Collins and Colorado State University to local, national, and global history networks. Based on experiences in undergraduate public history courses, graduate community projects, and Fort Collins Global Village Museum’s exhibition on International Beer History, we demonstrate how history can become a fantastic tool and topic to engage students, communities, institutions, and for-profit companies.
Gayle Warner, director of the Fort Collins’ Global Village Museum, discusses how connecting local craft breweries to the long and international history of brewing practices, immigration, and European influences helps better understand the complexity of Fort Collins’ history. Local projects also can inform international discussion. Brandt Suazo, an undergraduate student, shows how a CSU class project helps engaging with an international history conference organized in Berlin, Germany. The variety of profiles – undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and museum professional – shows the collaborative dimension of history.
Bios of presenters: Brandt Suazo is a senior at Colorado State University, working to complete his undergraduate degree in history. He is hoping to continue his work in public history and plans on being an active member for his community.
Elizabeth Norris is a graduate student in the History Department at Colorado State University on the museum studies track. She completed her B.A. in history in 2016 at the University of South Carolina Upstate and joined CSU in 2018. Elizabeth has developed local engagement and public participation in history through her public history training. In the summer of 2019, she began her internship at CSU’s Agricultural and Natural Resource Archive, where she created the Colorado Craft Brewers Collection. She will graduate with her masters in Spring 2020.
Thomas Cauvin is assistant professor of history at Colorado State University. He is also the president of the International Federation for Public History. Born in France, he has been an active promoter to connect local and international communities through history. He has been teaching a variety of public history courses, documentary film production, international history of beer, or museum practices.
Gayle Warner is the executive director of the Global Village Museum in Fort Collins. She was previously the director of program and grants strategy at Joining Vision and Action.
2-2:50 p.m.
Session 9: The Influence of Cultural Bias on Interpersonal Conflict
Location: Room 312
Description: In this session, participants will gain an understanding and awareness about how culture and conflict interact and learn how culture impacts the way individuals engage in conflict.
Bios of presenters: Sagarika Sarma currently serves as a student case manager in the Office of Case Management and Referral Coordination on campus. Her position is dedicated to helping students in crisis. She is originally from India where she spent most of her formative years and did most of her education as well. She holds a master’s degree in English literature from the University of Delhi and a second master’s in student affairs from Colorado State University. Sagarika draws on her bicultural life experiences to inform her work and as such within the context of this presentation, she hopes to weave in an intercultural lens when looking at conflict.
Ashlyn Friend is the assistant director for conflict resolution in the Student Resolution Center at Colorado State University. Ashlyn earned a master’s degree in college student personnel from Bowling Green State University and has more than seven years’ experience working in higher education. She completed extensive training in mediation, restorative justice processes, conflict coaching, and large group facilitation processes. Ashlyn believes conflict often occurs when there is an absence of connection. As a conflict resolution practitioner, she helps parties strengthen relationships while addressing specific issues of contention. Ashlyn has a strong record of building successful collaborative partnerships and implementing innovative programming to serve students. Prior to joining CSU, she served as the conflict resolution coordinator at the University of Colorado Boulder where she established an alternative dispute resolution program for students.
Session 10: Our Environment, Our Health: A Bold Transformation of the Environmental Protection Agency in Victoria, Australia
Location: Room 322
Description: In Victoria, Australia, the biggest transformation in EPA’s history is underway. Victoria’s Environment Protection laws are changing. In July 2020, the Environment Protection Amendment Act 2018 will come into effect. The new laws require that citizens, businesses and the EPA shift from a mindset of “fix the mistake” to “stop the mistake from happening in the first place.” The Victoria government is an international leader in tackling a transformation of organizational culture and societal responsibility.
In this session, I will describe the variety of social science toolkits that are helping the government of Victoria, Australia, to make a transformational shift in how they work to protect environmental and human health. The session will provide inspirational case studies of transformative efforts across the globe, interactive segments to demonstrate specific behavioral science tools, and the opportunity for session participants to apply the ideas to their own lives.
Bios of presenters: Jeni Cross, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Sociology, and director of the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences at CSU. Her areas of expertise include conservation, community development, organizational network analysis, social norms, and behavior change. Jeni’s passion is applying the tools of social science (theory and research methods) to help communities and organizations create thriving communities and transformational change. Her TEDx talk, “The 3 Myths of Behavior Change,” has been viewed over one million times and been adapted in dozens of courses across the globe in both social science an environmental science courses.
3-3:50 p.m
Session 11: SNL–Shakespeare Night Live: Humor, Political Commentary, and Universality through Time and Place
Location: Rooms 304-06
Description: The political system is a hub for the public eye, drawing in writers and artists through the ages to challenge authority and initiate rumblings of laughter from the crowd. Culture is created and reflected in art and politics, making for a desirable spot in revolutionizing the status quo.
Come reconnect with the most successful writer in history by diving into his universal thread–political commentary and entertainment–that transcends both time and geography.
William Shakespeare’s work can often feel extraneous and unrelatable, but exploring humans’ draw towards cultural makeovers will tie us to artists all over the world and their strive to entertain and make a statement.
Come see Shakespeare’s relation to Saturday Night Live and their roles in culture.
Bio of presenter: Kelly Peterson is finishing up her English degree at Colorado State University this year after returning from a summer abroad at Oxford University studying Shakespeare and history of English. She is passionate about how discourse–in all its diverse forms–impacts culture.
Kelly was in love with the book-loving, coffee-spilling, and flower-smelling culture of Oxford. She felt that Shakespeare’s words grasped her a little more tightly when walking through history itself, giving her room to dig further into Shakespeare’s influences as a 429-year-old writer. Her rambling thoughts from her time in England can be found at her personal blog.
Session 12: Mapping Under-examined Cities Around the World
Location: Rooms 308-10
Description: We will share our experience mapping secondary cities around the world, using participatory methods. We will include a hands-on demonstration of participatory mapping activities, describe opportunities for remote mapping through map-a-thons, and present geospatial outcomes from our five-year project. The Secondary Cities Initiative has mapped sixteen international cities that form three regional hubs focusing on geospatial data generation for emergency preparedness and human security.
CSU’s Geospatial Centroid partnered with the US Department of State’s Office of the Geographer to facilitate the use of geospatial technologies for humanitarian aid, disaster planning, and resiliency. This session focuses on outcomes of that project, highlighting the praxis of sustainability.
Bios of presenters: Melinda Laituri is a professor of geography at Colorado State University. Laituri received her Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in geography. She is a Jefferson Science Fellow and was assigned to the Humanitarian Information unit of the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Geographer. She is the principal investigator of the Secondary Cities Initiative and the director of the Geospatial Centroid.
Amanda Shores has studied a wide variety of geospatial technologies, environmental, and sustainability issues. She is the Secondary Cities CSU program manager, increasing sustainable development in rapidly expanding, resource limited cities around the globe.
4-6 p.m.
Keynote Speaker: Helen Thorpe
Helen Thorpe, lifelong journalist who has written three books of narrative nonfiction about the lives of immigrants, refugees, and veterans of foreign conflict, sits down with Dr. Kyle Oldham, director of Workplace Inclusion and Talent Management in Housing and Dining Services. Book signing of The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom will follow the presentation at 5 p.m. in Ballroom C-D.
Time:
4-5 p.m. – Keynote presentation
5-6 p.m. – Book signing and reception following the presentation
Location: Ballroom C-D