Global Reach

Oscar de la Torre, assistant professor of Africana studies, will discuss Brazil as the third speaker in the 2015 Great Decisions lecture series.  This talk, scheduled for 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 28, at UNC Charlotte Center City, will be a joint networking event with the Magellan Society, the young professionals of the World Affairs Council of Charlotte.

Students at UNC Charlotte are partnering with students in Russia to promote healthy living, through a collaboration created by program director Yuliya Baldwin and funded by the U.S. Department of State.

“When I saw this grant being offered, I immediately knew that I would like to partner with Russia simply because UNC Charlotte had never done any type of exchange with Russia,” said Baldwin, a lecturer in Russian in the Department of Languages and Culture Studies in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

Sustainability is an international concern, and for one UNC Charlotte professor the challenge is to bring new understanding to how Nigerians can view sacred groves as secular green spaces.

Retired Col. Mark Mykleby will speak at 3:30 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 22, in the Atkins Library, Halton Reading Room, as part of the seventh annual International Speaker Series.

J. Daniel White from the Religious Studies Department will discuss India’s changing political landscape at 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 14, at UNC Charlotte Center City. The talk is the first in UNC Charlotte’s 2015 Great Decisions Lecture Series.

Coordinated nationally by the Foreign Policy Association, the Great Decisions program highlights relevant foreign policy issues. The University’s Office of International Programs coordinates an annual lecture series for the Charlotte community in January and February to discuss those issues.

Future speakers and topics are:

UNC Charlotte’s Graduate School and State of São Paulo Research Foundation continue to offer faculty members opportunities to form research partnerships. The budget limit is now $20,000 from each party in the SPRINT program (São Paulo Researchers in International Collaboration).

Associate professor Spencer Salas will spend most of December in Oman to continue professional development efforts with that country’s K-12 teachers.

International Education Week 2014 is Nov. 18-22. This joint initiative of the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education is an opportunity to highlight the University’s commitment to global and international understanding through programming, lectures, presentations and more.

A film about building bridges of understanding in communities “My So-Called Enemy” will be screened at 7 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 19, in the Student Union Movie Theater.

Spanning seven years, “My So-Called Enemy” follows six Palestinian and Israeli teenage girls committed to justice and mutual understanding after participating in a women’s leadership program called Building Bridges for Peace. This film documents how the young women’s transformative experience of knowing their “enemies” as human beings in the United States meets with the realities of their lives in the Middle East.

Enajite Ojaruega, a faculty member in the Department of English and Literary Studies at Delta State University, Nigeria, will present “Women’s Education in Nigeria: Challenges and the Chibok Girls” at 12:30 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 4, in the Storrs Building, Room 290.

Chibok is the location of a school from which 276 girls were abducted by the Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram.

The Africana Studies Department and African Studies Academy are cosponsoring this public talk.