After a year off we are proud to relaunch the Faculty-Led Program Awards. The IES Abroad Faculty-Led Program Awards provide funding towards outstanding STEM- and language-focused faculty-led programs to run between May and July of 2022. The winning institutions receive $15,000 and $5,000 (runner up) for their STEM programs and $10,000 for one language program winner. The winners were selected by a jury comprised of IES Abroad Academics department staff members.
With that, we are pleased to announce that our $10,000 Faculty-Led Language Program Award has been given to Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU), an HBCU in Texas, for Dr. Quincy Moore's Honors Program set in Santiago, Chile.
For the Faculty-Led STEM Program Award, two programs taking place in Berlin, Germany took home the winner and runner-up awards. Dr. Kyle Camarda, Associate Professor at the School of Engineering at the University of Kansas (KU) is the winner with his program “Logistics in Berlin: Optimization and the Cold War.” The runner up is a program led by Sue Metzger, Professor of the Practice, Information Systems at Villanova University, "Maymester Berlin: VSB2006 - Strategic Information Technology."
Read on to learn more about the faculty winners and their programs!
Meet the Language Program Award Winner
About Dr. Moore: Dr. Quincy C. Moore serves as Director of the Prairie View A&M University Honors program and is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Biology in the Marvin D. and June Samuel Brailsford College of Arts and Sciences. He earned his B.S. from Jackson State University, his M.S. from Auburn University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Mississippi Medical Center. During his tenure at PVAMU, he has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses, served as research mentor, participated in assessment initiatives, managed grants, supervised student workers, and served on university, departmental and professional society committees.Combined with his dedication to mentoring, his strength in the classroom has resulted in a number of teaching awards, including the Dr. Wright’s President’s Faculty Teaching Award, five Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Awards, and the Faculty of the Year Awards in the Department of Biology.
About the Program: The Honors Program is a pivotal program providing academic enhancement of scholars on campus. One of the main focuses of The Honors Program is to prepare scholars for Global Leadership, which will allow the students to make a global impact in their respective disciplines, which is achieved in part through study abroad. A global perspective is particularly beneficial in educating our student leaders, as their expectation is to be informed when educating their communities and peers on current events and activism for the betterment of our country. Students taking part in this immersion program are from a vast array of majors. Still, they will all engage in this learning experience through immersion in Chilean culture, food, living, transportation, and conversations with various people. The trip will consist of educational engagement with visits to historic sites, universities, cultural exposure, and possible service learning. It is an exciting time to be a part of such a creative and diverse learning environment. This program will persist in promoting innovation and creativity in every student, and we look forward to the continued success of preparing scholars for a global impact. The overall objective of the travel to Santiago Chile is to utilize their language skills in real-world situations and to enhance their cultural competence. The students will observe, engage, and document their daily interactions and thoughts throughout the trip. This project will enable them to expand their understanding of their own culture and practice self-assessment.
Dr. Moore's Take on the Program: "The world will become the textbook for the students, and it will elevate their experience beyond that of just tourism. Studying abroad is unique because learning is not restricted to the classroom; every location serves as a teacher. Being able to apply classwork in everyday life will accelerate learning. Being able to immediately practice new vocabulary only moments after class in real-life scenarios will aid in retention. The study abroad will not limit or condense the learning. The project will engage individuals to increase their intellectual ability, thus leading to positively impacting the world."
Meet the STEM Program Award Winner
About Dr. Camarda: Dr. Kyle Camarda earned his Master's & Doctoral Degrees in Chemical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Camarda's research focuses mainly on the use of high-performance computers to solve optimization problems in product design, process design and bioinformatics. In the search for new pharmaceuticals, polymers, or fuel additives, the traditional trial-and-error approach is being supplanted by a new technique which uses computers to suggest compounds which are promising before any synthesis or testing is performed. He is also interested in integrating chemical engineering tools, such as process simulators, within Access Grid technology to allow for multi-site, multi-user design research.
Dr. Camarda joined as an Honors Faculty Fellow in the Spring 2021 semester.
About the Program: The first faculty-led program that KU's School of Engineering has led in about five years and intended for sophomore-level engineering majors, the course “Logistics in Berlin: Optimization and the Cold War” aims to teach both the mathematics of logistics, and an example historical context in which logistics was vital to success in geopolitics. The history of divided Berlin, 1945-1989, is a fascinating story of a “political island”: a city surrounded by a wall, maintained by Allied forces and constrained by the Soviet Empire. The Allies only were able to access West Berlin through three narrow corridors, by land and by air, and so the logistics of supply became paramount to the continued Allied presence there. This class will teach the mathematics behind optimal supply chains, scheduling and planning strategies, and constrained logistics which military and civilian planners used to keep the population of Berlin supported and independent of East Germany. Mathematical topics include linear and nonlinear programming, formulation of scheduling and planning problems, and discrete structures. The course will include visits to many Berlin-area sites connected to the Cold War period, including Checkpoint Charlie, Potsdam and the “Bridge of Spies”, the Berlin Wall Memorial, and Gatow airport, used in the famous Berlin Airlift. A guided tour of Cecilienhof Palace, where the famous Potsdam agreement was signed, is also proposed.
Dr. Camarda's Take on the Program: "We look forward to providing engineering students with an opportunity to take an engineering elective while simultaneously learning about the cultural history of modern Berlin.”
Meet the STEM Program Award Runner-Up
About Sue Metzger: Sue McFarland Metzger is a professor of Management Information Systems at Villanova University. Prior to coming to Villanova, she was a Director of Global Support for SAP America, managing teams and processes that provided large scale, global support to critical customer situations. She received her MS in Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and undergraduate degree from Bucknell University. At VSB, she teaches courses ranging from Strategic Information Technology, a core sophomore class designed to address enterprise technology, to programming as well as ERP, enterprise data management and business intelligence courses. Sue teaches several courses in Villanova’s Master of Business Analytics online program and more recently has been instrumental in creating an AI/ML minor. To support the minor, Sue teaches a course on applied machine learning algorithms.
In 2015, Sue spearheaded the VU Women in Tech initiative at Villanova that hosts events for students, faculty, staff and alumni to share experiences leading with technology, highlight opportunities for women to innovate with technology, and motivate those who hesitate. Sue’s work has been recognized with the Thomas J. Carmody, Jr. Faculty Award (2019), Wildcat Crossing Award (2017), faculty recipient of The Meyer Innovation & Creative Excellence Award (2016), and the Gerald A. Dougherty Endowed School of Business Faculty Award (2014).
About the Program: Students participating in the "Maymester Berlin: Strategic Information Technology" Program will gain an understanding of the political, economic, and historic origins of the country and region while experiencing cultural immersion by living and studying in an international and multicultural city. Berlin - Europe’s thriving Silicon Allee – is the ideal classroom setting for students to study IT theory in a practical setting all while experiencing real-world applications! From tech giants like Google, Apple, and Facebook to local success stories like music streaming service SoundCloud and to-do list app Wunderlist, Berlin is spawning a diverse range of technology firms that employ thousands of people across the city. Young creators, entrepreneurs and founders are flocking to the German capital to be part of a healthy growing ecosystem.
While completing academic coursework, students will also be able to participate in corporate site visits and cultural activities. Through engagement with corporate and cultural leaders, professors, and local partners conducting international business in the region, participants will cultivate an international perspective and inspire a global mindset that will foster the desire for further study abroad and future employment overseas. The program leaders will leverage personal relationships at SAP Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in developing on site lectures and corporate site visits.
Sue's Take on the Program: "My course teaches students the complexity of business technologies needed to support multinational corporations. Berlin provides the perfect backdrop to help bring to life these topics – from learning about SAP software, to exploring Berlin’s rich digital innovation hubs and understanding GDPR requirements. Having lived & worked in Germany for SAP, I treasure the opportunity to share my knowledge and my experiences with students. Being in Berlin will bring the materials to life and surely make the significance of the course content lasting."
Thank you to everyone who submitted their thoughtful and innovative program ideas! Learn more about our Customized and Faculty-Led Programs or connect with a Customized Program Manager to get started on your own faculty-led study abroad program!
