Virginia Garland, associate professor of education. (Courtesy photo)

CIE Travel Report: Virginia Garland
 
Virginia Garland, associate professor of education, received one of the 2005-06 CIE Faculty International Travel grants funded by the VPAA. In October 2005, she traveled to Puerto Rico to present a paper, "Internationalizing North American Higher Education:  Integrating the Topic of Natural Disasters in the Curricula" at the 10th North American Higher Education Conference. Below is her report.  

Associate Professor of Education Virginia Garland gave a presentation Oct. 13, 2005, at the 10th North American Higher Education Conference San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her paper, "Internationalizing North American Higher Education: Integrating the Topic of Natural Disasters in the Curricula," drew the interest of conference participants from Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean and the United States. The focus of this interactive presentation was on the impact of hurricanes and earthquakes on university efforts at internationalization. The session in which she spoke was widely attended due to the very recent tragedies of Hurricane Katrina and the Pakistan Earthquake.

During the conference, the Inter American University of Puerto Rico hosted a welcoming reception, staged at El Arsenal de la Puntilla Storehouse, built in 1847. Similar to a typical Patron Saint's Festival, the reception included several kiosks featuring traditional island crafts. Professor Garland is pictured with a local artisan specializing in shark's teeth jewelry.

Since coming to UNH in 1988, Garland has been active in international engagement. In 1992 she was a visiting professor at the Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin Institutes of Education in China. From 1994-1996, Garland served as the UNH College of Liberal Arts exchange professor at Kobe University, Japan. Her survival of the 1995 Kobe earthquake informed her research interests in the cross-cultural implications of educational leadership during crises.

In her presentation at the conference in Puerto Rico, she suggested the following ways to internationalize higher education: focus on the topic of natural disasters as an international theme, integrate emergency management in education courses, continue to support new curricula such as Professor Bruce Lindsay's resource economics course, "Catastrophe and Terrorism," expand offerings in foreign languages, provide services for international students impacted by natural disasters and terrorism.