University of Florida ranked No. 3 among more than 150 Peace Corps Prep partner universities
10/04/21

WASHINGTON – The Peace Corps announced today the University of Florida (UF) ranked No. 3 among schools on the agency’s list of top Peace Corps Prep certificate-issuing partners in 2021. UF issued 37 Peace Corps Prep certificates to the graduating class of 2021. There were 292 enrolled in the Peace Corps Prep program at UF during the 2020–21 academic year.

“At this pivotal time in our history, young people have a crucial role to play,” said Peace Corps Acting Director Carol Spahn. “Through the Peace Corps Prep program, these schools have equipped students with the skills and understanding necessary to help communities near and far recover from the multidimensional and global shocks...

UFLATM's Work on the Governance and Infrastructure in the Amazon Project
10/04/21

The Governance and Infrastructure in the Amazon project seeks to create, strengthen and expand a Community of Practice and Learning (COP-L) on the use of tools and strategies by conservation and development practitioners from NGOs, community organizations, government and academia. The GIA theory of change is that by bringing practitioners together to share experiences, reflect and dialogue, they will collaboratively learn and adapt, improve their use of tools and strategies to improve social-environmental governance, and thus be more effective at mitigating or stopping poorly planned infrastructure development.

The GIA project is led by an Executive Committee of faculty from UF’s...

UFIC Welcomes New Campus Peace Corps Recruiter, Hannah Jo Maier
09/27/21

UFIC is pleased to announce that Hannah Jo Maier is our new Campus Peace Corps Recruiter as of August.

Hannah Jo received her B.S. in Environmental Science at the University of Michigan in 2018. After graduation, Hannah Jo worked as a field assistant for the Sea Turtle Conservancy in Panama, where she collected sea turtle nesting data to measure the efficacy of conservation projects in the area . From 2019-2020, Hannah Jo served in the U.S. Peace Corps as a volunteer in the Education sector. She worked in an indigenous community in the Ecuadorian Amazon, teaching English as a Foreign Language under the Ecuadorian Ministry of Education and developing rural tourism projects with the...

Dr. Elischer Publishes New Book "Salafism and Political Order in Africa"
09/27/21

Violent Islamic extremism is affecting a growing number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In some, jihadi Salafi organizations have established home bases and turned into permanent security challengers. However, other countries have managed to prevent the formation or curb the spread of homegrown jihadi Salafi organizations. In this book, Sebastian Elischer provides a comparative analysis of how different West and East African states have engaged with fundamentalist Muslim groups between the 1950s and today. In doing so, he establishes a causal link between state-imposed organizational gatekeepers in the Islamic sphere and the absence of homegrown jihadi Salafism. Illustrating that the...

What is the Moon Festival? A scholar of Chinese religions explains
09/27/21

Source: The Conversation

With the arrival of September and hints of cooler temperatures also comes one of the most important traditional festivals in the Chinese calendar, the Mid-Autumn Festival, or Zhongqiu jie (中秋節), also known as the Moon Festival.

At this time of the year, the Chinese store down the road from our home in Gainesville, Florida, is stocked with mooncakes, known in Chinese as yuebing (月餅). The same is true of Chinese stores around the world. There is even the option these days of buying these desserts from online retailers such...

Hispanic Heritage Month Highlight: Dr. Gladys Velarde
09/20/21

Source: American College of Cardiology

The need to help others in a country with scarce resources, my love for science and the image of my older brother Carlos as a medical student were my initial inspirations to be a doctor.

At the age of 9, I lost my father to vascular complications. I never really knew the cause of his death; he was a heavy smoker and died shortly after an aorto-femoral arterial bypass.

I remember my father would take me for walks and at...

Cody Case Accepts Fulbright Hayes Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship
09/20/21

The UF School of Music is delighted to announce that Cody accepted the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship to conduct fieldwork research in Salvador, Brazil for twelve months beginning in 2022. The U.S. Department of Education manages the national annual competition to offer these awards for conducting doctoral research with a non-western area studies focus. Reinforcing UF’s strong reputation for earning Fulbright-Hays awards among graduate students and faculty, Cody is the first doctoral student to become a recipient from the College of the Arts in over 20 years.

Academically, Cody weaves together interdisciplinary coursework in Latin American studies...

Dr. Ian Tebbett's International Impact in Forensic Science
09/13/21

For over 20 years now, Dr. Ian Tebbett has led the largest Forensic Science program in the world and has over the years established numerous international collaborations with the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, universities in Australia, Europe, South America, and across Asia. His work has been impactful in growing not only the graduate online Forensic Science programs but also other initiatives across the UF campus and at the College of Pharmacy. Dr. Tebbet's leadership, vision, and expertise helped many other faculty in building their own in-person and online programs alike. He paved the way for additional...

UF-led study explores differences in COVID-19 severity internationally
09/13/21

The question kept coming up: Why are some countries in the grip of COVID-19 while others appear less affected?

“It’s fundamentally curious,” said Rhoel Dinglasan, Ph.D., M.P.H., a professor of infectious diseases with the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, part of UF Health, the university’s academic health center. “It seems like COVID-19 is not affecting people in Africa as severely as it has in North America. But why?”

Dinglasan suspects the answer is connected to people’s exposure to various infectious diseases in specific geographic regions.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently awarded a $10 million grant to a team led...

New International Student Numbers are Up!
09/08/21

The International Center is pleased to welcome a higher number of new international students this semester!

International students play an important role in the advancement of our university's research and teaching mission. Their presence is key to enhancing UF’s tradition of global learning.

Given the high number of new students who deferred from Fall 2020 to Spring 2021, the sum of those two semesters is a better indicator of international student interest in UF for our last academic year. In comparison with previous semesters, as of 8/31/21, 52% of F1 International Students who received an I-20s checked in, in contrast with 47% in Spring 2021, and 31% of check-ins in...

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