50 years of Student Mobility: Reflections on the Brazilian Scientific Mobility and Obama’s 100,000 Strong Programs and Precursors

• In Event: The Student Experience in Brazil and the U.S. at Fifty

Abstract

Since the founding of LASA 50 years ago, student mobility programs between Brazil and the U.S. have been important. This paper traces the history of the exchanges with an emphasis on the Science without Borders (BSM) and President Obama’s 100,000 Strong in the Americas. BSM has been a national priority for Brazil, with a goal of dramatically increasing the capacity of Brazil’s scientific professional and academic community to include over 101,000 BSM scholarship recipients by 2015. The U. S. is the primary destination for BSM students (Monks, 2013). According to IIE, 5,000 Brazilian BSM students are studying in the U.S. at any given time. Although there is current research focused on access to this program and returnees’ experiences, there is little data on the experiences of “receiving schools” or information on the preparation for support abroad. This presentation will focus the qualitative analysis and comparison of top “receiving schools” for undergraduate BSM students studying in the U.S. In addition to interpreting the experiences of BSM-receiving institutions, this presentation will also include data from interviews with mobility officers in Brazil about the preparation BSM students receive prior to departure to give an holistic account of the BSM study abroad pipeline. By analyzing the BSM program from a pre-departure to abroad co-institutional perspective, the presenters will make recommendations for collaborative support and improvement. The paper also explores the new 100,000 Strong in the Americas Program to compare the issues raised with BSM.

Authors

• Patricia Somers, University of Texas/Austin

• Genevieve Countryman, UT Austin