2009

A typical member of Iowa City’s International Women’s Club (IWC) is difficult to define. With roughly 140 members representing nearly 50 countries, and ranging from young mothers to a woman in her 90s, it’s easy to see why.

Every two years, a group of Japanese students from Joetsu University of Education spends several days visiting local attractions and offering an exchange of cultures at local elementary and secondary schools in eastern Iowa. The group also takes part in several events on the University of Iowa campus. The ten day Joetsu Exchange is facilitated by International Programs at the University of Iowa.

The U.S. Department of Education recently awarded University of Iowa International Programs two grants that will help expand on- and off-campus learning opportunities in South Asian studies for undergraduates and will create on-campus and study abroad courses in East Africa.

The Adirondack Mountains of northeastern New York are for me and my family a promised land. Geologically related to Canada’s Laurentian Mountains, but a few miles south of the mighty St. Lawrence River and west of Lake Champlain, North America’s sixth “great lake”, they are especially beautiful in the autumn when vibrant gold, orange, and red sugar maples meet claret oak and yellow beech and birch on dark evergreen mountainsides to stitch tapestries that feed the soul. My family first staked its slice of this “forever wild” heaven in the late Nineteenth Century, and has enjoyed and sought to protect it ever since, generation after generation. I now enjoy and protect it with my children and grandchildren, and believe they will do the same with their children and grandchildren.

In January, 2008, I traveled to Baghdad, together with representatives from 21 other Universities, at the invitation of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki.  The purpose of my trip was to explore further the role that the University of Iowa’s International Programs might play in the prime minister’s newly announced educational initiative.  With many of Iraq’s young professionals having fled the country, there is a pressing need to educate others to replace them, which would begin to stabilize the country’s economy and secure its future as a democratic society.

On June 29, 2009, the Fulbright Association launched a statewide affiliate in Iowa, at a meeting of alumni hosted by the University of Iowa’s International Programs. Sally Mason, president of the University of Iowa, Downing Thomas, associate provost and dean of international programs, and Jane L. Anderson, Fulbright Association executive director, spoke to Fulbright alumni and friends from Ames, Bettendorf, Burlington, Des Moines, Fairfield, Hudson, Iowa City, North Liberty, Oxford, Waterloo, and Williamsburg.

Members of the community and local elementary school students had opportunities to learn more about Japanese culture and language thanks to two events spearheaded by University of Iowa International Programs, under the leadership of Buffy Quintero, International Program Outreach Coordinator.