Sixteen Japanese students and their chaperones from the Ohmi Brotherhood High School in Omihachimnan, Shiga Prefecture, Japan visited KU for two weeks this month. This is a new program for International Short Programs, which is working with the high school students in an experiential learning and cultural exchange program.

While at KU, the students practiced their conversational English skills, learned about opportunities to study in the U.S., and visited cultural sites in Lawrence and the surrounding area. Highlights were attending a Royals baseball game and traveling to Leavenworth, which is the birthplace of the school's founder Merrell Vories Hitotsuyanagi.

Barbara Kerr, KU Williamson Family Distinguished Professor of Counseling Psychology, has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to travel to Iceland to study creative communities.

Co-funded by the National Science Foundation Arctic Scholars program, the Fulbright Fellowship will allow Kerr to spend the 2023 fall semester in Iceland exploring how communities composed of creative people differ from other organizations. Icelanders have a high participation rate in creative industries, and the country has more patents, copyrights and art sold per capita than much larger nations.

“We want to see if creative communities in Iceland have some part to play in national innovation,” Kerr said.

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KU was awarded a $35,000 grant from the U.S. Department of State to develop a hybrid study abroad program aimed at encouraging underrepresented students to travel internationally.

KU was one of 34 U.S. colleges and universities to receive a grant from the State Department’s Increase and Diversify Education Abroad for U.S. Students (IDEAS) Program. The IDEAS program is designed to develop and expand study abroad programs around the world and contribute to the State Department’s diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility efforts to engage Americans in foreign policy.

Elizabeth MacGonagle, associate professor of history and African and African-American studies, and Luciano Tosta, associate professor of Spanish & Portuguese, will create KU’s first hybrid study abroad program to be offered during winter break beginning December 2024.

The program will explore the interconnections among race, history and health in Africa and the African diaspora. By focusing on Nigeria, Cuba and Brazil, students will examine how the enslavement of Africans in the Americas explains health and social disparities in those countries. The program’s themes, location and hybrid format were designed to attract a demographic of students traditionally underrepresented in KU’s study abroad programs.

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Representing diverse academic fields across campus, 18 KU undergraduate students have received the prestigious Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship to study or intern abroad.

Funded through the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the highly competitive award provides up to $5,000 to apply toward the program cost to study or intern abroad. Students who additionally were awarded the Gilman Critical Need Language Award receive up to $8,000.

The most recent cohort of Gilman Scholars are from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Schools of Architecture & Design, Business, Education & Human Sciences and Engineering. The students have or will travel to 15 countries throughout Europe and Asia.

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