The Latin American Studies Center Board and the Tinker Foundation have awarded PhD student Ceci Valenzuela a Field Research Grant to fund pre-doctoral research in Latin America.
Ceci will return to Cuba to continue her study, "Pedagogical Intercambios: Cuban Education in Virtual Collaborations.” The first tier of her research focuses on educators involved in the 1961 Literacy Campaign. This movement was the first post-revolutionary effort that helped reduce the country's illiteracy rate from over 20 percent to just 3.9 percent within one year and recruited over 300,000 volunteers (of which over 100,000 were youth between the ages 10 and 19).
Her second tier of research will include building collaborations with Cuban educators and students to secure the creation of an on-line transnational 'intercambio' (exchange) focused on literacy and pedagogy.This study originated from her work in Cuba in 2011 and in 2013, during which she worked with the Ciudad Libertad, a campus in Havana that houses The Pedagogical Institute and Cuba's National Museum of Literacy. This experience will aid in Valenzuela’s hopes of developing a shared digital media website for youth and educators in multiple countries to use as a way of advancing intercultural and collaborative educational exchanges and promote on-line intercambios.
Ceci is the coordinator of the Education Diversity Scholars (EDS) program at the University of Colorado Boulder, which presents under-represented and first-generation students in either the Teacher Education or Education Minor program with an opportunity for limited scholarships and a safe space and community in which to grow and learn.
Related Faculty: Cecilia Valenzuela