Cornell University Global Health students share a light moment with their colleagues at the Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic in preparation for final research presentations in July 2015. Photo: Jensil Brujan.
The Cornell University Global Health Program and the Committee on U.S.-Latin American Relations (CUSLAR) recently hosted 11 students and their professor from the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo in the latest of several rich educational experiences that make up an emerging collaboration in the Dominican Republic.
From October 15-22, Dr. Angel Pichardo Almonte and his students, who are part of the holistic medicine group RenaSer in the Dominican capital, visited the Cornell campus to present summer health-related research and speak in classes. Students were hosted by their Cornell undergraduate counterparts who had spent the summer in the Dominican Republic and worked together on research teams.
Both the Cornell Chronicle and the Spanish-language Dominican daily Diario Libre gave coverage to this innovative and reciprocal educational exchange. See below for more detail. See below, also, for coverage of the Cornell students’ experience in the Dominican Republic in 2015.
Dominican medical students exchange knowledge on campus
Cornell Chronicle
27 October 2015
by Emily McNeill
In 2014, the Cornell University Global Health Program introduced a new summer program in the Dominican Republic in collaboration with Cornell’s Committee on U.S.-Latin American Relations and Asesoría Nutricional para el Desarrollo Armónico, a holistic clinic in Santo Domingo.
As part of the 2015 program, Cornell students completed research projects alongside Dominican medical students from the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD) on topics ranging from cancer and nutrition to gender inequality. Eleven UASD students began a weeklong visit Oct. 15 to Cornell to present their research, attend classes and learn about medicine in the U.S., adding an academic exchange component to the program. The reciprocal visit of eleven students and their professor, Dr. Angel Pichardo Almonte, is the largest to date for any of the Global Health field experiences offered by Cornell. As part of the exchange, the students presented research projects alongside Cornellians at the Oct. 16 Global Health Experiential Learning Symposium.
Estudiantes dominicanos participarán en intercambio académico en Universidad de Cornell
Diario Libre
13 October 2015
SANTO DOMINGO. Una delegación de estudiantes de la Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD) partirá hacia la ciudad de Ithaca, Nueva York, donde sostendrán diversos encuentros e intercambios culturales y académicos con sus similares de la Universidad de Cornell.
El grupo cumplirá un periplo de dos semanas en el campus de la academia estadounidense, en la que sostendrán diversos encuentros y presentaran proyectos de investigación sobre temas como “Violencia de Género en Adolescentes”, “Usos de Anticonceptivos en menores de edad”, “Masculinidad e Igualdad de Género”, así como otros tópicos sociales y de la salud.
Estudiantes de la UASD presentan investigaciones durante simposio internacional en Universidad de Cornell
Diario Libre
25 October 2015
ITHACA, NUEVA YORK. Como parte de un colectivo de 42 representantes de 13 países, estudiantes de la Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD) expusieron este fin de semana los resultados de diversas investigaciones realizadas en conjunto con alumnos de la Universidad de Cornell sobre varios temas de la salud, entre ellos, el acceso de los inmigrantes haitianos al sistema de salud de República Dominicana.
La representación dominicana, junto a sus pares de Etiopía, Ghana, Haití, India, México, Nepal, Marruecos, Perú, Filipinas, Tanzania, Zambia y Estados Unidos presentó los estudios llevados a cabo en el período mayo-julio del 2015 bajo el programa de Salud Global de la Universidad de Cornell.
The DR Is In: Global Health students dive into medicine, policy, and research in Dominican Republic summer program
Cornell University Human Ecology Magazine
Fall 2015
by Tim Shenk
At a program orientation in Samaná, Dominican Republic, two dozen participants sit in a circle while Dr. Angel Pichardo leads a group reflection in Spanish. An overhead fan moves the humid, salty air, and mosquitoes whine at the window screens.
It’s the first weekend of the 2015 Cornell-CUSLAR Global Health summer service-learning program. As he begins to speak, Pichardo appears to absent-mindedly pour water from a pitcher into a full glass. Several students jump up to warn him as the water overflows and spills onto the floor.
“¿Por qué se botó?” he asks, looking around the circle. “Why did it spill?”
“It was full already,” one student ventures. “And you poured more water into it.”
“Yes,” Pichardo says. “This is what can happen when you try to teach something new to a person who thinks they know everything. New knowledge doesn’t have any place to go, so it spills out and is lost. Our conditioning and our assumptions can make new learning more difficult.”
Students study, serve in Dominican Republic
Cornell Chronicle
June 5, 2015
by Tim Shenk
Traditional Dominican drumming and impromptu dancing amid peals of laughter punctuated an evening welcome event for eight Cornell Global Health students May 28 in the Dominican Republic’s capital city, Santo Domingo, kicking off Cornell’s second eight-week summer collaboration there.
The program is an immersion in language, culture and community life. It includes a homestay, lectures and visits to hospitals and other health-related institutions, service rotations in the ANDA medical clinic and a public primary care facility, group travel and a research methods course with teams of Cornell and Dominican students. The research teams plan to present initial findings at Cornell in the fall.
Committee on U.S./Latin American Relations 