Elizabeth Bernal lives in Iowa City, where she is involved with multiple community organizations that promote inclusion and wellbeing for immigrant communities. Elizabeth is a founding member of the board of directors of the Eastern Iowa Community Bond Project, a local community organization that pays immigration bond for incarcerated Iowa immigrants who cannot afford their immigration bond. Elizabeth also serves on the board of the Center for Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa, and last October she was awarded the Rick Graf award from the Iowa City Human Rights Commission.​

​As associate provost and dean, Russel Ganim has the privilege of working closely with exceptional faculty and staff who provide leadership and support for internationally-oriented teaching, research, creative work, and engagement. This is done through International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS), Study Abroad, facilitating international partnerships around the world, providing student and faculty funding opportunities, and many other programs and services.

Before coming to International Programs, he served as the director of the UI's Division of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures from 2011-2019, where he worked to extend and deepen study abroad and other partnership opportunities in East Asia, Europe, Russia, and Latin America. He also served as chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln from 2001-2011, where he oversaw numerous study abroad programs and served a term as head of the University's International Affairs Advisory Committee.

Much of his career has been devoted to shared governance, including serving as chair of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) Faculty Assembly, and more recently as president of the UI Faculty Senate.

Russel sees his role in International Programs as one of enhancing collaboration between faculty, staff, students, and senior administration across the university for the benefit of the institution. International education has undergone significant changes in recent months, but it is precisely these collaborations that reinforce our mission and underscore the UI's commitment to promoting the world as our classroom now and in the future.

​In his presentation, Russel Ganim will talk about...

How the response to the coronavirus from offices of international programs nationwide places them in a strong position to rebound from the crisis.

Chuck Connerly joined the University of Iowa School of Urban and Regional Planning (recently renamed the School of Planning and Public Affairs) in 2008 as professor and director. His research has been published in top journals urban planning. He wrote the Most Segregated City in America: City Planning and Civil Rights in Birmingham, 1920-1980 (University of Virginia Press, 2005) and co-edited Growth Management in Florida: Planning for Paradise, published by Ashgate Publishing in 2007.

The Most Segregated City was named one of the top 10 planning books in 2006 by Planetizen. In 2007 the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning named the book a recipient of the Paul Davidoff Award, which recognizes an outstanding book publication promoting participatory planning and positive social change, opposing poverty and racism as factors in society and seeking ways to reduce disparities between rich and poor; white and black; men and women. For five years he co-edited the Journal of Planning Education and Research and for nine years he co-edited Housing Studies.

In 2011-2013, Chuck served as President of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, the national learned society of planning schools, faculty, and students in the US. His most recent book, Green, Fair, and Prosperous:  Paths to a Sustainable Iowa (University of Iowa Press, 2020, September 1) is an assessment (part history, part contemporary analysis) of Iowa's sustainability challenges and responses. It builds on Connerly's work with the community engagement initiative of which he is the principal founder, the UI Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities (http://iisc.uiowa.edu/). In 2015, he received the Michael J. Brody award for faculty service presented by the University of Iowa Faculty Senate and the UI Provost's Office.  In 2018, he was presented with the Jay Chatterjee Award for Service by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning.

Join us online for a program from Kimberly Musial Datchuk and Cory Gundlach, who will speak to us on "African Art in Iowa: New Approaches to Collecting, Curating, and Engagement at the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art." ​

Kimberly Musial Datchuk has a PhD in art history with a specialty in nineteenth-century European art. As the Curator of Learning and Engagement at the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art, she connects the museum to the public and UI campus through teaching, research, and programming. At the Stanley, she has curated several exhibitions that center the work of women and the struggle for social justice, as well as an international loan exhibition on Ferdinand Bac. Her research and curatorial interests include institutional critique and the intersection of art, gender, sexuality, and technology, particularly in fin-de-siècle France. She has presented her research throughout the United States, as well as France, England, and Poland.  ​

Cory Gundlach has a PhD in art history with a specialty in African art. He began his art museum career in northwest California in 1998, and worked with museums of history, science, and art in Colorado before joining the staff as a curatorial research assistant at the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art in 2012. Soon after completing the Art & Life in Africa website, he accepted his current position as curator at the museum. Since 2015, he has curated nine installations of African art at the Stanley Visual Classroom, including his most recent exhibition, Follow Her Lead: Womanhood in African and Diasporic Arts. In 2017, he curated a major exhibition of contemporary sculpture by Eric Adjetey Anang in the Black Box Theater, and in 2019, he collaborated with UIHC Department of Radiology to conduct computer tomography (CT) analysis on selected works in the Africa collection. He is currently planning a re-installation of the African collection for the new museum.   
​

What's new with African art at the Stanley Museum? To answer this question about activities today and visions of the future, we will take a brief look at what's been done with African art at Iowa in the past. Historically, what goals have driven the museum's collecting practices and exhibition programs for African art, and how were they realized? What has changed over time and what is consistent to Iowa's use of African art? Answers to these questions will offer perspective on recent examples of engagements with African art at the museum today, and the opportunity to consider new directions in the future. We will conclude with a look at how students and faculty have helped shape our vision and participated in exhibitions and programming. ​

When: Tuesday, July 21st @ 12:15pm 
Where: Online via Zoom
Please register to receive a link to join the online program live.

Join us online for a program from Morten Schlütter and Cuma Özkan, who will speak to us on "State Regulation of Religion: Understanding Islam in the People's Republic of China." ​

By Peter Gerlach on Wednesday, April 2020

Dr. Peter Gerlach is Summer Institute Coordinator at the International Writing Program and Adjunct Assistant Professor of International Studies at the University of Iowa. He received his BA and MA degrees in English from Ripon College and the University of Northern Colorado, respectively. After serving in the US Peace Corps in Mongolia, he earned a PhD in Cultural Foundations of Education from Syracuse University. Since 2004, he has taught a wide variety of courses in English, Education, and interdisciplinary departments. Dr. Gerlach’s work as an international educator and his dissertation, current teaching, and research interests focus on the merits and limits of global citizenship, the need for understanding and empathy across cultures, the internationalization of higher education, and the lived experiences of university students, refugees, and immigrants in a globalized world.

​In his talk, Dr. Gerlach describes how his new course, Community Engaged Learning with Refugees and Immigrants in Iowa, fosters students’ international education and benefits a local non-profit through service. The talk focuses on how the course was designed; the relationship between the class and community partner, the Refugee and Immigrant Association; and how the course was adapted midway through the semester to respond to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Lessons learned and broader implications for teaching and learning are also shared.