URBANA, Ill. – Humanitarian engineering projects often focus on bringing western technologies to non-industrialized societies. But environmental and cultural factors in these locations may be very different from conditions in the West, and the projects may not meet client needs if engineers do not fully understand the context in which they are operating.

Today, as world leaders gather for the UN General Assembly, hundreds of emerging leaders focused on fighting global inequality came together at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s third annual Goalkeepers event in New York City.

Although summer could be seen as a time to slow down after the semester and find a break in the action, many students instead take advantage of the time away from the university to pursue a study abroad program. Summer is another opportunity to connect with an increasingly global environment, learn more about other cultures, and build new relationships while earning academic course credit. During summer 2019, 85 College of ACES students were able to participate in summer programs across four continents.  

Over the past decade, more than 200 international students have been introduced to the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at the University of Illinois through the International Student Immersion Program (ISIP) coordinated by the ACES Office of International Programs. ISIP helps ACES maintain and facilitate strategic partnerships with key international universities, identifies potential graduate students, and serves as a bridge for cultural understanding, for both the visiting students and their hosts at Illinois.

After an engaging set of interactions in South Africa over the summer, several faculty from the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) are planning new collaborations with colleagues from the University of Pretoria and the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Agronomy professionals from around the world converged at the Crop Sciences Research and Education Center’s South First Street facility on August 26 for in-field presentations and opportunities to interact with ACES faculty.

The event is hosted biannually to coincide with the Farm Progress Show in Decatur. Most of the attendees hailed from Brazil and Argentina.

John Bowman (Ph.D. Plant Pathology ’84) recently received the “Outstanding International Horticulturalist” award from the American Society of Horticultural Science. This award recognized Bowman’s lifetime of achievement in international horticulture. He currently serves as a program area leader in the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Office of Agricultural Research and Policy.

URBANA, Ill. – Jordan Blake Banks recently arrived in Finland, where she’ll begin a two-year Master’s program in bioenergy systems at the Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology (LUT). She is one of two 2019 graduates from the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences to receive a Fulbright scholarship for continued studies.

Banks spent her first weeks abroad participating in a Finnish language and culture course. Now she’s ready to start at LUT, which offers an international Master’s program with classes taught in English.

Growing up in Silicon Valley, Krti Tallam was steeped in a culture that equated success with personal wealth and getting ahead. But that didn’t sit right with her.

“As grateful as I was to grow up there, I was bombarded by a sense that you need to be in tech to be successful,” she says. “It bothered me that we have 7 billion people in the world and we’re teaching them to look out for themselves, not do anything for the planet.”