Faculty and students who are affiliated with the Latin American Studies Program (LASP) represent a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. They are engaged in a variety of community-based projects both locally and internationally.
Examples of LASP faculty community engagement include:
- virtual exchange between a University of Iowa classroom and a group of students in Moravia, a historic neighborhood in Medellín, Colombia.
- collaboration with University of Iowa’s Liberal Arts Beyond Bars on collective brainstorming to identify and address health needs in the Iowa Medical and Classification Center.
- Spanish Creative Literacy Outreach which pairs University of Iowa students with local Spanish-speaking youth in order to foster appreciation of their linguistic heritage.
LASP students have been involved with:
- Scholars at Risk
- The University of Iowa Center for Human Rights
- Bridges to Prosperity (Nicaragua)
- Mujeres Latinas Project - Iowa Women’s Archives
- Health Equity Advancement Lab - University of Iowa College of Public Health
Public Engagement in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
The University of Iowa’s core mission extends beyond the classrooms, laboratories, studios, and libraries where we educate students, conduct our research, and create new artistic work. Equally important is our engagement with communities throughout Iowa, across the nation, and around the world.
Our faculty, students, and staff work to solve problems, imagine new approaches to challenges, and improve quality of life, often through service-learning courses in which students earn academic credit.
It’s a virtuous circle: When UI expertise is harnessed to help a community or region improve the lives of its residents, the experience adds unique educational value to students’ academic journeys, and advances the research and creative production of our faculty. In turn, that new knowledge empowers us to help more communities, solve more problems, and improve more lives.
The UI is not just the University of Iowa, we're the University for Iowa—and throughout the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, we are proud to serve.