Fulbright to Chile (part 1)

  



Among all the busy-ness at work this spring, including teaching another delightful set of undergraduates in my American literature survey class, I received the incredible news that I have won a Fulbright Scholar Award to work at the Pontifica Universidad Catolica in Valparaiso, Chile.  This will hitherto be acronym-ed as PUC-V.  There seem to be a number of Pontificas Universidades Catolicas in South America, and the main one in Chile is in Santiago.  The one in Valparaiso, or Valpo, has about 13,000 students and is only a few blocks from where the Chilean Congress meets.

This all came about because of a surprise request by Fernanda Rejas to visit the University of Georgia in the fall of 2010 to find out what programs the Center for Teaching and Learning offered to train and support teaching assistants in their instructional roles.  At the time, she was working for PUC-Santiago.  My boss then, Nelson Hilton, forwarded Fernanda's email request, asking if I would be willing to meet with her.  Sure.  Why not?  Little did I know that I would meet such a delightful person who was so eagerly interested in what we did, so easy to talk to, and so appreciated of any ideas for her own institution.  On the last night of her stay in Athens, Erica, Zachary, and I had her over to our house and took her out to La Parilla, and she went on her way.  That, I thought, was that.

After returning to Chile, she contacted me to ask if I was willing to present an overview of TA Programs to a group of faculty and administrators at PUC Santiago via Skype.  I eagerly agreed.  Though I'd had little experience with Skype at the time, the presentation would be during the week, and I could rely on the technical expertise at my office to test the connection and to troubleshoot if something went wrong.  It just so happened that this was in December, and Athens had one of its rarest of all natural phenomenons--a snow storm.   Well, a snow storm by Georgia standards, meaning that there were at least two inches of snow that promptly slushed-up and then re-froze, making Clarke County one big ice rink with only a few municipal trucks to fling sand on the overpasses.  The day of the presentation, the University was closed and I was at home with my own devices to pull off this presentation.   After reaching Fena on a shaky connection with blurry, jerky video and uneven audio, she made the mistake of showing me the room of people that I was going to address.  This was an auditorium of people who were gathered to hear me prattle on about TA Programs from my home office.  Things went well until we lost connection toward the end of the presentation.  After some follow-up emails with Fena, I thought: that was that.

Some time early in 2011, Fena contacted me that her office at PUC-Santiago was applying for a government grant to bring an "expert" to come to Chile to consult about training teaching assistants, which--it turns out--typically means undergraduate teaching assistants or "ayudantes pregrados."  She asked if I would be interested in being that expert. . . . Ummm, yeah: which meant, YEAH!, I was incredibly excited about the chance to travel to Chile, and, yeah?, I'm not sure I'm the person that you are looking for.   I eagerly encouraged her to apply with the assurance that I was more than willing to come.  This was in the spring and it sounded all so prospective.  That was that.

Throughout that late spring, throughout the summer, and into the fall, Fena kept sending more and more encouraging emails, until she asked when, exactly, could I come.  Dates were set.  Emails exchanged.  Forms filled out.  Itineraries were proposed, revised, revised, revised.  And it was set:  I was headed to Chile to consult on what PUC-Santiago could do to better train and support ayudantes pregrados.  I remember saying to Erica as I pulled out of the driveway in my 1993 Nissan pick-up truck that I truly wasn't sure that what I knew was worth a trip down to Santiago, Chile.

Those ten days, September 26-October 5, were unlike any other in my life.  Sure, they were different because I was in Chile.  More than that, though, for the days that I worked, I worked harder, met more people, spoke with more confidence and authority about what I had learned in my job than I ever had before.  For all ten days, I felt more comfortable in my skin than I had in a long time.  One day was a wine tour in the Maipo Valley.  Another day was a hike with an incredible guide to one of the lower lagoons at the foot of El Morado, a snow-capped peak in the Andes. One weekend was with Fernanda and her husband David in their home in Vina del Mar and a day touring the funky town of Valparaiso.  And a short trip to Quintay, the smallest of all fishing villages with the feeling of a Hemingway novel.  Little could I imagine that I would return to Vina del Mar with my family to live for five months and work in Valparaiso. 

When I flew out of Santiago, I definitely thought that that was that.