Students from Kennesaw State University, along with students from other universities across Georgia and Brazil, gathered to present their results of research projects highlighting global trends and challenges in Brazil and the greater Portuguese-speaking world.

News at KSU reports that the daylong “Year of the Portuguese-Speaking World” Student Symposium featured presenters from Kennesaw State, Morehouse College, Spelman College, the University of Georgia, Clark Atlanta University, Georgia Gwinnett College and Emory University. Joining them at the KSU Center earlier this month via a live video feed were students from Universidade Salvador (UNIFACS) in Brazil. They gathered to share their research and discuss their experiences studying abroad in Portuguese-speaking countries.

 

Event organizers included Dan Paracka, director of campus internationalization for Kennesaw State’s Division of Global Affairs; Ken Hill, manager of the president’s Emerging Global Scholars (PEGS) program; and the newly created Georgia Afro-Brazilian Consortium.

 

The symposium’s first session featured several of the 20 participants in Kennesaw State’s PEGS program who studied abroad in Brazil for 18 days and worked with UNIFACS students to compare how Americans and Brazilians think about issues ranging from the role technology plays in daily life to attitudes surrounding gun ownership. Students at both universities surveyed their respective student bodies and presented their findings at the symposium.

 

The results revealed similarities between the two cultures on some issues and striking differences on other critical issues. Click here to read the entire article. Click here to read the entire article.