A delegation from the University of Arkansas is in Panama this week to strengthen existing academic and cultural exchanges and recruit students.
At least eight Fayetteville campus officials representing its agricultural, trade, international, student recruitment and fundraising efforts made the trip, which will feature an alumni event today, the university announced Thursday.
Panama is home to the university’s only international alumni chapter, established in 2009, said Tammy Tucker, a spokesman for the Arkansas Alumni Association.
The trip celebrates a relationship between UA and Panama that dates back more than 60 years. Between 1951 and 1956, the university’s agricultural mission program sent 24 people to Panama.
The mission was part of President Harry S. Truman’s “Point Four Program,” a ColdWar initiative designed to improve international relations with Third World countries and, through the sharing of agricultural and technological knowledge, foster opportunities for capital investment and economic development outside the U.S., according to various historical resources.
Fayetteville campus officials said it was the first U.S. land-grant university to embark on a foreign agricultural mission.
UA’s contribution included a research program in animal nutrition and management that it said helped Panama grow its agricultural industry. The person behind that effort, Professor Emeritus Paul Noland, was among the two dozen UA employees dispatched there for the program.
“The idea is to help both countries,” said Noland’s wife, Eunice. Her husband wasn’t feeling well Thursday and wasn’t available to elaborate, she said.
Paul Noland, a former head of UA’s animal and poultry science department, lived in Divisa, Panama, with his family for about two years beginning July 1, 1955, according to an interview he gave UA’s Pryor Center in October 2005.
“The original mission helped develop the initial program that has grown into a Panamanian government initiative - National Institute of Agriculture,” said Robby Edwards, spokesman for UA’s Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences, in an e-mail. He was referring to the original 1951-56 program. “It’s been described as a magnet high school for high-achieving students in Panama who are pursuing a career in agriculture.”
“Dr. Noland helped recruit students to UA in the 1950s and 60s, and some of them are leaders in Panama today.Some are involved with the Panama Canal, some in banking. Lucho Morena was the first graduate and he helped institute some of the loans that helped re-establish the Panamanian economy.”
The current Panamanian president, Ricardo Martinelli, graduated from UA in 1973. A year later, so did his brother, Mario Martinelli, who runs the Super 99 grocery-store chain in Panama.
The alumni event is scheduled for 7-9 p.m. today at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Panama City, according to a university news release.
“The main purpose of the trip is … to recruit high-quality students,” Edwards said, adding that the Panamanian government provides scholarships to the top student at each of its high schools.
“Those students can go anywhere they want and we want them to pick Arkansas,” he said, adding that UA is competing with some other U.S. universities which also have strong ties with Panama.
“International experience is important to Panamanian students because it’s important to their economy,” Edwards said. “It’s important to Arkansas agriculture because we have products exported down the Mississippi River and throughthe Panama Canal.”
Currently, 81 Panamanian students are enrolled at the Fayetteville campus, 30 of them tuition-paying and 51 on Panamanian-government scholarships, Edwards said.
Fortymore Panamanian students have been admitted to UA for the fall semester, he said. Nineteen have been conditionally admitted for the fall, provided they improve their English-language skills sufficiently through the UA-affiliated Spring International Language Center.
UA officials who already were in Panama on Thursday or scheduled to make the trip for today’s event include Chris Wyrick, UA vice chancellor for University Advancement, which oversees fundraising and alumni relations; Mike Vayda, Bumpers College dean; Dan Hendrix, vice president and chief executive officer of the Arkansas World Trade Center; Bryan Hill, assistantdean for the College of Engineering’s student recruitment and international programs; Bumpers College’s development director, Mitchell Spearman, and its student recruitment coordinator, Michelle Pribbernow; and the Alumni Association’s executive director and associate vice chancellor, Graham Stewart, and its president, John Reap.
To see a four-minute video of Paul Noland’s memories of living in midcentury Panama, log on to: newswire. uark.edu/articles/21386/ bumpers-college-alumni-recruiting-event-in-panama.-
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 06/14/2013