Dr. Jean Ouedraogo Receives Chancellor's Award

"I congratulate Dr. Ouedraogo on behalf of the campus community on this prestigious honor," said College President John Ettling. "This is an award in which he and the entire campus community can be proud."

Of 32 project proposals from around SUNY, Ouedraogo was one of 12 to receive the award, which comes with $8,000 to support his project in Martinique, a French-speaking island in the Caribbean.

The project with Universite Antilles-Guyane will allow SUNY Plattsburgh students to travel to Martinique during Winter Session.

"This partnership will allow us to tap into local faculty expertise and enhance our students experience through the host family system," said Ouedraogo. "The project is rooted in the belief that language and cultural immersion provides students with an essential incentive for personal and academic growth. By design, the project executes an academically-sound curriculum while accommodating further discovery through culturally relevant activities."

Students who choose to participate in the Winter Session course will first take a Web-based course from Dec. 19 to Jan. 3, 2006. The students will then head to Martinique for approximately two weeks where they will visit several sites including rum and sugar cane museums, a nature reserve and colorful markets.

"The award's stipend is intended to facilitate the execution of the project by providing the project director with the financial resources for its implementation," said Ouedraogo. "The Chancellor's Award is a great honor personally, institutionally and academically."

Interim SUNY Chancellor John Ryan said that he regards the enhancement of the international dimension of the University and of the students' education to be among SUNY's priorities.

"Professor Ouedraogo's project in Martinique will provide a unique and challenging educational opportunity for your students," said Ryan. "We have created the Chancellor's Award for Internationalization to encourage SUNY faculty to develop precisely this sort of program for our students. The experience the participating students will have will be invaluable for their education and for their developing sense of the world."

According to Ouedraogo, no SUNY institution has an exchange program with Martinique.

"To this extent, this project complies with the award's stated goal of promoting 'study in less commonly traveled regions.' While its geographic proximity contributes to a general sense of familiarity, Martinique's linguistic and political specificities very often remain significant barriers to a fuller appreciation of its place, not only vis-a-vis France, but also with regard to the French-speaking world, the Francophone and Africana studies curricula, our Western Hemisphere, and indeed to the world at large," said Ouedraogo.

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