Building a Network Between North and South America

Charles Wallace, Fulbright Alumni Ambassador
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science at Michigan Technological University
2010 Core Fulbright Scholar to Chile

“Ocho coma ocho.”  Eight point eight?  At 4 A.M. I trusted my grasp of Spanish even less than usual.  Yet that was the phrase on everyone’s tongue as we stood outside the empty apartment building.  Did the Richter scale really go that high?  Encountering what was then the sixth strongest earthquake ever recorded, on February 27, 2010, days before the beginning of classes at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago, was the first indication that the unexpected was to be expected during my time as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar. As the school term unfolded, the reality of my Fulbright experience would prove to be more complex, often more difficult, but ultimately more rewarding than my simplistic expectations.

As a software engineering educator and researcher, I had certain assumptions about “the way things work” in the United States and European software industries.  I was accustomed to students in my home university transitioning easily between their classes and employment with big firms, gaining experience in large-scale software development companies as they went along.  The students at Católica were just as sharp and motivated as those at my home institution, but the opportunities for real developer experience were more limited than in the States. While they were focused on what they thought of as the ideal, the United States, I was interested in learning about how developing firms in Chile were making things work in a place so far from the digital mainstream.  I had the opportunity to meet real software developers and understand their challenges as they strove to meet standards developed exclusively in the Northern Hemisphere.

As an instructor, I prefer active learning techniques like flipped classroom and guided inquiry.  These techniques were clearly not the norm for the Chilean students in my Software Testing course.  Frankly, the first class meetings were awkward, as the students waited for me to “lecture,” and I insisted on them providing the questions that would move the class forward.  Eventually they warmed up to the idea that their expertise and critical thinking skills were valuable contributions to the classroom.  Their projects on exploratory software testing were particularly satisfying, as they discovered and reported serious flaws in several commonly used Chilean websites. 

The Fulbright Commission in Chile was a hotbed of activity and the Commission was not shy about asking visiting Fulbright Scholars to help in preparing Chilean students for their visits to U.S. institutions.  Working with U.S.-bound students, again I noticed a clear difference in engineering culture between the United States and Chile.  How students present themselves is more colored by marketing and advertising in the United States; Chilean students were under the impression that test scores and accomplishments on a résumé spoke for themselves. I gave them pointers on how to tell their stories in writing, and I coached them in bringing more of their personality and experience into interview settings.

My eye-opening Fulbright experience inspired me to bring students from South America together with professionals in the Northern Hemisphere, giving them the experience that students at my home institution enjoy.  With my colleagues at Católica and other institutions, I received National Science Foundation (NSF) funding for the 2013 “Pan American Software Quality Institute”, a software engineering workshop for students and researchers across the Americas.  This event created strong ties between a cohort of top students from ten countries and has resulted in several ongoing international collaborations with scholars in Chile, Brazil, Costa Rica, and the United States.  The research projects and professional connections generated through this effort, still supported through Microsoft Research, are the proudest outcome from my Fulbright.