Core Fulbright Scholar ProgramThe core Fulbright Scholar Program sends 800 U.S. faculty and professionals abroad each year. Grantees lecture and conduct research in a wide variety of academic and professional fields. Deadline: August 1, 2012  Learn More >

Students and parents will have an opportunity to ask important questions, evaluate various schools and their academic programs, and begin planning their future. Last year more than 15,000 students interested in pursuing higher education in the United States attended the IIE Higher Education Fair series. Students attending IIE’s Higher Education Fair series will receive IIE’s Study America guide, a source for comprehensive information on U.S. colleges and universities and studying in the United States.

A new online registration and payment system is available at www.iie.org/fairs, a site exclusively designed to ensure institutions, students, and sponsors can access all relevant fair information. Registration is open now. For questions, please contact ufairs@iie.org.

Fabiola Rodriguez-Ciampoli, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the U.S. Department of State recounts on the U.S. State Department blog  http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/site/entry/promoting_educational_exchange how her Fulbright scholarship to the United States changed the course of her life. As she notes, “study abroad enhances our understanding of other cultures, provides an enlightening perspective on our home country, and builds partnerships that foster progress toward greater prosperity, economic equality, and sustainability.”

Guardian Op-Ed: Higher Education Must Join Up Internationalization and Development

An op-ed by Rajika Bhandari, the deputy vice president of research and evaluation at the Institute of International Education, argues that experts and practitioners in the fields of international education and international development need to communicate with each other more often in order to shape “the next generation’s thinking about how their learning can help solve some of the world’s most endemic problems.”

Tara Sonenshine was sworn in as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs on April 5 following confirmation by the Senate. In her new capacity, Sonenshine oversees the Department of State’s bureaus of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), Public Affairs (PA), and International Information Programs (IIP).

In her recent remarks to the U.S.-Brazil partnership for the 21st century, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stressed the importance of exchange programs between the two countries as well as President Obama’s 100,000 Strong in the Americas initiative. This initiative aims to increase the number of students from Latin America and the Caribbean studying in the U.S. to 100,000 each year while at the same time sending 100,000 American students to the region over the next ten years, Clinton explained.

Clinton said:

“I personally believe that having more interaction between our young people, going north to south, east to west within our hemisphere is one of the keys to [a] shared future. Educational exchange programs like these will help us prepare the workforce to give our students the skills, experiences, and relationships that a global economy requires.”

Clinton also noted that the U.S. will be opening two new consulates in Brazil and that the Department of State is “trying to make it easier to get those visas, easier to travel, knock down some of the barriers that have been put up, and continue to promote people-to-people contact.”

• Video and transcript of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remarks at the US-Brazil Partnership Conference, highlighting the importance of educational exchange
• White House Joint Statement on talks between President Obama and President Rousseff, with education as one of the pillars of the partnership discussions
• White House Fact Sheet on Educational Exchanges for the 21st Century: 100,000 Strong In The Americas and Science Without Borders
• State Department Fact Sheet on The United States and Brazil: An Education Partnership for the 21st Century

“Study abroad can change your life – and your country,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Fabiola Rodriguez-Ciampoli proclaimed in a recent post on the Department of State’s DipNote blog.

Rodriguez-Ciampoli, who herself first came to the U.S. as a Fulbright graduate student from Mexico and later became a U.S. citizen, underlined the importance of people-to-people exchanges not only for the individual but especially for international relations:

“Although most people realize that study abroad can change an individual’s life, they often don’t recognize how important international exchanges can be as a contribution to relations between our countries. Study abroad enhances our understanding of other cultures, provides an enlightening perspective on our home country, and builds partnerships that foster progress toward greater prosperity, economic quality, and sustainability.”

“International exchanges are, without question, the best way to build lasting ties of international understanding and friendship, as well as to prepare for success in an increasingly interconnected global economy and workforce.”

Rodriguez-Ciampoli further recalls her experience at a recent roundtable hosted by the Department of State where she met with representatives of local colleges, universities, educational associations, as well as nine U.S. Ambassadors serving in different countries in the Western Hemisphere. “It was striking to see how many of our most senior Ambassadors in the region view promoting educational exchange as an essential part of building strong bilateral relations,” she said.