Monthly Archives: February 2020

Attendees at USFUVG’s October 2018 reception at the Organization of American States in Washington DC heard about a revolutionary technology known as Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) that has revolutionized Maya archeology.  Revealing pre-Columbian civilization to be far more complex and interconnected than previously thought, Lidar shoots lasers down from planes to pierce the thick foliage and paint a 3-D picture of the ground below. Structures long lost to this jungle are revealed in the data. UVG is part of the largest Lidar survey project in the Maya area, Dr. Tomás Barrientos, Chair of UVG’s Department of Archaeology and the Director of [...]

When I was in elementary school, my music teacher showed us a trumpet. It was just an ordinary trumpet, but as soon as I saw it, I wanted to explore it as a piece of musical machinery. I wanted to pick it up and play it. It seemed like such an amazing tool! This kind...

In 1999, a symbol of war began its transformation into a beacon of education--the former military base of Sololá  became a vibrant UVG campus serving the largely Mayan population of the Altiplano region. UVG turned former barracks into lecture halls, dorms, science laboratories, and distance learning facilities. The shooting fields were converted into agricultural experimentation plots. The campus now offers curriculums in agriculture and forestry, entrepreneurship, food safety, tourism, teacher training, and ESL, along with community development programs that serve the surrounding villages. Along with matriculated students, it’s not rare to find a class of school children visiting the library, a [...]