Stories

This year has been unlike any other. We are struggling through a global pandemic that brings health and economic anxieties. Even as social distancing and cancelation of events have isolated us from each other, we have been reminded of how interconnected we are as the coronavirus marched across the globe. We have had to make difficult choices and ask difficult questions. We are asking ourselves, how do we respond to a year like this? The students, faculty, and staff of the University of the Valley of Guatemala (UVG) have been asking these tough questions as well. Like experts around the globe, [...]

June 4, 2020 Dear USFUVG Friends, The world has experienced several significant challenges lately, affecting our physical and mental health, our economy, our health system, and more recently, our values on social equality.  The brutal and disturbing deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, and others before them, as well as the racist confrontation in Central Park directed toward Christian Cooper, have shaken our society, demanding equality and justice to address the long-standing structural and systemic discriminatory attitudes and actions in the United States.    As an organization that works with educators and supports students of different cultures, we [...]

The IDDS team at UVG-Altiplano Mayarí Perez Tay has always been curious about the way machines work. Growing up, she dreamed of transforming society through the engineering design process. Excited to pursue her goal, in 2012 she enrolled at UVG, which she choose because it emulates US ideas and values and is a champion of creative spaces for innovation in science and technology. Double majoring in mechanical and industrial engineering, in 2016 she was invited to visit Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to present UVG’s Makerspaces project at the International Symposium on Academic Makerspaces (ISAM). She was the only undergraduate to [...]

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 [...]