Folks,
One of the stories I was remiss in sharing this summer was that of Janeth Rivera y ("y" is Spanish for "and") Violetta Becerra. I met them when I spoke at CONCIBE. Violetta was one of the coordinators for the event.
The day before CONCIBE started, Indium's Ivan Castellanos and I were chatting with Violetta and her friend Janeth after Violetta had given us a tour of the University of Guadalajara (UoG), the host of CONCIBE. I suggested that Janeth and Violetta join us for dinner, but they said they couldn't because they were taking English classes. Since I speak little Spanish, I suggested that they might learn more Enlgish at dinner. So they joined us. At dinner Ivan and I learned that they were taking these classes hoping to improve their English well enough to get into graduate school in the US. The both have BS degrees from UoG and teach as instructors there.
It occurred to me, that an effective way for them to learn English, would be to come to Dartmouth and take my summer course on Materials: The Substance of Civilization and of course be immersed in English while in the US. To make a long story short, a herculean effort was performed by a small army of people, at UoG, Dartmouth, Indium, their families and a few friends to do all of the work to get visas, find them a place to live and find the funding. All of this was done in a matter of days. The details would take pages to discuss.
So they arrived at Dartmouth in early July and stayed through early September. Not only did they attend my class, but also some other engineering courses. They worked in a trip to Montreal and thay took Dartmouth's Six Sigma Course at Indium's European facility north of London. In the photo, Janeth is on the left. The photo was taken on the picturesque town green in Lebanon, NH.
They have now both applied to Dartmouth to become grad students in January 2008. Let's all wish them well in this worthy endeavor!
Cheers,
Dr. Ron