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Virginia Tech partnership with Ecole Supérieure d’Infotronique d’Haìti (ESIH) in Port-au-Prince, Haiti Year: 2008-2010 Granting Agency: Higher Education for Development (HED) Grant #: AEG-A-00-05-0007-00 Grant Amount: $552,000 Location: Port-au-Prince, Haiti Virginia Tech is partnering with the Ecole Supérieure d’Infotronique d’Haìti in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to strengthen the school’s computer science program. The three-year project is part of an initiative by USAID’s Higher Education for Development office to build capacity in Haiti’s institutions of higher education. The program has two main facets: to enhance the training of faculty at ESIH, and to provide funds that will enable several ESIH students to complete their undergraduate training at Virginia Tech. Undergraduate students at Virginia Tech: The first five students—two women and three men—will transfer into their junior year at Virginia Tech in June, 2008. Under the program, they will complete their final two years of undergraduate study at Virginia Tech and will then return to Haiti to get jobs in the private sector or to become teachers of information technology. The program requires that the students return to Haiti when their undergraduate training is completed.
Faculty training opportunities: Virginia Tech’s computer science faculty will travel to Haiti to review and critique course offerings and content at ESIH and to provide faculty there with exposure to current trends in syllabi, reading, outreach and extension materials. The program will also fund four ESIH faculty to come to Virginia Tech for a month to learn how a large American university runs its computer science program. The ESIH faculty will include women; while they are at Virginia Tech, the program will create a speakers series for them to share their experiences working in a historically male field.
Virginia Tech in the Caribbean: Virginia Tech already has a program in the Dominican Republic, which with Haiti makes up the island of Hispaniola. With the IT program in Haiti, Tech officials hope to further expand the university’s Caribbean presence.
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