Eduardo Contreras

Transcript

Derek Smith:
Hello, and welcome to Baylor Connections, a conversation series with the people shaping our future. Each week we go in depth with Baylor leaders, professors, and more discussing important topics in higher education, research and student life. I'm Derek Smith, and today we are talking global engagement at Baylor with Eduardo. Contreras. Baylor's Center for Global Engagement connects Baylor to the World. Center for Global Engagement or CGE, CGE staff, faculty, staff and students who participate in international activities such as study abroad programs, internships and more all interact with CGE in some form or fashion. The Center for Global Engagement also fosters partnerships with institutions around the world that provide new opportunities for Baylor students and faculty and enhances Baylor's global impact. International students and scholars are also served by CGE in every step of their process coming to the USA from their home country and coming to Baylor.
Dr. Eduardo Contreras serves as Baylor's Vice Provost for Global Engagement, a recognized leader in global education. He came to Baylor in 2023 from the University of Portland. In addition to his role at Baylor, he also serves on the form of education, Abroad Board and North American Advisory Board for Education of New Zealand, and he's a faculty co-chair for the Harvard Management Development Program. Little over a year here at Baylor and a great time to talk about global impact opportunities and happenings at Baylor. Dr. Contreras, thanks so much for joining us on Baylor connections today.

Eduardo Contreras:
It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me, Derek.

Derek Smith:
Great to have you here and to talk about so many exciting opportunities as I ran down that list of things that CGE offers the Baylor community. I know there's far more than that and exciting to dive into that or really unpack those. So I thought it'd be my fun, give us a snapshot at the moment, if you would, the conversations you're having, the places they take you. What does some of that look like for you and your team right now?

Eduardo Contreras:
Well, it hasn't been a dull moment since I arrived, and that's been terrific. We've seen a lot of interest and a lot of engagement over this year that I've been here in student mobility. And so what I mean by that is outgoing U.S students studying abroad and then also bringing international students to the world. And so those conversations have certainly taken place here on campus in Waco, but we've also had some of those conversations out in the world. I had the good fortune upon arriving in Waco a little over a year ago in the summer of joining a delegation of faculty to India as we're starting a partnership with Christ University in a city called Bangalore.
And that was terrific to see another institution, a Christian institution in India working to move their students into the world and certainly to receive our students. And so that's been a partnership that started before I got here, but it was incredible to be there after being on for really less than a week and then going over to Bangalore and connecting with colleagues there. And believe it or not, it was cooler in Bangalore, India than it was in Wales.

Derek Smith:
Wow. Yeah. Well, after coming here from Portland, I'm sure that's quite an adjustment.

Eduardo Contreras:
It's right, it's been an adjustment, but it's been a great one.

Derek Smith:
And that's quite an immersion going to India immediately on coming to Baylor University. And as we discussed this, I want to get your take, I gave that description of CGE at the top of the program. How would you describe it more fully than I did?

Eduardo Contreras:
I like to think of it in a metaphorical way as the cog in the internationalization machine. So if you think of an old timey watch and they have those now, you can see the gears inside. We're one of those gears and certainly on a daily basis we're churning and turning to keep the clock running so that we're engaging in multiple aspects of internationalizations. Study abroad, incoming international student services, faculty research partnerships with other institutions. But we're not the only cog, we're an important one, but if we don't have the partnership of senior leadership, if we don't have the partnership of leaders in the colleges and the schools talking about deans, directors and so forth that we don't have the partnership of our tremendous faculty and the students, then it doesn't really work as a campus wide effort. And so we're charged with doing it on a daily basis and it's a privilege to do so, but we do it in partnership with every single cog in this beautiful Baylor machine.

Derek Smith:
You have some specific resources and programs are yours, but very much not siloed in any way. Absolutely. And it spills out in a lot of fun ways. Dr. Contreras, many universities have a division, something like the Center for Global Engagement, whatever they may call it there. But I'm curious, after being here a year, what makes Baylor special? What makes Baylor special distinct?

Eduardo Contreras:
I think much of it is because Baylor is a distinct institution. We have here at Baylor, the unique identity of being a Christian research one institution. And so what that allows us to do in global engagement is partner with some of the top research institutions in the world. The good fortune of traveling to Japan this past May and visiting with some of our partners there. We work there as an example with Tohoku University, which is one of the top research universities, not only in Japan but in the world. And we're able to partner with them in a similar way as I open Christ Universities not known as a research university, but it is a Christian university, and the fact that we can partner with those institutions in that way makes us distinctive. The other piece that's also special about being at Baylor is we're big time athletics. And so just last week I was in D.C at the Conference for Global Inclusion, and there was a colleague from New Zealand and we were just chatting and she saw my name tag and she said, "Oh, Waiata Jennings," who's on the women's basketball team-

Derek Smith:
That's right, yeah.

Eduardo Contreras:
... who played with New Zealand on her national team in Japan recently. And she was just thrilled that there was a connection there. She knew of Baylor through athletics, and we have a whole host of international students who are playing big time division one athletics. And so that makes us unique as well. And so as the central cog in that internationalization mechanism, we get to engage in a way that's true to the mission, but that is also very special and unique because we have that Christian identity, that RO1 identity and the athletics as well. That's a way that we're known worldwide.

Derek Smith:
Well, we look forward to seeing a Waiata Jennings success on the basketball court and also in the classroom and student life, not just her, but all student athletes and students in general who get to come here and get plugged in. And I know you all help them do that in a lot of ways as we visit with Baylor's Vice Provost for Global Engagement, Dr. Eduardo Contreras. And Dr. Contreras, for those who aren't familiar, I know you have a few resources that might be good to give a brief description of so they can get a more full picture of what's out there. I'll just mention a few of these and maybe you could describe them for us. Obviously, I think one that is instantly recognizable to most people, Study Abroad.

Eduardo Contreras:
Absolutely. Study Abroad is the way that we get our Baylor students out into the world. We get them there. They can directly enroll in universities and as an exchange, they can go with the faculty member. They can go in the summer, they can go for semester long, they can go for shorter term periods, like we have Winter Masters now. And so that very much is getting our students to have meaningful international experiences outside of our beautiful campus here in Waco.

Derek Smith:
Another one is International Student and Scholar Services.

Eduardo Contreras:
Absolutely. That's about bringing students from around the world to campus, making them feel like they belong, making sure that they're seen, supported, and really plugged into the community so that they can thrive wherever they happen to be in their school and college. As I said earlier, we have international student athletes. We want our place to be their first stop, but then we want them to plug in and take advantage of all the great opportunities here.

Derek Smith:
Global Baylor is the next one.

Eduardo Contreras:
Global Baylor, we do a number of certificate programs so that students who want to be intentional about their co-curricular experiences can plug in and get a certificate. Students love badging and getting these certificates, so they get a certificate signed by President Livingstone, and they also get it transcripted that it shows that they've had this global certificate experience where they attend multiple events throughout their time at Baylor in order to receive this. We also have a first abroad fellows program that is for students who in their first in their family provide some funding. We recently received a passport grant by the IIE to provide free passports for students who demonstrate financial need. And so that's a way for us to break down some of the barriers for students so that they can get out into the world through our endeavors and Global Baylor.

Derek Smith:
And till where those opportunities can take them once they get plugged into those. Visiting with Dr. Contreras talking about resources at the moment in the Center for Global Engagement. The next one, the Global Gateway program.

Eduardo Contreras:
This is a program for students from around the world who have the academics to get into Baylor, their English just needs a little bit of work, so we have academic English programs. We have an extraordinary faculty who prepare students in their majors. These are students who are coming, they get these English classes and they have then a pathway to get into Baylor as a full-time student.

Derek Smith:
That's great. And then this is a broad one, global partnerships. We can even talk about this a little bit more. Seems like an exciting time for that at Baylor.

Eduardo Contreras:
It sure is, and this is the newest piece of our office. What we're doing in the partnerships office is where we've been hosting a number of delegations that come from around the world who want to visit our campus. We work with units on campus to make connections. A lot of faculty who are engaged in global research, we want to help them make connections around the world. They've got full-time jobs and they're often quite busy doing what they're doing, but we want our partnerships division to do the kind of work that will connect Baylor to the world and the world to Baylor.

Derek Smith:
Dr. Contreras, I think you've painted this picture. I mean, some of it just when you think about the resources are there, it casts that vision, but when a student makes initial contacts with your office, whether they're coming from abroad or hoping to go abroad, how would you describe your hopes and dreams for those students?

Eduardo Contreras:
Well, when the student comes and they want to study abroad, what I hope that we can do for that student is remove the barriers. So for me, it's really important that every student, regardless of their financial need, regardless of their major, can have an opportunity to have a meaningful international experience so that they can develop themselves personally, professionally, and academically. And so if we can help them find the program that's right for them, that's ideal.
On the flip side, when we have an international student who comes to their office, maybe it's their first time coming, maybe they come in the middle of the year and they just have a question that they don't quite know where to go. I want the international students to feel that the CGE is their home away from home. They can come to us, they can ask us questions without fear of thinking, that's a dumb question. They come to us and then we help plug them in to the campus so that they can be seen, heard, but also so they can have whatever they need to as a Baylor bearer.

Derek Smith:
And we see the success that our international students having here at Baylor, our students as they travel abroad, the opportunities that paints a picture of the great work you and your team have been doing here at CGE for a long time now, as we visit with Dr. Eduardo Contreras here on Baylor Connections. Dr. Contreras serves as Baylor's Vice Provost for global engagement. And I've referenced a couple of times, this is an exciting time to be talking about this. Remember seeing last year when Pro Mundo was added to Baylor's motto, which really demonstrates just how meaningful that is to the institution. I'm curious for you, what did it mean to hear Pro Mundo was officially included as a part of our longstanding motto?

Eduardo Contreras:
Boy, it was really exciting. One of the things that really brought me to Baylor was the work that had been ongoing in the world and the engagement. And the joke that I remember hearing when I first came to campus when they were talking about the motto was we were Pro Ecclesia, Pro Texana, for the church and for the state, but when Baylor was founded in 1845, the state might as well have been the world. And so that's been the case and in a more serious way, and I'm a Texan, so I had a little bit of that-

Derek Smith:
Right, we know how that is. Yes.

Eduardo Contreras:
I know what that meant. But in a more serious way, Baylor really has been doing global engagement since the earliest days, and that has been part of the work that we do. But now it's official. I was thrilled to see it. I also felt very humbled by it. It's very humbling as an institution to say front and center, we're for the world. That means something. It can't simply be rhetoric, can't simply look nice written in Latin on a crest. It has to come with sincerity. And I believe from the bottom of my heart and know that, and I know we're going to talk about it in a second, the deeds of what you do is really what matters. And I know that our leadership are committed to it. Our team in CGE is certainly committed to it. And it is humbling though to think that this is now something that we say we're doing, and so now we have to make sure that we're doing it.

Derek Smith:
Well, you referenced Baylor's new strategic plan, Baylor in Deeds, and it's kind of neat to look at that and realize that all across campus there are people who are living out that vision, that Baylor mission through their deeds, but we're going to try to grow and expand those and create more ways to do that. So for you all in the Center for Global Engagement, it's a five-year plan, and we're just a few weeks into it. So I know that if we talk to you a couple years from now and hopefully we'll, or down the line, you'll have even more to say, but early going helping live those deeds out and grow that Pro Mundo vision for Baylor, what are some of the ways that you and your team are excited to start to live that out?

Eduardo Contreras:
Well, in the plan, commitment three says explicitly that we're building a vibrant care and a global community. And so as you said very nicely, we've been doing that already in a number of different ways. So making our international students feel like they belong on campus, making sure that we've got opportunities for study abroad students. The piece that I can be more specific about is we've had a number of initiatives tied to Latin America. And so, one of the things that I'm most excited about with in deeds is really putting some actions behind what a Latin America initiative is. And I feel very strongly that the United States is in Latin America, broadly defined. Geographically, yes, we're north, but in terms of the demographics of the country, we have a number of folks within the United States, I include myself in that group, who came from Latin American roots. My grandparents are Mexican immigrants, and I grew up on the border in El Paso. So we're very much part of Latin America as neighbors, and I know there are countries that define us.
But for me, part of the Latin America Initiative experience programming will be considering the role of the United States in Latin America, broadly defined. And we go all the way to the Southern cone in the way that I'm thinking about it. And I think that's an extraordinary opportunity for our faculty to be able to engage and research in multiple disciplines in Latin America with Latin American scholars. It's also a way for our students who might have heritage coming from Latin America to explore their roots if they choose to do so. It's also a way to think about pathways for partnerships, for potential long-term career opportunities in the region, development of Spanish language programs. There's just a whole host of opportunities really in our backyard to work with and alongside our neighbors.

Derek Smith:
Visiting with Dr. Eduardo Contreras here on Baylor Connections. And Dr. Contreras, let's get to know you a little bit here as you made that decision to come to Baylor. And maybe the obvious question is, what was it that led you here a little bit over a year ago?

Eduardo Contreras:
So I've had the good fortune of being in higher education for over two decades now, I'll say quietly. And I love it. It's the only thing that I could do. I don't know that I could do anything else outside of higher education. The majority of my career has been at secular research institutions, so spending a good chunk of time at that little school down the road in Austin at UT, spending time in Massachusetts at Harvard. And I have terrific friends and colleagues at those institutions, and they're great unambiguously worldwide institutions. When I moved to Oregon about nine and a half years ago, I took a job at University of Portland, which is a Catholic institution, and that was the first time I had ever worked within a Christian institution as a Catholic, as a Christian. And it was very, in some ways liberating for me because in those terrific secular institutions, I could do good work and have a motivating factor, be my faith. But it was sort of something that you did on the weekends or at home. It was a part of yourself.
At University of Portland and now here at Baylor, it's part of what we do as an institution, and so it doesn't have to be secondary. And that has been fascinating to me to see as a professional. It's also been, in my mind, a terrific way to advocate for international education. If we think about international education at its highest level as connecting people in the world to one another, to loving our neighbors as ourselves, to appreciating the glory of God's kingdom, then that's international education. And certainly international education is also learning languages. It's also learning about working across differences. It's also about negotiation skills. It's also about tolerance for ambiguity, but at the highest level, the pieces that tend to be the most soul feeling that goes hand in glove with Christian education.
And so when I saw that this position had opened up to finally get to answering your question here at Baylor, I thought, wow, University of Portland is terrific, it didn't have a research element. It was a fantastic school with teaching without the research component. Baylor had the research piece that I had been missing from the other places I had been. It was also home, right? My parents still live in El Paso. My wife's family lives in Houston. My brothers are in Austin, her brother's in Houston. And so it was a way to get back home to my roots, but also to be closer to family, which during the pandemic, as a lot of us did, that distance felt magnified tenfold from Oregon to Texas. And so that's the reason that I came back to Texas.

Derek Smith:
Well, and we're glad to have you here doing what you do at this time, as we've talked about such an exciting time to be involved in that. Dr. Contreras, as we head into the final couple of minutes here, I just want to ask you, as you look ahead on the horizon for you and the great team you get to work with, what are y'all most excited about as you grow together and in sharing this unique time together?

Eduardo Contreras:
Well, we're certainly excited about Baylor in Deeds. We have been thinking about what that's going to mean for us. We're really excited to see if we can move the needle even further on our study of broad numbers. Last year, there's an annual report of student mobility demographics, and Baylor was the top five sending school in the state of Texas. And that top five includes A&M and UT, so big schools. And so we're definitely punching above our weight, and I think we're going to do even better next year. And so that's exciting to see how we can grow, how we can develop our programming opportunities, how we can develop our staff. On the incoming side, this was the first year in Baylor's history where we have more international students who are graduate students than undergraduate students. And that's a trend that's happening across the country, the United States.
I'm excited to see how we can grow our international students across the board, undergraduate and graduates, but in graduate students especially, we're excited. We're hiring for a director of international graduate student recruitment. That'll be a new position at Baylor. And that'll be a new way to be intentional about recruiting extraordinary graduate students from around the world who can come to Baylor and study in graduate programs, masters programs, Ph.D level programs. And so those are two areas that we're very excited about and looking forward to what we can do in those areas.

Derek Smith:
Well, Dr. Contreras, well, we'll have to have you on again here. Give a little time for us, some of these ideas to grow and mature and see where they go and have you on again here one of these days to talk about that and what you've seen as we move towards some of these ideas that right now are things that we can build on in Baylor indeed. So thank you so much for your time today, and look forward to visiting with you again.

Eduardo Contreras:
Thanks, Derek. I appreciate it.

Derek Smith:
Dr. Eduardo Contreras, Baylor's, Vice President for Global Engagement, our guest today on Baylor Connections. I'm Derek Smith. Reminder, you can hear this and other programs online, Baylor.edu/connections, and you can subscribe on iTunes. Thanks for joining us here on Baylor Connections.