{"id":5738,"date":"2016-11-14T08:32:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-14T14:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/news\/?p=5738"},"modified":"2016-11-14T08:32:00","modified_gmt":"2016-11-14T14:32:00","slug":"sau-opens-exchange-cuba-via-art-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/news\/2016\/sau-opens-exchange-cuba-via-art-project\/","title":{"rendered":"SAU opens exchange with Cuba via art project"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"kardas-in-cuba-at-ministry-of-education\"<\/a>A group of students and professors from Southern Arkansas University will visit the University of Artemisa in Cuba in November to undertake an academic exchange related to the decorative arts.<\/p>\n

The group, to be led by Dr. Ed Kardas, distinguished professor of psychology and director of the SAU Honors College, and Steven Ochs, professor of art, will be working with the Cuban university on what Ochs described as a concrete mural project that measures 9 feet by 23 feet. The vertical wall will be co-designed by art professors of the University of Artemisa, he said. \u201cThe imagery of the mural will be abstract symbols of art concepts,\u201d Ochs said. \u201cIt will connect our universities and symbolize the relationship we are building.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Trey Berry, president of SAU, said the University is the first in Arkansas to create an exchange program with a university in Cuba.<\/p>\n

Veronica Ramirez, a sophomore majoring in Game, Animation & Design, from Huntsville, Ark., will accompany Kardas and Ochs. She was selected thanks to to her talent in art and fluency in Spanish. The group will be in Cuba during the week of Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlanning and executing the mural will be a mutual project between the universities,\u201d Kardas said. \u201cWe began making plans last summer, but both schools needed to wait on final approval from the Cuban Ministry of Higher Education.\u201d<\/p>\n

Approval of the exchange was recently handed down from the Cuban ministry. \u201cIt has some conditions,\u201d Kardas said. \u201cThe main one is that the project must be completed by the end of November. Failure to do so will mean \u2026 both schools will have to re-propose the project to the Ministry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ochs said he has been busy \u201cfor the last few weeks\u201d making plans for the trip. He has had to find a means of shipping the necessary tools from the United States to Cuba.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been talking to my sponsors trying to figure out a way to get the materials there,\u201d he said. \u201cBosch Tools will be sending dye grinders with diamond-cutting blades and Smith Paint Products will provide stains, sealer and polymer overlays. We\u2019re shipping the materials through Canada, where there is a company that will fly them to Havana.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said that even though the \u201cdoors are now open\u201d between the U.S. and Cuba, \u201cthe paperwork hasn\u2019t caught up yet. No postal service is willing to ship anything to Cuba. Smith Paint went through 25 different carriers before they could find one in Canada willing to do it. They put a lot of time into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This will be Kardas\u2019 third trip to Cuba since May 2015. He represented SAU in visits with the University of Havana and the Ministry of Higher Education to take the first steps toward beginning exchange programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cSAU sent me to Cuba with a group from the Arkansas Chamber of Commerce,\u201d Kardas said. \u201cDuring that visit, I contacted officials at the Cuban Ministry of Higher Education. Those officials urged me to come back in February to attend Universidad 2016, an international conference on higher education in Havana.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kardas and Dr. Juping Wang, associate professor of Spanish, did attend the week-long meeting to communicate to Cuban universities their hope of setting up faculty and student exchange programs. They met with more than a dozen universities.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrior to that trip, Dr. Berry convened an SAU Ad Hoc Extramural Education Committee, which selected a number of programs that might serve as conduits for academic exchange,\u201d Kardas said. \u201cJuping Wang and I took brochures in Spanish that she had translated and prepared along with longer documents detailing our proposals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur proposal called for academic exchanges with Cuban universities where the traveling group would pay to travel and the host would pay for lodging and meals,\u201d Kardas said. \u201cAt the conference in Havana, Juping and I spoke \u2013 in Spanish, by the way \u2013 with some 14 separate Cuban universities and visited two campuses personally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kardas traveled to the Universidad de Ciencias Informaticas and Wang to the Universidad de Artemisa. \u201cJuping\u2019s visit to (Artemisa) was especially successful,\u201d Kardas said. \u201cSince then, Artemisa and SAU have been planning a specific academic exchange.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kardas said future plans include hosting a group from Artemisa at SAU in August 2017 to participate in a parallel decorative concrete project, and development of plans between SAU and Artemisa\u2019s College of Social Science.<\/p>\n

Ochs said he has a small window in which to work on the mural \u2013 only five days. \u201cWe won\u2019t agree on a final design until I am on location,\u201d he said. \u201cThis will be a public art piece, but that\u2019s their home. It\u2019s got to be a functioning design that communicates to their people. We\u2019ll leave our representation, but it is their mural.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A group of students and professors from Southern Arkansas University will visit the University of Artemisa in Cuba in November to undertake an academic exchange related to the decorative arts. The group, to be led by Dr. Ed Kardas, distinguished professor of psychology and director of the SAU Honors College, and Steven Ochs, professor of… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":564,"featured_media":5739,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[271,309,207,32641,7753,159,143],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5738","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-academics","8":"category-art-and-design","9":"category-college-of-liberal-performing-arts","10":"category-featured-layout","11":"category-homepage","12":"category-honors-college","13":"category-student-life","14":"entry"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/564"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}