The Diplomat
The director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero, signed yesterday in Charlottesville (Virginia, USA) an agreement with the University of Virginia to establish the first presence of the institute in the area of influence of Washington D. C., the federal capital of the United States.
On behalf of the University of Virginia, ranked as the most important public university on the East Coast, the agreement was signed by Ian Baucom, executive vice president and provost; and Christa Acampora, dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, according to a press release issued yesterday by the Institute.
Under the auspices of the Instituto Cervantes of New York, the extension at the academic institution will mainly develop professional courses for teachers of Spanish, a program of cultural activities and actions aimed at the dissemination of Spanish or Spanish-language culture in the United States. The extension will also have a Cervantes Professor, a renowned professor from the university’s Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, selected jointly by both entities, with a four-year renewable appointment.
His duties, carried out in collaboration with the director of Cervantes New York, Richard Bueno Hudson, will include the promotion of cultural activities, the promotion of the Cervantes Institute’s activities in the country, and liaison with other U.S. academic institutions. The school will also make its facilities available for the development of these programs, as well as for the DELE (Diplomas in Spanish as a Foreign Language) Spanish exams. The agreement will be valid for four years and may be extended.
Declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the University of Virginia had among its students figures such as Edgar Allan Poe or Robert Kennedy and, among its professors, the Nobel Prize for Literature William Faulkner.
It is currently the public institution that receives the largest number of students in the Washington D. C. metropolitan area. More than 1,500 students study at the elementary and intermediate levels of the Language Department, which has forty Spanish teachers, making it one of the largest Spanish teaching centers in the country.
The program of activities of the director of the Instituto Cervantes on the east coast of the United States will continue with his participation in the International Book Fair of New York City (FILNYC), on September 22 and 23.
