Thirty-two of our students have done an international exchange doctorate, one has done an exchange master’s, and two have done a short internship abroad in the last four years, all of them benefitting from our internationalization efforts. Our program has developed into an important nucleus for Brazilian, Latin American, and international student seeking their qualifications in Animal Science at the UFRGS. Currently, the program has five international students enrolled, highlighting a PhD student from the University of California, Davis, who, under the CAPES-National Science Foundation GROW program, has been doing an“inverse exchange” program, in other words, coming to our department to do her thesis. Also, in 2016 we started a co-advising degree with Universidad Nacional de Colombia. In 2017, we will welcome two new foreign students (Mexico and Mozambique). Moreover, our faculty has been increasing the number of foreign students enrolled in international courses that they are advising or co-advising, for example at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, Universidad de la Republica del Uruguay, and University of California.
The Graduate Program in Animal Science encourages its faculty to promote international travel, professional visits to institutes and civil society organizations and collaborations or exchanges with other institutions. Agreements have been established at the regional and national level with NASCAR-EMATER, the Federation of Agriculture of Rio Grande do Sul (FARSUL), SEBRAE-RS, SENAR-RS and the Agricultural Research Foundation of Rio Grande do Sul (FEPAGRO). Various joint activities are operating with other regional and national universities: University of Ijuí (UNIJUÍ), University of Passo Fundo (UPF), Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM), Federal University of Pelotas (UFPEL), Federal University of Parana (UFPR), EMBRAPA, etc. In the private sector, the Graduate Program in Animal Science has a special agreement with the Brazilian Association of Breeders of Hereford and Braford, the Brazilian Association of Aberdeen Angus, the Gaucha Poultry Association, the Association of Seed Producers from South (SULPASTO), the Uruguaiana Rural Association and the Dom Pedrito Rural Syndicate.
At the international level, both formal agreements, e.g. the CAPES-COFECUB Project 684, and informal exchanges have been established, the latter with the University of Wisconsin (USA), Auburn University (USA), the University of Georgia (USA), the University of British Columbia (Canada), the University of Western Ontario (Canada), the Department of Fisheries and Oceans at the University of Wisconsin, the University of Georgia (USA), the National Institute of Agronomy Paris/Grignon, INRA, the Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (Montpellier, France), several Latin American universities including the University of Buenos Aires and Córdoba University and regional research institutes such as INTA Balcarce in Argentina and INIA in Uruguay.
In addition, numerous informal contacts between many of our postgraduate alumni and the teams of national and foreign researchers are resulting in collaborative research projects, co-authored articles and exchange of data for analysis. A list of actions with impacts on the international scope of the program is presented below:
Creating an atmosphere of International Conviviality for teachers and students in the Graduate Program in Animal Science.
This action has been ongoing since 2012 thanks to the training in foreign languages (English and French) offered by UFRGS free of charge of all students enrolled in graduate programs. Frequently, seminar presentations in foreign languages, whether by international speakers or by students who have returned from their training abroad and present their reports in the local language where they made the exchange, are critical for breaking language barriers. Additionally, Special Topics courses allow foreign students to impart content in their native language. In 2012, for example, some classes were given in Spanish, by professors from the University of the Republic of Uruguay, in English, by professors from the University of California and University of Edinburgh and in French by INRA researchers. These tools for foreign language training and the presence of students and teachers from other countries have created greater international involvement for students and advisers, facilitated by the improvement in English communication skills in the Graduate Program in Animal Science community.
The presence of international professors and visiting researchers.
With a call for attracting visiting researchers, in 2012 the program received for a period of three years the researcher Zhang Tiantian from the Institute of Research in the Applied Natural Sciences, UK. In addition, visiting researchers from Texas A&M, the University of California and the University of Edinburgh have given seminars and taught courses in the Graduate Group in Animal Science.
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