Emerging Giant

As the two largest economies and democracies in the Western Hemisphere, the United States and Brazil share one of the most important trade and economic relationships in the world, and it is growing, with an expanded emphasis on higher education partnerships that are taking shape through a broad range of programs, many of them new.

For much of the U.S. higher education community, “Brazil is hot right now,” as characterized by Kristine Lalley, director of international engineering initiatives in the Swanson School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. It is one of 18 U.S colleges and universities selected so far to receive Brazilian students in the Brazil Scientific Mobility Program, formerly known as the Science Without Borders Undergraduate Scholarship Program, one of the most significant of the new initiatives.

“Brazil is exciting because it’s on the move. They have a lot of younger people who want to study but they can’t all do it there, and we can offer them something here,” adds Dean Peck, vice provost for global strategies at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York, another of the institutions that is taking students in the program. “I really knew very little about Brazil before, but I knew it was a country we should look at as a potential partner,” Peck says.

Longstanding Ties Between the United States and Brazil

As U.S. government documents make clear, the two countries have traditionally enjoyed friendly, active relations encompassing a broad political and economic agenda that was foreshadowed