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Alberto Arenas (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 2000)
arenas@educ.umass.edu
Alberto joined CIE in September, 2000 as an Assistant Professor of education.
He specializes in the intersection between sustainable development and formal
education, with a particular focus on Latin America and the US. He views schools
and other academic settings as sites for promoting the social and environmental
well-being of the communities that sustain them. In this context, education
is understood as a vehicle to support the physical, emotional, intellectual,and
spiritual welfare of each student, and to enhance equity and social justice
in the community as a whole. At the same time, education should serve as a springboard
for encouraging local and global environmental literacy to underscore the complete
dependency of social systems on natural systems.
Alberto has extensive educational experience in various Latin American countries,
especially in Brazil (where he lived for two years) and Colombia, and the United
States. He has worked in slums in Salvador, Brazil, in urban and rural schools
in Colombia, in literacy projects in Nicaragua, and in K-16 settings in California.
His most recent publications include "Education and Nationalism in East Timor"
(in Social Justice, 1998); "Education of Afro-Latin Americans" (in Africana:
The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, 1999); and
"Managing U.S. Campuses with an Ecological Vision" (in Sustainability and University
Life, 1999). Alberto is also member of the steering committee of the Higher
Education Network for Sustainability and the Environment (HENSE), a national
organization that promotes environmental responsibility in higher education
in the US and abroad.
His research interests include: