Initiatives
B3 offers a series of professional development opportunities for faculty and staff at UTRGV to enhance faculty capacities to deliver instruction in Spanish or bilingually and through culturally relevant approaches; similarly, B3 offers professional development opportunities for staff to enhance their ability to communicate and build relationships with students, colleagues, and the community at large.
- 1a. Build roster of UTRGV faculty interested in delivering instruction in Spanish or bilingually and through culturally appropriate approaches and offer supporting professional development opportunities for those faculty members.
- 1b. Workshops
Place based workshops that feature community based learning and culturally relevant approaches to teaching, research, and service. These one-day workshops focus on teaching, research, and service.
Workshop topics:
- *Getting to know the RGV: history, culture, and language;
- *Understanding & enacting assets based theory of change;
- *Designing & enacting culturally relevant pedagogies;
- *Integrating community engagement into teaching, research & service.
- 1c. Provide Certificates of Language and Culture Development for faculty that participate fulfill a faculty development criteria as assessed by the B3 Institute; this Certificate allows faculty to designate a course as a B3 course—that is, a course that can be taught in Spanish or bilingually and through a culturally appropriate approach.
- 1d. Immersion Institutes
Spanish language immersion institutes deepen understanding of self, language, and regional culture. There are three different types of Institutes:
- *Residential with local residents who comprise a cottage industry and who are monolingual and who host faculty members in their homes and engage faculty through conversational Spanish;
- *Study en la frontera; partner with universities in Reynosa, Matamoros, and Rio Bravo, to develop inter-semester immersion programs that may be residential;
- *Study abroad programs where faculty members enroll in courses organized to be taught in Spanish in different parts of the Spanish-speaking world.
- 1e. Seek funding to support workshop and institute series.
- 1f. Create a dual language program across the university that students can earn through completion of eight (8) courses taught in Spanish or bilingually and through culturally relevant approaches. Upon completion of eight such courses and completion of a degree plan, a student would earn a Seal of Biliteracy on their UTRGV Diploma.
- a. Through place based workshops and through language immersion institutes, the B3 Institute offers support through available networks and the creation of new networks to enhance research and scholarship opportunities for faculty; the workshop research opportunities can be discipline/topic focused, while immersion institutes may focus more on the transformation of participant(s).
- b. Build research and other scholarly opportunities for faculty, such as through the interdisciplinary peer review journal, Rio Bravo, as a venue through which to publish research and scholarship pertinent to biculturalism, bilingualism, and biliteracy, and help faculty engaged in B3 work to identify other publishing venues.
- c. Seek funding to offer financial support to incentivize research and scholarship.
The B3 Institute engages external and internal partners to advance the mission, vision, and core priorities of UTRGV.
Internal partners
- a. B3 engages internal partners, which includes faculty, staff, students, and the UTRGV leadership team through a workshop series, through Spanish language immersion institutes, and through assistance with translation and interpreting.
External partners
- b. The B3 Institute engages the external community through the integration of community voices in its workshop series, through primary participation in its language immersion program, through a public discourse to elevate the value of bilingualism, biculturalism, and biliteracy.
- c. Key external partners include the pre-K through 12 sector, community based organizations, municipalities, higher education entities in northern Mexico, the healthcare and medical industry, food and sustainable agricultural interests, and leaders across the region.
- d. Work with K-12 to advocate for culturally enriching bilingual education practices, rather than subtractive practices.
- e. Seek funding to offer financial support to incentivize community engagement through teaching, research, and service for faculty, staff, and students.
- f. Work with policymakers to elevate value of Spanish and bilingualism in the Rio Grande Valley by advocating for a bilingual zone and by advocating for culturally enriching bilingual education practices.