Universidad de San Carlos, September 1st 2011

This is where things really started to kick into gear. USC is a large public University with seperate physics and math departments (though within the school of engineering for the time being), and one of the only masters programs in physics for all of Central America. While this masters program has been unsuccessful to this point, it shows a promising direction that the physics dept. at USC is trying to head.

In fact, for several years it has been the ambition of numerous principaled individuals, both internal and external, to form a seperate fundamental sciences and mathematics school. Leading the charge for this initiative has been the current physics department director, Dr. Edgar Cifuentes, along with the Guatemalan physicist Dr. Fernando Queveda (currently of the University of Cambridge and director of the theoretical physics institute in Triste, Italy).

I had the priveledge of spending the bulk of an afternoon speaking to Dr. Cifuentes in his modest shared office. It will be difficult to summarize the wealth of information and potential strategies and ideas that were imparted to me during these hours, but I came away with a much clearer vision of what I wanted to work towards.

As I had learned before, lack of scholarships limited the number of students who could study full-time, but also the salaries of the professors were so deficient that many of them had to take on second jobs. Many wanted to do some form of research, but either had no time, or were completely blocked through the nearly impossible process of applying for funding through the university. It was also mentioned that the donation of resources from foreign institutions, such as computers, often gets blocked or severely delayed by uninformed administrators.

It's the belief of Dr. Cifuentes, along with Dr. Queveda, that the first step towards legitimate post-grad degrees and eventual productive research, is the establishment of the seperate Sciences and Math school. This is to commence next year (2012), but only with Physics and Math. The Biology and Chemistry departments decided they were comfortable with their limited course flexibility and focus in pharmacy and health research, though they deal with many of the same obstacles as the Physics department. The Mathematics department has been reluctant to join, but is now committed it seems. The math professors are thought to be comfortable with their 100% teaching arrangement and likely didn't want to put in the extra effort of establishing a new curriculum, but the enthusiasm of the Physics department helped sway them.

By freeing themselves from the umbrella of the engineering department, new classes can be implemented that faculty and students alike can get interested in. Joining myself and Dr. Cifuentes for a portion of the afternoon was one Dr. Enrique Pazos, a Gravitation specialist who recently completed post-doc work at the University of Maryland and Georgia Tech. Dr. Pazos would like to teach a General Relativiy course in the new Math and Physics school, perhaps as part of a more comprehensive masters program.

After my meeting with Dr. Cifuentes and a tour through some very limited labs, I asked to speak to some students, something I now know is a crucial part of this process.

Within the informal "physics lounge," I gave an impromptu talk to 12 kids, which is about half of the current physics class. I found their response to what I had to say inspiring.

We went around the room, with each one expressing what area of physics specifically interested them. They were surprisingly informed of specifics in areas far removed from what was available in their physics curriculum; dark matter research, superconductors, supersymmetry breaking, searching for extrasolar planets, were just a few of the research areas mentioned as future ambitions.

Their excitement for the subject of physics was evident, but they all view their current status in the underdeveloped curriculum at USC as a mere stepping stone. They all plan to go for post-grad degrees in other countries, and the uncomfortable consensus as a response to whether they would come back was "I would love to, this is my country and my family is here, but what am I going to do with a PhD in physics here in Guatemala?"

This response gets to the heart of the problem. There are excited and bright students everywhere ready to contribute and anxious to receive a more complete education, but they need to leave to do it and have no incentive to come back (this is of course common to all fields in developing countries, but the aim here is to get students better educated so that they and their country can contribute to global scientific innovation). I posed the hypothetical question, "With better resources and the ability to connect with foreign institutions to continue your research, would you come back to Guatemala after the completion of your post-grad degrees?" The majority gave an emphatic "Si!"