News
Cornell's Latin American Studies Program (LASP), founded in 1961, has become one of the nation's premier Latin American centers. Today, as part of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, LASP provides a focus for all activities on the Cornell campus oriented toward Latin America. Latin Americanists are active in most of Cornell's colleges and schools, with diverse strengths including agricultural sciences, anthropology, art history, city and regional planning, government, history, labor relations, languages, literatures, and nutrition.
LASP's mission is to stimulate learning about Latin America by supporting Cornell's Latin American curriculum, nurturing faculty and student research, sponsoring events on and off campus, sponsoring visiting scholars from Latin America, and establishing relationships with universities and other institutions in Latin America. LASP offers a concentration in Latin American Studies for undergraduate and graduate students, fellowships, summer programs , and more.
History
Major sources of permanent support for LASP activities come from the Mario Einaudi Center, and endowments established from funds granted by the Form and Morelos foundations. The Program has also received support from a series of short-term awards, such as the 1990 award from the National Endowment for the Humanities which was used to host a summer seminar on the Andes. LASP was also awarded a major grant from the Venezuelan Fundacion Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho intended for cooperative projects between scholars and students at Cornell and their counterparts in Venezuela. In 2004 LASP was awarded a three year grant from the Tinker Foundation to support graduate student research in Latin America and the Caribbean. Between 1984 and 2006, LASP was designated as a National Resource Center (NRC) in Latin American Studies under the U.S. Department of Education's Title VI program in association with the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.
