Laurie Medina, Director
The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) supports scholarship on Latin America and the Caribbean by catalyzing interdisciplinary collaborations on campus and forging partnerships with institutions in the region. The center identifies emerging opportunities for research, educational exchanges, and engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean and serves as an information hub for faculty and students with interests in the region.
The CLACS Core Faculty consists of more than 150 tenure-stream and non-tenure-stream faculty and staff actively engaged in teaching, research, service, and librarianship on Latin America and the Caribbean. Representing 65 departments and programs across 16 MSU colleges, core faculty members offer a broad range of courses that focus on the region, covering languages and literatures, histories and politics, ecologies and economic development trajectories. CLACS collaborates with faculty to organize co-curricular events to support and enhance their Latin American and Caribbean content courses. To support faculty research, the center offers Strategic Partnership Funding for collaborations with international partners at institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean.
MSU offers academic and extracurricular opportunities for students interested in Latin America and the Caribbean. For undergraduates, MSU offers an interdisciplinary major in Global and International Studies with a track in Latin America and the Caribbean as well as an interdisciplinary minor in Latin American and Caribbean Studies that can be combined with any major. The center provides scholarships for undergraduate students to pursue study abroad, internships, or research opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean. At the graduate level, CLACS offers a certificate in Latin American and Caribbean Studies that can be combined with majors in any academic discipline. It also offers funding to support pre-dissertation research in the region for graduate students. In addition, CLACS collaborates with organizations that represent students from the region to create programs and events that address their priorities.
As part of the land grant tradition, CLACS also provides expertise and educational resources related to Latin America and the Caribbean to K-16 educators, the mid-Michigan community, businesses, and government.
For more information, email clacs@msu.edu, call 1-517-353-1690, or visit https://clacs.isp.msu.edu/.