Professor Cristián Ricci won’t find himself in the classroom sharing his love of Spanish and Moroccan literature with UC Merced students this fall. That’s because he’ll be busy in his new role as director of the UC Education Abroad Program (UCEAP) in Chile and Argentina.
Ricci, who is also serving as chair of the Academic Senate Division Council, is the first UCEAP director from UC Merced. It was a natural fit for the Buenos Aires native, who taught language and literature courses to American students in Argentina and Spain prior to joining UC Merced.
“My interest in becoming the director for the UCEAP in Chile and Argentina is an outgrowth of my continuous commitment to education abroad,” Ricci said. “I know firsthand how the university system works there because I studied two majors at two different institutions — economics at the University of Buenos Aires, and physical education at the Romero Brest Institute.”
UCEAP currently partners with 115 top universities in 42 countries worldwide and combines immersive learning environments with engaging activities and excursions. Ricci’s will oversee the program abroad and represent the UC to host universities in Chile and Argentina — a job that includes academic duties as well as administrative functions, such as oversight of student safety, security and conduct.
Ricci, who earned his bachelor’s degree from CSU Los Angeles and his master’s and Ph.D. from UC Santa Barbara, has mainly focused his research on 20th- and 21st-century Spanish literature and Moroccan literature in Castilian and Catalan.
In 2014, Ricci received one of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Awards for Faculty to complete his project, “Moroccan Literature and the Broadening of Postcolonial Literary Studies.” He just finished an in-depth analysis of Moroccan literature in Spain, France, Belgium and Holland, which he said not only highlights the great work of Moroccan writers living in Europe, but also contributes a better understanding of Moroccan literature itself.
Taking on the UCEAP role is not the only change for Ricci this school year. As chair of the Academic Senate Division Council, Ricci will work to develop a strategy to meet the campus’s goal of growing to 530 faculty members, 1,000 graduate students and 9,000 undergraduates in the next five to seven years.
“In order to achieve this goal, our campus will have to rebalance its ratio of tenured and tenure-track faculty to lecturers,” Ricci said. “The Academic Senate will also try to find solutions to address our well-known space limitations.”
Although his new responsibilities will keep him out of the classroom, Ricci will help organize a symposium on the relationship between the U.S. and the Southern Cone of South America. He also looks forward to encouraging UC Merced colleagues to present their research findings in Chile or Argentina, and encouraging UC Merced students to study abroad.
“The EAP directorship in Chile and Argentina will allow me to continue this activity, which I have always considered the highlight of my teaching career,” Ricci said. “I am very much interested in showing the importance of education abroad to students in all disciplines at UC Merced.”
