As an expression of its commitment to global engagement in the Jesuit educational tradition, Seattle University formed a successful partnership with the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in Managua, Nicaragua. This developed into Seattle University’s Nicaragua Initiative, the first building block that would become the greater Central America Initiative. Today, this partnership has grown to encompass outreach, programs and research throughout Central America to include Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and other countries. The Central America Initiative is built upon many years of collaborative activities based on the pillars of research, teaching, service and advocacy. This is borne out in shared activities for students, faculty and staff, involving courses, research, campus visits, conferences and webinars, and other forms of exchange.

The collaborative learning continues during the pandemic with virtual connections between Seattle U and UCA-Nicaragua through faculty and student participation in the COIL method (Collaborative Online International Learning) in which faculty from each university design and implement shared activities for their students and students form international teams and work on projects together, from book groups to shared interviews. Now professors from Seattle U and the Universidad Rafael Landívar-Quetzaltenango campus in Guatemala are collaborating as well as Seattle U professors with counterparts at St. Joseph’s College in Bangalore, India.