Fellow Reflections: Gloria Caminha
By Gloria Caminha (Teaching Fellow Spring 2026, Seminar Fellow Fall 2025)
This past academic year (2025-2026), I was a Seminar and Teaching fellow for the China at CUNY Initiative (CACI). An experience that was both incredible and enriching. Participating in the seminar discussions and hearing from specialists enlightened me about China’s rich history. It motivated me to learn even more, as every topic covered during the seminar sessions piqued my curiosity and prompted me to delve deeper into China’s history. The environment fostered collaboration and free thinking, making me feel comfortable sharing my ideas and thoughts.
During the seminar sessions, we brainstormed and worked together to create teaching activities and topic guides to help students connect China’s history to an international context and learn in depth. Additionally, I really liked the atmosphere of knowledge sharing, and the interactions with the other fellows made the sessions more fun.
The CACI fellowship also provided me with the opportunity to work with professors specializing in China studies, who helped me find content on Chinese history to incorporate into the course I teach on United States foreign policy in Latin America. Suggestions from my fellows and professors helped me design a pedagogically effective way to incorporate China studies into my teaching. As a result, I became confident in addressing China’s content and linking it to the U.S.’s history of relationships with Latin American nations. Every time I spoke about contemporary issues between China and the U.S. and its impact on the Western Hemisphere, the students were captivated and deeply engaged.
I have benefited immensely from the CACI fellowship not only intellectually, as it expanded my knowledge on China studies and helped me to place my classes beyond the U.S.-Latin America relations, but also because it helped me to develop interpersonal skills by collaborating with other fellows and professors, which connected me to an amazing support network I might not have found otherwise.
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