LORMAN — Dr. Kassie Freeman, director of strategic innovation at Alcorn State University, attended the XV Comparative Education World Congress June 24-28, at the School of Economics, Buenos Aires University, Brazil.

Freeman served as president of the Comparative International Education Society in 2003-2004. She was the second African-American and the first HBCU representative to be elected as president of the organization.

“Every country has its own CIES group,” Freeman said. “Every three years, all the CIES groups come from around the world to meet at the Congress. And this year, my colleague, Jason Hughes of Stand for Children organization, and I presented our research on ‘Predominantly Black Campuses in the USA, Brazil, and Columbia: Global Challenges and Opportunities’.”

These three countries have the largest black population outside of Africa, with Brazil having 140 million black residents, the U.S approximately 30-40 million and Columbia 25 million.

“Alcorn was chosen as the focus of the research for HBCUs because of the vision that our President M. Christopher Brown II has for the globalization of the university,” Freeman said. “Three campuses, including Alcorn, were selected to host Brazilian students this year. Dr. Dovi Alipoe, director, Global Programs at Alcorn, and I are working on establishing connections between our university and predominantly black campuses in Brazil and Columbia. We are envisioning this relationship to place Alcorn at the forefront of broadly educating our own students and students from the diaspora.”