Terry McCoy's Retirement
Dr. Terry McCoy’s Retirement Celebration
A retirement celebration for Dr. Terry McCoy, Director of the Latin American Business Environment Program (LABE) and former Director of the Center, was held on November 8, 2008. This special event was held in conjunction with the fourth Latin American Business Symposium and Career Workshop held November 7-8, 2008 on the UF campus. The symposium marked the 10th anniversary of the Center's LABE Program with the theme, "Business in Latin America: The Past 10 Years, the Next 10 Years." McCoy officially retired from UF in spring 2007, but continues to direct the Center’s LABE program, which he founded.
To honor McCoy, colleagues and former students have established The Terry McCoy Latin American Travel Scholarship Fund. Income from the fund will support student travel grants for short-term study abroad programs in Latin America, such as those that McCoy developed and promoted. Among those programs associated with Dr. McCoy are the annual Latin American International Business study tour, the Law and Policy in the Americas Judicial Reform study tour to Chile, and the Business in Brazil summer program in Rio de Janeiro. To contribute to this endowment please contact Janet Romero, Associate Director for Development and Alumni Affairs, at jromero@uff.ufl.edu, or visit Contributing to the Center.
Bio of Dr. Terry McCoy
Dr. Terry McCoy is Professor Emeritus of Latin the Center for Latin American Studies and Political Science. In retirement he continues to serve as Director of the Latin American Business Environment program in the Center and also as Associate Director of CIBER (Center for International Business and Education Research) in the Warrington College of Business Administration on a part-time basis.
Dr. McCoy first joined UF as Assistant Director of the Center for Latin American Studies in 1975 and subsequently was promoted to Associate Director in 1980. He was an affiliate faculty member of the Department of Political Science. He was Director of the Center from 1985 until 1996.
Dr. McCoy’s broad area of research is the political economy of Latin America. In the 1970s his researched focused on Latin American populations policies, a topic on which he published an edited volume and a co-authored book. In the 1980s it shifted to Caribbean migration. With Dr. Charles Wood, he conducted a study of West Indian seasonal workers in the Florida sugar industry. On stepping down as Center director, Dr. McCoy created the Latin American Business Environment program under which his research has dealt with the region’s business environment and trade negotiations in the Americas. Funded principally through CIBER, this research has been intimately tied with McCoy’s teaching, training, and outreach activities. The main output has been an annual publication distributed widely, The Latin American Business Environment Report, now in its ninth year. Over the past decade he also participated in research projects on the Gulf of Mexico region.
Dr. McCoy regularly taught Latin American Politics, International Politics of Latin America, and a graduate seminar on Inter-American Relations in the Department of Political Science. At the Center, he developed the curriculum for and designed and implemented the student training components of the Latin American Business Environment program. These included two new courses; graduate concentrations for students in the MALAS (Masters of Arts in Latin American Studies), MBA and MSF degree programs; study-abroad opportunities; paid internships; and a student-oriented biannual conference. He is currently working up proposals for joint MALAS degrees with the MBA and MSF programs, and previously developed the joint MALAS-JD program with the Levin College of Law.
For three decades Dr. McCoy has been the pillar of the Center’s MALAS program, supervising more than 70 MA theses in Latin American Studies and serving as the graduate coordinator for 15 years. Most of his students have carried out field research in Latin America under his direction. He has also chaired five PhD dissertations in Political Science and served as a member of scores of committees across campus.
He also has considerable international teaching experience, having taught short courses and seminars in Uruguay, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. Among his awards have been Fulbright fellowships to Brazil and Chile.
Dr. McCoy was also an innovator with respect to study abroad. He developed and initiated in 1978 UF’s Brazilian Portuguese Language and Culture summer program in Rio de Janeiro. This program is the oldest and most successful summer overseas program in Brazil, having trained around 500 students. In 1986 he made the initial contacts that led to the Tropical Conservation and Development project in Acre, Brazil, which has trained dozens of students over the years. In 1999 he developed -- and he continues to direct -- the summer Business in Brazil program at the Catholic University in Rio. In its eight years this program has attracted and trained over 70 students.