Puerto Rico and The Ohio State University have had a long-standing and fruitful relationship.

Students from the Caribbean island that has been a U.S. territory since 1898 have attended OSU since the 1930s. For one, the island’s second democratically elected governor, Roberto Sánchez Vilella, received his undergraduate degree in engineering from OSU in 1934.

Prof. Henry Fischbach speaks to high ability students at the San José High School, San German, Puerto Rico.

Since the early 1980s, OSU also has maintained an active program of recruit-ment in Puerto Rico for graduate and under-graduate students. What began as an occasional venture to a few schools and universities became an annual pilgrimage to recruit among the top candidates for university and graduate school, and later the athletic departments at OSU began recruiting Puerto Rican students for various teams.

“The beneficial relationship that exists between OSU and Puerto Rico is one that spans decades,” said Normando Cabán, Director for Undergraduate Recruitment and Student Development for the Office of Minority Affairs. “One can easily notice the impact and influence OSU has had in Puerto Rico by simply counting the many professors, business and government officials working on the island who have received their degrees from OSU. In the same vein, we also see how OSU continues to enrich its diversity goals by attracting academically talented students from Puerto Rico.”

To continue the important recruitment tradition established by OSU decades ago, Cabán in September went on a week-long recruitment trip to Puerto Rico. As it has done in the past, the university’s diversity effort can only benefit from such direct contact and recruitment.

“I was not at all surprised to learn that schools such as Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Penn, and others, had already scheduled their recruitment visits to Puerto Rico. In the long run, OSU and our alumini there will be the ultimate winners as we cultivate this productive relationship,” said Cabán.