HOUSTON – Food. Culture. People.
These are all things University of Houston College of Education Professor Virginia Snodgrass Rangel fell in love with over the two years she lived in and worked remotely from Argentina.
Snodgrass Rangel moved to the South American country in 2023 with her husband, who works for Aberdeen, Scotland-based Wood PLC, which has a major presence in Houston as well as in Buenos Aires and other Argentinian cities.
After about a year of living in Buenos Aires, Snodgrass Rangel had an idea: Why not bring a group of UH Energy students to Argentina to learn about the country’s sustainability efforts and policies, while also experiencing everything she had come to love?
“I wanted to make something of my time here that wasn’t just me doing UH work remotely,” she said. “So, that was the genesis.”
After months of planning, coordinating with deans across UH’s colleges and collaborating with Argentinian businesses and universities, UH Energy completed its first-ever study abroad trip to in May.
The cohort consisted of 10 students across varying disciplines and three faculty members, including Snodgrass Rangel. The trip was titled “Sustainability in Policy in the Energy Transition: A Focus on Argentina.”
“It’s always useful to learn about something from someone else’s perspective,” Snodgrass Rangel said. “A lot of our students were really hoping to learn about renewables, which is only part of the story in Argentina – it’s also one of the world’s biggest oil and gas producers.”
The Journey Ahead
Snodgrass Rangel wasn’t alone in putting the trip together. In fact, she reached out to Diedra Perry, executive director of educational programs, to help make this dream a reality.
“We spent a lot of time planning, meeting and organizing to put this together,” said Perry, one of the faculty to make the trip. “We were literally building the plane as we were flying it because we had never done this before.”
According to Perry, what made setting up the trip unique – and a little complicated – was coordinating with the different colleges each student was from because UH Energy itself isn’t a college; it’s actually made up of faculty and students from various colleges with a shared interest in the energy sector.
“We had to work with each college and go through their departments and deans to develop a syllabus,” Perry said. “So, every step of the way was like, ‘Oh, we need this. Oh, we need that.’”
Finding available faculty also proved to be a challenge, as well as locking in the 10 students to make the trip.
The trip was originally supposed to be co-led by Cullen College of Engineering Professor Mim Rahimi and Hobby School of Public Affairs Professor Pablo Pinto, who is originally from Argentina but had to drop out due to scheduling complications.
However, despite dropping out, Pinto was key to ensuring a successful trip.
“Pinto gave us a long list of folks to contact, and they were very excited and willing to help us,” Perry said. “We ended up having so many opportunities in Argentina, we had to let some stuff go.”
Power Players
Across the 10 days the students and faculty spent in Argentina, they visited nine businesses and three universities across two cities, Buenos Aires and Neuquén.
One of the top priorities for the trip was to ensure students experienced things they had never experienced before, such as visiting oil and gas production sites.
“They got hands-on experience to see what’s happening,” Rahimi said. “We took them to a site in Neuquén and the students were so excited. The experience was priceless.”
Although faculty had developed an itinerary full of activities, many of the businesses had created their own plans for the students.
For example, Snodgrass Rangel said they provided one company with each student’s major ahead of their arrival, and that company set up small group meetings catered to their studies.
“One of our students was a computer science major, so they sent her to meet for half an hour with one of their programmers,” Snodgrass Rangel said. “She was thrilled. Not that she hadn’t learned anything yet, but that was the first time she learned something directly related to what she did.”
For Vittoria Palomba, a chemical engineering major, the trip gave her insight to real-world issues through an engineering lens.
“It helped me connect classroom learning to broader global systems and made me think more critically about the role engineers play in shaping sustainable solutions,” Palomba said.
Following graduation, Palomba hopes to pursue a career in the energy sector focusing primarily on sustainable development and innovative solutions to improve energy efficiency and accessibility.
Just the Beginning
Since returning from Argentina, Snodgrass Rangel has moved back to Houston, arriving with a goal to keep UH Energy’s study abroad program alive.
When she, Perry and Rahimi spoke with UH Media Relations, they laughed about having just ended a meeting in which they were already discussing next year’s trip. At the time, they couldn’t say where, but it has since been confirmed to be Chile.
Perry said the title and topic for next year’s trip is still being finalized, but they’re already looking for the next cadre of UH Energy students to make the expedition.
“Everything is global now, but energy really is global,” Snodgrass Rangel said. “I think the more the university can do to build those international connections will prepare students for what they’re going to find.”
About the University of Houston
The University of Houston is a Carnegie-designated Tier One public research university recognized with a Phi Beta Kappa chapter for excellence in undergraduate education. UH serves the globally competitive Houston and Gulf Coast region by providing world-class faculty, experiential learning and strategic industry partnerships. Located in the nation’s fourth-largest city and one of the most culturally rich regions in the country, UH enrolls more than 47,000 students.