Meet Christina Gamiño, TIEC Program Coordinator and part of the TIEC team since 2023. She is a vital member of TIEC's “programs team,” which brings our different programs and grants to life, connecting experts from TIEC’s many Texas universities and colleges with researchers, nonprofits, higher ed experts, and government officials worldwide.
While Christina works on several programs, a crucial part of her job is overseeing TIEC’s J-1 visa — or the Exchange Visitor Program — sponsorship services. Recently, we caught up with Christina to find out what’s new and why she sees the Exchange Visitor Program as a vital way to bring global perspectives to our Texas campuses.
What is the Exchange Visitor Program?
The Exchange Visitor (J-1) visa program is a special short-term visa offered by the U.S. Department of State to encourage cultural exchange between the United States and other countries. While the program is extensive and offers many different options, Christina explained that our Texas universities and colleges primarily use the program to bring scholars, researchers, and doctoral students from other countries to the Lone Star State. And while the program can bring enormous benefits to our host Texas institutions, the burden of being an official Exchange Visitor program sponsor — with a long list of responsibilities to maintain federal regulations and reporting duties — can often outweigh the benefits for smaller campuses.
That’s where TIEC comes in! Christina explained that by TIEC serving as the official J-1 sponsor for our member institutions, smaller campuses that don’t have the staff time to dedicate to sponsorship duties can still bring international research scholars, faculty, and researchers to their campuses. In fact, some larger Texas universities also use TIEC’s sponsorship services. Texas State University is the largest institution TIEC currently works with to provide J-1 services. While TIEC is the official sponsor for each individual coming through the program, Christina works closely with a designated campus representative for each of the seventeen universities and colleges that utilize TIEC’s J-1 sponsorship services.
Welcoming Exchange Visitors on Texas Campuses
The Exchange Visitors coming to Texas are representative of the huge diversity and range of specialties found across Texas higher education. This year, TIEC will sponsor 126 exchange visitors from across seventeen different Texas institutions.
Texas primarily brings professors and research scholars, who typically come for around two years, along with a smaller number of short-term scholars and doctoral students. Matching Texas’s traditional academic strengths, Christina sees a number of experts in STEM, but she also notes more specialized programs are represented, like Sam Houston University's top-ranked criminology department and Texas Woman’s University’s prodigious nursing school.
Under Christina’s guidance, the J-1 visa services program at TIEC has undergone improvements and refining. The application is now fully digital, and she explained that she’s made efforts to clarify the onboarding process.
Thanks to site visits around the state, Christina and other TIEC staff have been able to meet her university counterparts, get to know them better, and talk about TIEC’s process and what can be improved. The best part, she explained, was an opportunity to meet the scholars and researchers during welcome events.
Christina explained, “As I process [each exchange visitor]’s application, I feel like I learn so much about them, see their pictures, and what they do — and often their families too. With the site visits, I get the opportunity to meet them in person, get to know them, and hear about their work. During my TAMU Corpus Christi visit, I met one of the marine biology researchers from Italy and heard about his work tracking dolphins worldwide. It was a great time!”
“Our visiting scholars bring such a valuable perspective to our country and our universities,” said Christina. “I'm really happy that I can help be a part of that and ensure that they know that someone is looking out for them during their time here.”
Get to Know Christina Gamiño
Christina’s career has spanned many different aspects of international relations and taken her around the world. With a master’s in international management, at a time in her career she oversaw human resources for Fortune 50 companies. But she discovered a passion for teaching English and obtained a second master's in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from Florida International University, which eventually set her on a path to TIEC. Christina first worked with TIEC as an instructor on one of our exchange programs for Fulbright teachers from Korea in 2020.
A few years later, when a permanent role as a TIEC program coordinator opened, she jumped at the opportunity. She explained, “I've been here for over a year, and I've really enjoyed it. I like working in a small organization that can get a lot done quickly. We're very nimble and committed to our goals!”
Learn more about TIEC’s J-1 Exchange Visitor services here.
