For CIEL,  I am charged with coordinating, recruiting, training, and evaluating nearly 25 UNIV 401 Instructors who teach courses for students who are pursuing Graduation with Leadership Distinction.  I also help oversee the “Faculty Fellows” Program which involves working with 8-10 Faculty members on experiential learning and advising students pursuing GLD.  Other duties include preparing the teaching schedule for 7 to 9 sections in the Fall and 16 to 20 sections in the Spring of UNIV 401 with the Registrar, reviewing all UNIV 401 syllabi, resolving disputes between instructors and students, directing workshops, and coordinating duties between CIEL Director Charlie Pierce, CIEL Associate Director Lauren Epps,  and GLD advisors and staff. 

Matt D. Childs teaches for the History Department graduate and undergraduate course dealing with Latin American and Caribbean history, Atlantic History, and comparative histories of colonialism and slavery in shaping the modern world. At USC he has served as Director of the Latin American Studies Program and the African Studies program housed at the Walker Institute for International and Global Studies, Director of the Graduate Studies Program for the History Department, and Director of the History Center at the University of South Carolina. He stared teaching at the University of South Carolina in the Fall of 2009. Before joining the History Department at USC, Childs taught at Florida State University from 2001-2008. His primary research and teaching interests are Latin American, Caribbean, and Atlantic history with a particular emphasis on the importance of understanding the historical legacies of slavery and racism in shaping the modern world. Professor Childs is the author of The 1812 Aponte Rebellion in Cuba and the Struggle against Atlantic Slavery, which was a finalist for the Frederick Douglass Book Prize and translated and published in Cuba.  Matt Childs has co-edited with Toyin Falola The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World, and The Changing Worlds of Atlantic Africa:  Essay in Honor or Robin Law. Childs served as an Associate Editor for the 6 volume Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture. With James Sidbury and Jorge Canizares-Esguerra he has co-edited The Urban Black Atlantic during the Era of the Slave Trade.  Professor Childs has published articles in The Journal of Latin American Studies, The Americas, The Historian, The History Workshop Journal, The Latin Americanist, and the Latin American Research Review among other journals. Childs has received research grants from the Social Science Research Council, the Ford Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Fulbright-Hays Program, and other agencies to conduct research in Cuba, Spain, Great Britain, and the United States.

As a kid I never had opportunities to travel, and only went on a plane for the first time when I was 21 years old to leave the country for a study abroad trip to Venezuela.  Since then I am always planning to travel during my free time.  Over the last 30 years, I have traveled and studied in the following Latin American countries: Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Barbados, Jamaica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Bahamas, Ecuador, Brazil, and Peru; most countries in western Europe:  Spain, Portugal, France, Great Britain, Holland, Germany, Belgium, and Italy; and a few countries in North Africa. I have been fortunate to combine my love of travel with teaching at the college level by leading Study Abroad trips to  the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, Peru, Portugal, and Spain for USC students.