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The history of the Panama Canal will be discussed Sunday, March 2, at the Penn State Altoona Edith Adams Eve Memorial Chapel. The public is welcome to attend the event, hosted by The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Blair County.
Panamanian Issac Carranza is currently a Humphrey Fellow at Penn State University Park and has been a Historical Memory Specialist and librarian for the canal for 14 years.
From 10:30 to 11:30 a.m., Carranza will describe his work with the canal and answer questions. From 12:30 to 3 p.m., the documentary "Panama Canal Stories" will be shown, followed by a Q&A session. The historical drama chronicles five stories of people who helped build the canal and Panama itself. Spanning a century, from 1913 to 2013, the film weaves together the tales of five remarkable characters.
Carranza graduated with a degree in international relations from the National Chengchi University, Republic of China (Taiwan), and obtained a master's degree in management science from the Free University of Brussels, Belgium.
In his work at the Panama Canal, his department oversees managing a library specializing in the Panama Canal, an archive center and two museums. He is also a writer and researcher.
During his fellowship with Penn State, he plans to develop his communication skills, learn about U.S. history and visit the Library of Congress and the National Archives. He is a visiting scholar at the Penn State University Library and hopes to gain knowledge about its operation in order to modernize his work unit in Panama.