Colorado State University is developing a harmless pesticide to kill disease-carrying mosquitoes in the Yucatán jungle in a new agreement with a Mexican university.
In Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Colorado School of Mines professors are teaching men to explore for oil at a petroleum-engineering school that Mines helped to create.
And in Beijing, the University of Denver is educating an elite batch of students enrolled in an English-only international affairs program designed for future diplomats.
Higher education is becoming increasingly global as universities form international partnerships in research, dual- degree programs, and faculty and student exchanges. And the effect is larger than just enriching U.S. campuses with multiculturalism – these global relationships are smoothing the path toward better diplomacy, university experts say.
“Those of us who aspire to educate the next generation of leaders for our country recognize that they need to be informed about the entire world,” said Linda Lorimer, vice president of Yale University, which has more than 800 faculty projects abroad and a shared center for genetic research with Fudan University in Shanghai, China. “The world has become so interconnected that research at major universities is increasingly global in its dimensions.”
The global explosion in higher education began in the past decade, Lorimer said. This year, dozens of university presidents, including CSU’s Larry Penley, have made globalization a major part of their strategic plans.
Penley recently returned from Mérida, Mexico, to formalize an agreement with the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, where researchers test bird blood to study mosquito-carried viruses.
A team of Colorado and Mexican researchers received a Gates Foundation grant to develop environmentally sensitive pesticides, which, Penley said, could be embedded in the curtains of jungle homes to kill mosquitoes. CSU also has agreements with a handful of Chinese universities to study agriculture, nutrition and carbon pollution.
The relationships not only foster research in ecosystems far different from Colorado, but also create a natural exchange of faculty and students, Penley said.
“Many of us who lead higher education institutions really want to see our students graduate with greater understanding of the world,” he said.
CU’s reach wide
The University of Colorado at Boulder has about 40 research relationships with mostly European universities, said Stein Sture, vice chancellor for research. Professors and graduate students in behavioral science and sociology collaborate with researchers in Kenya to study substance abuse and youths.
CU’s Denver campus has an agreement with the Korean government, which sends mid- level civil servants to the Graduate School of Public Affairs, said director of international education Christopher Johnson. The business school exchanges faculty and students with France, and the Health Sciences Center’s nursing program exchanges with a Japanese nursing school.
Students and faculty from Colorado College also are spread around the globe, from Costa Rica to Germany to Japan, said Clara Lomas, director of international studies.
“Our students should see themselves not only as citizens of this country but citizens of the world,” she said.
Mines’ aggressive stance
Colorado School of Mines is among the most aggressive in developing overseas connections. It is the principal adviser of The Petroleum Institute, a university in the United Arab Emirates configured to Western standards, said Nigel Middleton, executive vice president for academic affairs at Mines.
The Middle Eastern country had been sending students to the United States and Europe for petroleum-engineering degrees, Middleton said. The Petroleum Institute’s first class will graduate this summer.
Mines’ outreach mirrors that of the U.S. oil industry’s worldwide exploration. Several of the school’s partnerships developed because some of the largest oil-producing countries, such as Saudi Arabia, aren’t the largest users of oil or the largest developers of exploration technology, opening the way for Mines to help, Middleton said.
“It’s important for us to have visible and good relations all over the world,” he said.
DU, which already has an agreement with the People’s University in Beijing, is working to develop joint-degree programs in Turkey, Mexico and South Korea – countries with emerging markets, said Tom Farer, dean of DU’s Graduate School of International Studies. Students involved in the graduate programs would study part time in another country, possibly earning a dual degree.
DU, like other Colorado universities, intends to make the programs financially self- sufficient.
The partnerships, Farer said, are about “building an understanding among people who are going to go on to important positions in society.”
“I see it as a way of building bridges to the next generation of leaders in these key countries,” he said.
