IUPUI to Sign Strategic Partnership that Will Transform International Education

INDIANAPOLIS - IUPUI is starting a strategic partnership with Moi University in Kenya that will blaze a new path toward a 21st Century approach to international education.

The strategic partnership agreement will be signed by IUPUI Chancellor Charles R. Bantz during a ceremony attended by hundreds of Moi and IUPUI officials November 8, 2006 in Eldoret, Kenya. Moi is one of the leading universities in East Africa.

It's the first of several strategic partnerships IUPUI expects to develop in key locations around the world, including Mexico, India, China and Europe.

The strategic partnership builds upon a partnership begun in 1989 between the IU School of Medicine and Moi that has developed into what has been described as the most comprehensive HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention program in Africa.

Under IUPUI's strategic partnership, the Schools of Dentistry, Social Work and Nursing on the IUPUI campus will work with their counterparts at Moi University to develop or expand programs in their respective areas, Bantz said. In addition, University College, Student Life and Diversity, and the Schools of Education; Business, Informatics; Engineering and Technology; Physical Education and Tourism Development; and Liberal Arts are exploring opportunities for curriculum development, institution building, student and faculty exchange, collaborative research projects, distance education, study abroad programming, and expansion of the impact and outreach of the HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention program, Bantz added.

Long the province of a small number of students and faculty, international education took a major step forward 20 years ago when it became apparent that all students needed some awareness of the broader world beyond the borders of the U.S. But that knowledge continued to be delivered through a few locally-based faculty who were hired for their expertise about other countries and cultures.

The agreement between IUPUI and Moi turns that approach on its head, Bantz said.

Instead of attempting to learn about Kenya at a distance, the strategic partnership provides an international platform for many faculty and students across all academic fields at both universities to engage in extensive exchange, dialogue and collaboration.

“With this approach, universities are no longer ivory towers that keep the process of learning within their walls,” said Susan Sutton, associate dean of the IUPUI Office of International Affairs and Chancellor's Professor of Anthropology at IUPUI. “Instead, we are knocking down those walls and drawing outselves out into international networks of knowledge and exchange.”

The impetus for a new approach to international education is simple, Sutton says: globalization.

In the 21 st Century, knowledge and research is being constructed through international partnerships, she continued. “Today if you ask an engineer or research scientist in the United States if they only read research produced by Americans, they would look at you as if you were nuts.”

At IUPUI, she continued, “we recognize that if you truly want to be international, that you need to do it through partnerships, through reciprocal exchanges.”

Under the strategic partnership, “any student or faculty member can learn about Africa and get involved in issues that Africa has to teach us, whether it's development, the great health issues of our time, or insights into the place of origin for a significant portion of Americans,” Sutton said.

Strategic partnerships are critical to IUPUI, she said.

“We need to be connected to these places,” Sutton said. “It is just part of the survival skills of the 21 st Century. We willl be graduating students who have personal connections with people in those countries. They will know how to interact with them because they will have been there, or had people from those countries in their classes. We are focusing on knowledge that has direct translation into skills of interaction, understanding, and partnering.”