U.S. Colleges Get Serious With Partners Overseas

By KARIN FISCHER (The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 27, 2009)

Like a single man who has soured on the dating scene, Mark S. Wrighton is looking for serious commitment. The chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis is tired of accumulating scores of hastily arranged agreements with overseas universities that rarely lead to much.

In the search for more meaningful relationships abroad, he has focused on a select group of foreign universities in hopes of engaging large numbers of Washington University students and faculty members, encouraging robust research collaborations, and cultivating a more global campus.

Mr. Wrighton is not alone in his desire to develop overseas partnerships that are both broad and deep. A growing number of college leaders say they want arrangements that involve multiple departments and disciplines, square with institutional goals, and even tackle global challenges like sustainable agriculture or clean energy.

Previous approaches to overseas collaboration were more like "casual dating," says JoAnn S. McCarthy, an international-education consultant and a former assistant provost for international affairs at the University of Pennsylvania. "This is serious. This is getting married."

Still, nurturing these links can be challenging, which may explain why only a handful of American colleges have such blockbuster relationships.

Differing expectations can derail deals. And in designating preferred partners, college leaders risk alienating professors who don't see the relevance of overseas work to their fields or who are frustrated that an institution they work with was passed over.

Strategic international partnerships can also require a substantial investment, in time and in money.

"It requires continuous effort," Mr. Wrighton said recently in a 3 a.m. phone call from Mumbai, where he was meeting with the new head of one Washington University's partners, the Indian Institute of Technology. "It requires real endurance to stick with it."

Beyond Handshakes

Indeed, Washington University's strategy, which centers on a network of two dozen universities, primarily in Asia, wasn't developed overnight. Instead, Mr. Wrighton, who became chancellor of the private research university in 1995, took repeat trips to the region, meeting with officials at potential partner universities, as well as with business and government leaders, to identify mutual interests and compatible strengths. Not until 2005 did the university announce the McDonnell International Scholars Academy, its student-exchange and research partnership.

John F. McDonnell, a Washington University trustee who pledged $10-million to endow the partnership program, says Mr. Wrighton sold him on the compelling need to develop a new kind of international strategy.

"The world is getting smaller, and there's much more interaction and interdependency," says Mr. McDonnell, a retired chairman of the McDonnell Douglas Corporation. "Universities have a real role to play."

Like Mr. Wrighton, many college leaders are coming to understand that, in a global economy, they need to produce graduates and develop faculty members with strong international skills.

The recognition has led them to take new, more deliberate approaches to work abroad rather than viewing it as "marginal and
serendipitous," says Madeleine F. Green, vice president for international initiatives at the American Council on Education.

But the types of international agreements struck by American universities in the past were not, in the main, suited to meeting such multifaceted goals. Often they were what Daniel S. Papp, president of Kennesaw State University, calls "handshake-and-paper agreements," exchanged between university leaders as a sign of good will. Such arrangements "don't mean anything more beyond the day you shook hands and signed the paper," Mr. Papp says.

Individual faculty members have long had connections with colleagues overseas, but those relationships rarely advanced beyond specific research interests and have had little institutional impact.

"Throwing a bunch of seeds around doesn't create much of a garden," says Susan B. Sutton, associate vice president for international affairs at the Indiana University system. "All you have is a bunch of wildflowers growing."

Seeding Collaborations

At Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, where Ms. Sutton also serves as associate vice chancellor for international affairs, a partnership begun nearly two decades ago by a group of doctors has blossomed into a universitywide collaboration with Moi University, in Kenya. Now Indiana-Purdue is building institutional ties based on work in public administration and biomedical research with Sun Yat-Sen University, in China, and on public health and immigration with the Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo, in Mexico.

Other universities have also built on longstanding strengths. New Mexico State University took a 30-year-old collaboration with the Autonomous University of Chihuahua and supersized it, shaping a strategic institutional focus on the Mexico-U.S. border. Over the last six years, the universities have worked together on issues like rural economic development and indigenous education and have won grants from the National Science Foundation and the New Mexico Department of Economic Development, among others.

From the outset, Washington University's model differed from the typical partnership, by design. Rather than reaching bilateral agreements, university officials sought to build a network of well-regarded overseas institutions, united by a common research agenda, with Washington University in the center. James V. Wertsch, who is director of the McDonnell International Scholars Academy, says a selling point to the 24 partner institutions, 17 of which are in Asia, was the opportunity to work with one another.

That work has coalesced around broad research themes:first, energy and the environment, and second, clean-coal use, both of which have been the subject of international conferences among the partners. Global health and infectious disease are likely to be next up, Mr. Wrighton says.

In selecting topics, Mr. Wrighton says, the partners are looking for meaty areas in which they share deep faculty expertise and can have both a global and a local impact. Air pollution caused by coal burning has become a particular problem in countries like China, for example, while St. Louis is home to two coal-producing giants, Arch Coal and Peabody Energy Corporation, both of which are sponsors of the partners' research.

To kick-start cooperation, Washington University, in 2007, offered $500,000 in faculty grants for one-year research projects related to energy and the environment. The university is now accepting proposals for a second round of projects, on clean coal, with about $1.25-million available, says Pratim Biswas, who leads the research collaborative.

While the grants go to Washington University faculty members, they must work with a colleague at one of the overseas partners. One such pair, Daniel E. Giammar, an associate professor of energy, environment, and chemical engineering in St. Louis, and Akkihebbal K. Suresh, a professor of chemical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai, met at the partnership's conference and applied for a grant to study the dissolution and transformation of lead particles in drinking water, a growing health concern as aging lead pipes deteriorate.

Mr. Suresh spent last spring on sabbatical in St. Louis, working with Mr. Giammar and another Washington University rofessor. Mr. Giammar and two doctoral students later traveled to India.

Although the grant was small, about $40,000, Mr. Giammar says it has had outsized benefits. Mr. Suresh, with whom he is writing two papers, introduced him to some Indian colleagues, and Mr. Giammar is working with them on proposals for three other projects, including one that is being considered for a large National Science Foundation grant.

"It opened doors and helped me make connections," Mr. Giammar says.

Mr. Biswas, who is also chairman of the department of energy, environment, and chemical engineering, says there is some evidence that the grants are succeeding in seeding broader cooperative work. Of the 14 projects supported in the first round, eight have applied for or received additional money from outside sources.

The partner universities have also taken an inventory of the more than 800 courses they offer in energy and the environment and plan to exchange course content and develop curricula that can be jointly taught. And Washington University now offers an annual summer study-abroad program, anchored at one of the partner universities and on a topic related to those fields. Last year, the program's first, 14 Washington students studied air quality during the Olympics, alongside students from Peking and Tsinghua Universities, in smoggy Beijing. Faculty Commitment

Mr. Wrighton says the partnership has been useful in attracting new faculty members to Washington University, but he acknowledges that the program's profile on the campus is not yet as high as he would like. He still finds that Washington University professors are working with a partner university unbeknownst to administrators and without knowledge of the broader institutional relationship.

Winning over faculty members can be challenging, says Everett Egginton, dean of international and border programs at New Mexico State, who concedes that some of his colleagues felt "neglected" by the university's mandate that he spend nearly half his time on Mexico. He says that he has tried to draw more faculty members into the work with Chihuahua and that he remains supportive of individual overseas projects — even if he can't provide financial resources.

At Washington University, the commitment is institutional, but in many ways, the success of the international relationships rests with professors, particularly those who serve as "ambassadors" to the 24 partners. As in the diplomatic corps, the ambassador is Washington University's representative to the overseas institution and spends at least a week there a year to develop contacts, make scholarly connections, and raise the university's profile. Many, like Mr. Biswas, who works with the Indian Institute of Technology, are graduates of the partner institution.

Linda B. Cottler, a professor of epidemiology who is Washington University's ambassador to Chulalongkorn University, in Thailand, says the partnership model can provide access to faculty members who don't have relationships abroad. For example, during her last visit to Chulalongkorn, she met an engineering professor with an idea for an international project whom she connected to Mr. Biswas's department. The partnership "could be that anchor, provide an infrastructure for international work," Ms. Cottler says.

The ambassadors have a role to play back in St. Louis as well, where the partnership brings top graduates from each overseas collaborator to Washington University to pursue professional or graduate degrees. The ambassadors act as informal mentors to the students, known as McDonnell international scholars, who also meet together for regular workshops, seminars, and special events. The goal, says Mr. Wertsch, the program director, is to build connections across disciplines and irrespective of
home country. Washington University officials hope that in 20 years there will be a network of McDonnell scholars in the top levels of business, politics, and academe.

The scholars, Mr. Wertsch says, are "kind of the glue that holds the network together."

Some Reservations Still, advocates of in-depth international relationships note that high-level champions — presidents, provosts, and chancellors — are also an indispensable element in making institutional partnerships successful. "A strategic partnership needs a champion," says Ms. Green, of the American Council on Education, "or it will wither."

Mr. Egginton, of New Mexico State, says turnover at the top has been the biggest threat to the university's work with Chihuahua. Since coming to New Mexico State in 2002, Mr. Egginton has been through four presidents and three provosts, not all of whom bought into the university's border focus.

Other issues, both mundane and monumental, can trip up partnerships, says Ms. Sutton, of Indiana. Is there a good communications plan in place to ensure that the partners talk regularly? How will credits be counted in joint-degree programs or student exchanges? Has each institution clearly articulated what it hopes to get from the arrangement?

"You need to make sure the relationship has mutual benefit," Ms. Sutton says. "It can't be lopsided."

Money can also be an issue. Focusing university resources on a select few relationships can create efficiencies, and successful research collaborations can attract new grants. The Indiana-Purdue-Moi partnership, for example, has drawn more than $100-million in outside funds.

But truly deep relationships require an investment. At Washington University, Mr. Wrighton has raised $30-million from Mr. McDonnell and others but says he would ultimately like to have an endowment of $100-million to support the network. Each of the 39 graduate-student scholars costs about $75,000 a year, although some have corporate backers. The ambassadors receive $15,000 annually to cover outreach as well as their own research.

That can put such relationships out of the reach of less-wealthy institutions. Paul J. McVeigh, associate vice president for global studies and programs at Northern Virginia Community College, says that he is trying to be more intentional in forming international partnerships but that "we don't have tremendous reserves, so a lot of what we do comes about through opportunity."

And not all campus leaders are completely sold on the idea of focusing on just a few strategic relationships. Mark Novak, associate vice president and dean of international and extended studies at San Jose State University, says he sees his role as nurturing the many strong relationships developed on the faculty, department, and school levels. He worries that an attempt to turn a few relationships into blockbusters could lead to the neglect of other promising partnerships.

"I don't know that these fall out of the sky every day," Mr. Novak says of institutional relationships. "Maybe we should have more appreciation for lower-level partnerships."

Ms. Green agrees that not every institution can, or perhaps should, create sophisticated, substantive exchanges like those at Washington University. But she says all colleges can be more thoughtful and tactical in working overseas.

"You can be strategic," she says, "even if you don't have a King Kong-type partnership."