Stephen Dunnett, vice provost for international education, said the universities involved in the new exchange agreements are among the finest in their respective nations.

The new programs reflect a strong effort by Kerry Grant, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, to further internationalize UB. Grant said he is doing this by expanding the university's exchange offerings and by strengthening and diversifying its undergraduate and graduate populations of international students.

UB-Hangzhou University (China)
UB last year signed a comprehensive exchange agreement with Hangzhou University, the largest comprehensive university in China, that will help strengthen UB's Chinese and Asian studies programs and better serve the growing number of UB students interested in Asia or in professional opportunities in that region. The first UB faculty member to participate in the exchange was Barbara Bunker, professor of psychology, who delivered a series of lectures at Hangzhou last spring.

Hangzhou offers a broad variety of undergraduate-, graduate- and professional-degree programs. It was one of the first universities in China authorized to confer master's and doctoral degrees.

The university is an active participant in more than 50 international programs. In the last decade, more than 1,100 Hangzhou faculty have been sent abroad for advanced training, as well as to give lectures, conduct research and attend conferences. Two UB students were enrolled in the program in the Fall 1998 semester.

UB-Maharaja Sayajirao
University of Baroda (India)
The summer of 1998 also marked the establishment of UB's first comprehensive exchange program with a university in India, the architecturally beautiful Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India (MSU). The exchange originally was suggested by MSU alumnus Muchand Patel, professor and chair of the UB Department of Biochemistry.

MSU is one of the major comprehensive universities in India, enrolling 35,000 students in bachelor's, master's and doctoral programs across 13 faculties. Unlike most Indian universities, MSU incorporates extensive research activities on its teaching campus.

The university attracts students from all over India and from overseas, particularly to its highly regarded programs in the fine arts, performing arts, education, home science, management, technology and engineering. MSU will send a member of its performance faculty to UB this spring as a visiting artist and UB expects to enroll students at MSU in the fall.

UB-University of Havana Agreement (Cuba)
The landmark exchange agreement signed last summer by Grant and Yolanda Wood, dean of the University of Havana Faculty of Arts and Letters, was the first of its kind between UH and an American university since 1959, the year Havana fell to the revolutionary forces of Fidel Castro.

The agreement commits UB and UH to the joint development of a Caribbean Studies Program with an integrative and interdisciplinary nature for the purposes of conducting research and teaching. It already has launched several initiatives.

UB-University of the
Western Cape (South Africa)
UB has a formal memorandum of agreement with UWC dating back to 1995 and is in the process of developing the programs stipulated under the agreement. These include joint research, staff and student exchanges, exchange of research and of teaching, learning and informational materials and other ventures.

Although a steady stream of academic and administrative visitors from UB and UWC have visited one anothers' campuses since 1995, limited dormitory and home space for foreign students at UWC thus far has prevented the enrollment of UB students.

The University of the Western Cape (UWC) was founded in 1960 specifically to cater to the colored population of South Africa's Cape Province, who were then barred from attending "white" institutions. UWC's first staff was primarily white and supported apartheid, but by the late 1970s began to reject the ideological grounds upon which the university was founded.

It then began to serve as a center of intellectual and political resistance to apartheid and leading faculty members have been invited to take positions in the Mandela government.