UB Opens Exchange Programs With Universities in Cuba, India, China And South Africa

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo has expanded its student/faculty international-education effort to include formal academic exchange programs with the University of Havana, Cuba; China's Hangzhou University; Maharaja Sayajirao University in India's Vadordara Gujaret State, and South Africa's University of the Western Cape.

Stephen Dunnett, UB 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 UB's College of Arts and Sciences, to further internationalize the university by expanding the university's exchange offerings and by strengthening and diversifying its undergraduate and graduate population of international students.

"One thing that I am not in favor of," said Grant, "is academic tourism -- the short stay that is just long enough for the participant to say, 'My isn't this an odd place' and then leave.

"Students need to be in a new country long enough to go from being a stranger to seeing things as curious, to developing an understanding of the conditions that give rise to circumstances that trouble them, to finally recognizing deep changes within themselves and seeing their experience in another nation as life-changing."

He said the College of Arts and Sciences also has an important role in assisting students who want to reaffirm their heritage identity and connect with their "parent" cultures in an academic context, whether that culture be in Asia, Europe, Africa or Latin America.

The landmark exchange agreement signed last summer by Grant and Yolanda Wood, dean of the University of Havana (UH) Faculty of Arts and Letters, was the first of its kind betweenUH 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:

o A joint working group has been established to develop the Caribbean Studies Program and will meet at UB in April.

o A master's-degree program in Caribbean studies is expected to be in place at UB by fall. The two universities also will jointly design and manage a master's degree in the arts and letters of the Caribbean.

o Fernando Remirez de Esternoz, first deputy minister of the Cuban Republic and head of the Cuban Interest Section in Washington, D.C., will visit UB on March 4-6 to discuss the new initiatives and their possible expansion.

o UB expects to establish a research center in Caribbean Studies at UH as soon as possible. Given the current state of economic affairs in Cuba, the center will be outfitted by UB with personal computers, a fax machine and other office and conferencing equipment.

o UB's very successful summer-abroad program, conducted in Cuba in 1997 and 1998, will be expanded. In 1998, the program enrolled 33 students from UB, Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and Binghamton University.

The eight courses offered in Havana last summer were taught by three UB faculty members and two from UH. Students chose among five study options and earned up to six credit hours from UB. In addition, the UB program featured 15 visiting lectures and opportunities for student contact with an extensive network of artists and intellectuals throughout Cuba.

The 1999 program is expected to enroll 35 students who will remain in Cuba throughout July and earn graduate and undergraduate academic credits. Three professors at UH will be teaching in this year's program along with two members of the UB faculty: Jose Buscaglia, assistant professor of modern languages and literatures and director of the Cuban and Caribbean

programs at UB, and Henry Louis Taylor, Jr., associate professor of American studies and director of the UB Center for Urban Studies.

A comprehensive exchange agreement between UB and Hangzhou University, the largest comprehensive university in China, also began in 1998.

The new exchange agreement will 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 on organizational change and strategic planning at Hangzhou last spring.

Like UB, Hangzhou is a comprehensive research university offering 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.

Two UB students were enrolled in the program last fall and more will be enrolled as soon as the merger of Hangzhou University and four other institutions in the Zehjiang region, including an agricultural institute and a medical institute, is fully accomplished. The resulting institution is to be called Zehjiang University

UB's ties to China go back to 1980 when it established an exchange program with the Beijing Municipal System of Higher Education.

From 1984-91, UB operated the first and only American MBA program in China, which graduated 216 students, many of whom have since risen to prominent positions in Chinese and American-based businesses in China. That program, affiliated with China's Dalian University of Technology, ended after funding from the U.S. Department of Commerce expired.

Earlier this month, the UB School of Management opened a new MBA program for top Chinese executives at Renmin University in Beijing. Graduates of the program will be awarded a degree from UB. The UB program will be the only U.S. program in China to be affiliated with a nationally ranked Chinese school of business.

The summer of 1998 also marked the establishment of UB's first comprehensive exchange program with a university in India, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India (MSU).

The exchange was suggested by MSU alumnus Muchand Patel, chair of the UB Department of Biochemistry.

MSU is a major comprehensive university that enrolls 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. It was established in 1949 as the first teaching, residential and unitary university in western India.

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 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 exchange, exchange of research and of teaching, learning and informational materials and other ventures.

Links seem potentially fruitful in the fields of economics and urban development, cultural studies, law and human rights, history, African literature and the teaching of English as a second language. Although a steady stream of academic and administrative visitors from UB and UWC have visited each other's campuses since 1995, limited dormitory and home space for foreign students at UWC 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 then were barred from attending "white" institutions. Although the university grew slowly because of the government's grudging allocation of resources, it came to play an honored role in the struggle for democracy based on the fundamental premise of equality, an idea alien to South Africa under National Party control.

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 Nelson Mandela government.