Universities Offer International Resources to Help Economy at Home
By Karin Fischer
The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 15, 2009
Universities, with their global reach and increasingly international missions, can use their overseas connections and expertise to improve their state and local economies.
That was the argument made by speakers at a panel discussion Sunday on global partnerships and economic development, one of the sessions held on the first day of the annual meeting here of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, formerly the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges.
In Wisconsin, the president of the state-university system, Kevin P. Reilly, recently appointed a group of educators, business leaders, and economic-development officials to explore how academic know-how could be used to help attract overseas investment to Wisconsin and expand the state’s presence in global markets.
“In a truly global economy, we need to build bridges between our international efforts and our economic-development efforts,” said Gilles Bousquet, one of the Wisconsin commission’s co-chairmen and a speaker at Sunday’s session. “International work and economic development,” continued Mr. Bousquet, who is dean of international studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, “are intrinsically linked.”