On 11 March, William Brustein (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Susan Jeffords (University of Washington), two experts on the internationalization of higher education, held a candid discussion at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (pictured to the right) about how communities and regions benefit from the global efforts of their public universities.Topics in this two hour-long event included knowledge hubs and economic development, strategic university-community partnerships, and institutional cooperation, among others.
A webcast of the forum can now be viewed online. PowerPoint presentations are also available for download.
A webcast of the previous Global Public University forum, featuring a dialogue between Stephen Toope (President, University of British Columbia) and David Ward (President, American Council on Education), can be viewed at this link, as well. It took place on 9 October 2007.
The Global Public University Series promotes discussion about the trends, challenges, and opportunities that impact public universities throughout the world and how these institutions can learn from and work with one another, and their communities. The event was co-sponsored by UW-Madison Division of International Studies, WISCAPE, and the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN), and reflects a desire to enhance strategic thinking about how to more effectively craft institutional strategies in a rapidly changing multi-scalar context. For example, the local/regional/provincial/state responsibilities of public universities, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, creates some interesting challenges for crafting (and legitimizing) an international/global strategy, though in a manner that is supportive of making a “difference in the lives of Wisconsin citizens“. Events like this are designed to to spur on (re)thinking so as to enable institutions to better face these challenges; challenges that public universities around the world will increasingly face, regardless of available resources.
Kris Olds and Masarah Van Eyck