Temple in the World - The World at Temple
Keynote Address
A Global Temple Conference
November 16, 2006
Good afternoon. It is wonderful to see so many of you here at the end of the day. I am delighted to be kicking off the Global Temple Conference.
Is there any more powerful evidence of Temple’s global engagement than the program for this conference? More than 200 Temple faculty members and students are participating in panel discussions; poster sessions; music, dance and poetry performances; art exhibits and film screenings. I am in awe of the breadth of expertise, quality of research and artistry, and geographical diversity that will be on display here today and tomorrow. What a tremendous tribute to the global reach of Temple University.
I applaud the vision of the Faculty Senate’s International Programs Committee, which worked so hard to make the Global Temple Conference happen. I would like to recognize the co-chairs of today’s conference: Dr. Sanjoy Chakravorty, professor and chair of geography and urban studies, and Professor Brooke Harrington of the department of architecture in the Tyler School of Art.
The global perspectives provided by the participants of this conference could not be more timely. As educators, we must confront a simple fact: Globalization changes everything. If we do not internationalize our teaching, our research, and our community outreach, we will be increasingly left behind in a dynamic and changing world.
As some of you may know, I am the chair-elect of the Commission on International Programs at the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges — commonly known as NASULGC. Our commission “seeks to incorporate a global dimension element into the learning, discovery and engagement activities” of all member universities. We also support and advocate for academic exchange and research and development programs with Congress and federal agencies.
The NASULGC Task Force on International Education has identified four reasons why American universities must internationalize.
For our students: internationalization will help them develop the global critical thinking essential to contributing as citizens of the world and competing in the international marketplace.
For our communities: internationalization links them to the world, expanding opportunities for universal service and engagement while also enhancing their global competitiveness.
For our nation: internationalization contributes to national security and a vital economy, and prepares future world leaders who know and value democracy.
For our institutions: internationalization enlivens faculty scholarship and teaching, expands research opportunities, and provides a pathway to national and international distinction.
A week ago I spoke at the Temple Urban Research conference, where I said that in an era when local conditions are directly linked to global patterns, we must not restrict our work on urban trends and problems to the United States alone. That program reflected Temple’s global concerns and included several scholars working on urban conditions in other parts of the world.
International research often requires fieldwork that is more complicated and costly than social research done at home. However, Temple is better positioned than many similar institutions to place its faculty and students in distant corners of the globe, by virtue of our programs and campuses across the world.
For example, Temple University has the oldest and largest American university in Japan. Founded in 1982, TUJ is the first “Foreign University” to be recognized by the Japan’s Ministry of Education. This status allows TUJ to sponsor foreign visas, providing international students the opportunity to complete a four-year degree in Japan. Several of our schools and colleges have developed majors that can be completed only at the TUJ campus, such as the College of Liberal Arts’ undergraduate majors in international affairs and psychological studies. The Fox School of Business, the College of Education, and the Law School offer graduate programs featuring a combination of local Japanese faculty and faculty from our Main Campus. Other schools, such as Tourism and Hospitality Management, have developed “2+2” programs for students to begin their studies in Japan and complete them here in Philadelphia.
Temple can also boast about its campus in Rome, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year! I look forward to my visit there in March to mark this momentous occasion with them. In 1966, 36 Temple art students steamed across the Atlantic to begin their studies at the Villa Caproni. Now Temple Rome is one of the largest and longest-standing programs in Italy, offering semester or year abroad experiences to about 650 students annually (about half of whom are Temple students). Today’s Temple Rome students study visual arts, liberal arts, Italian studies, architecture, landscape architecture, international business, and law with the program’s 40 faculty members. And today’s Villa Caproni has high-tech “smart” classrooms, wireless Internet access, a computer lab, digital photo labs, darkrooms, a printmaking studio, a sculpture studio, a computerized architecture studio, an art gallery and a 16,000-volume English language library — the third largest in Rome.
The School of Communications and Theater offers a semester or year long program in London where students have the opportunity to complete an unpaid internship at a British or American media or theater organization. And Temple students can take advantage of exchange, study abroad and summer programs around the world, including Brazil, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Mexico, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
Temple is well-positioned to place its students and faculty into research and learning opportunities around the world. But, internationalization is about more than offering study abroad opportunities. As the NASULGC task force report states: “International study must move from the periphery to the center of our institutional teaching, research, and engagement commitment.”
Several of our schools and colleges have begun this integration of the international perspective in earnest. For example, the Beasley School of Law’s international program has burst into the U.S. News and World Report’s top 20. Dean Reinstein has hired renowned faculty experts from the world’s leading law schools, such as Peter Spiro, the Honorable Charles R. Weiner Professor of Law, one of the world’s top authorities on immigration law and citizenship issues, and Jaya Ramji-Nogales, who teaches civil procedure and evidence and has recently published an exciting book on bringing the Khmer Rouge to justice for genocide in Cambodia. Jaya was awarded a fellowship after law school to recreate a refugee law clinic in South Africa. In 1999, the Law School also offered the first U.S. graduate law program to be offered in the People’s Republic of China in conjunction with Tsinghua University School of Law in Beijing. Over 160 lawyers have graduated from that program and many continue to work in the People’s Republic of China.
And, as I have noted on a number of occasions, the new chair of Tyler’s architecture department is Lindsay Bremner, who came to us all the way from South Africa, where she was chair of architecture at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She is a renowned expert on urban planning in post-apartheid South Africa.
The Fox School of Business and Management has also made an international focus a priority. The Fox School is the American MBA program rated by the Financial Times in the top 10 in all five global categories of international mobility, international students, international faculty, international board, and international experience. It was ranked number one in the United States for international mobility of its graduates. The Fox School was also recognized by the International Business Review for its international business faculty research productivity.
This year, 16 Temple students and four administrators will be participating in an “alternative winter break” in a “service immersion project” in Tijuana, Mexico. They will spend seven days working alongside local community members. During the evenings they will learn about local culture and explore issues with guest lecturers from the local university. Over 100 students applied for the 16 available slots!
I have mentioned just a few examples of international programs in our schools and colleges, and there are so many more that I could not mention. We are also making efforts at the administrative level. For example, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies Peter Jones has been working to ensure that our best students have the opportunity to study abroad without increasing their time to graduation. General education courses will be available at our Tokyo and Rome campuses.
We are also expanding the definition of the “structures and conduct of society” requirement to be more inclusive of international topics and issues of globalization. Many faculty members recommended this expansion and I believe it enhances the intellectual outreach of our new general education program.
My own experience with the life-transforming power of international experiences in education began with a lesson from our daughter Liza, who announced at the beginning of her sophomore year in high school that she was going to be an international exchange student the following year, and we needed to get to work finding the right program. The year she spent in Vienna—1989-90—transformed not only her own life but, as many of you may remember, the lives of millions of others. Liza saw first-hand the barbed wire and armed guards of the Czech border near her host family’s home in Retz, Austria, watched tens of thousands of people stream through Austria on their way out of Eastern Europe, and traveled by train to Hungary with her Austrian hosts as one of the first western tourists allowed into Budapest after the fall of the Berlin Wall. On a sunny Sunday in May, she walked with us and her host family into the woods and across the Czech boarder, where no barbed wire remained.
And just this Tuesday, I listened to Dr. Peter McPherson, president of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, passionately describe how his world view had been forever changed by his experience in the Peace Corps and later by his work with USAID.
In 2004, Earl Kellogg [Associate Provost for International Programs at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign] wrote that “a strong international dimension in our learning mission is a prerequisite for being a great research university.” One hundred years ago, land grant universities were the makers of knowledge of the 20th century, urban research universities will be the incubators of the next century. Temple is a great university in a great city. Like other urban research universities, “Our missions must be reframed to include global as well as metropolitan and regional communities. Our partnerships must grow in diversity, reach, and location.”
In order to maintain Temple’s momentum as we grow in the future, in order to continue our push to be a leader among national urban research universities, we must expand and articulate our international mission in both teaching and research.
Some of the questions that I will be asking our deans, department chairs, and faculty:
These are important discussions for us to begin — and to begin today. Thank you all for being here today to share your own work and to learn about the work of your colleagues.
<<Back to Addresses and Articles
|
