Strategic Plan outlines global initiatives

IU’s reach exceeds its seven campuses, stretching across borders to make its mark in almost every corner of the world.

Students might know IU works on this global outreach through study abroad, but the University is using a new platform to further its international stance — gateway
facilities.

Gateway facilities are IU offices outside the U.S. that focus on research collaborations with faculty in other countries, programming for overseas alumni, fundraising and other related activities, said David Zaret, vice president for international affairs. Each facility has an academic director. 

“One use of the gateway would be for IU faculty to organize a mini conference or a workshop with their foreign colleagues,” Zaret said. “The goal of this would be to explore shared areas of interests and possible research collaborations in the future.”

Part of IU Provost Lauren Robel’s strategic plan’s international initiatives section proposed to utilize and expand these gateway facilities.

Already, IU has a gateway facility that opened last year in Gurgaon, India, near New Delhi, and is renovating another facility in Beijing, China. 

The locations of the facilities are on a list of 32 countries that IU wants to focus on for partnerships. But the list doesn’t mean only 32 countries are of interest to IU.

Zaret said IU faculty research in or travel to any country, but the University is focusing on the 32 listed nations.

Besides India and China, other countries on the list are Kenya, Spain and Egypt. Currently, IU has partners in both India and China to help with the facilities.

India is partner to the American Institute of India Studies, which also sponsors the Dhar India studies program at IU.

China’s gateway facility is partner to CERNET.

“What I hope to see in the future is not just that people just in India are using the gateway, but that it becomes much more of a part of this international competency which we have for our students,” said Michael Dodson, academic director for the IU gateway in Gugaon.

No new facilities will open soon in other countries, Zaret said.

“We are mainly concerned with renovating the space in both of these facilities and then beginning to ramp up activities at them,” Zaret said.

Basically, the space is being renovated to bring it up to what we might think of as “IU standards,” Dodson said.

The facilities include individual offices, an office for group work and a large seminar room with teleconferencing capabilities, Zaret said.

Renovations in China will be more extensive because the local custom is to rip out everything from leased space in a building down to the bare walls, bare floors and any existing internal walls, Zaret said.

“The gateway facility allows us to foster out partnerships with universities, governments and corporations in their regions,” said M.A. Venkataramanan, vice provost for strategic initiatives in an email last Thursday. “The gateway facility signals our commitments to these regions and enhance our global recognition.”