Yale Bulletin
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YALE'S INTERNATIONAL STRENGTH|SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT|SEPTEMBER 2006



Forging Global Alliances

International Alliance of Research Universities. Yale is among the 10 research-intensive universities comprising the new International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU). The alliance aims to promote the development of deeper relationships between the member universities, so they can exchange best practices and address problems; facilitate bilateral programs between members; and promote collaborative research projects on topics ranging from "Understanding Women in Universities around the Globe" to "Global Challenges in Migration," "Aging, Longevity and Health," "International Security" and "Strategies for Institutionalizing Sustainability in Higher Education." The other IARU members are Australian National University, ETH Zurich, National University of Singapore, Peking University and the Universities of California-Berkeley, Cambridge, Copenhagen, Oxford and Tokyo.

Presidential Trips. President Richard C. Levin has led delegations to several regions of the world, meeting with government, educational and business leaders, as well as international alumni. In 2001, Levin became the first Yale president to visit the People's Republic of China. He has since made six return trips, most recently in 2006. These trips have resulted in numerous Yale-China collaborations. (See "The Yale-China Connection".) He also visited Japan and India in 2005, and South Korea and Mexico in 2003 to forge ties and establish new educational and research initiatives.

This September, Levin led a Yale delegation to meet with cultural, educational and government leaders in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to explore partnerships and opportunities for Yale in the Middle East. The Yale delegates included Vice President and University Secretary Linda Koch Lorimer; Barbara Shailor, deputy provost for the arts; Robert Blocker, dean of the School of Music; Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the School of Architecture; and Victoria Nolan, deputy dean of the School of Drama and director of the Yale Repertory Theatre. The trip included meetings with His Highness General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, and Michelle Sisson, the U.S. ambassador to the UAE.

Yale Libraries' Global Collaborations. Like their collections -- which include materials from all over the world -- Yale's libraries have an ever-expanding global reach. Yale librarians are collaborating with 40 partner institutions in over 20 countries on a wide range of international initiatives. Two examples of these are the Arabic and Middle Eastern Electronic Library, an international effort to digitize and create a technological infrastructure for the sharing of scholarly journals in and about the Middle East; and the Online Access to Research in the Environment, a collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies to make scientific literature available to researchers in developing countries. In addition, Yale librarians have served as consultants to libraries around the world and have welcomed colleagues from foreign shores, who come to New Haven to learn from Yale practices. Further information: www.library.yale.edu/international.

Law School World Partnerships. Now in its 14th year, the Yale Law School's Linkage Program is designed to strengthen democratic institutions and practices in Latin America. Under the program, Yale students spend a month in Brazil, Chile or Argentina working with law students there in small study groups and clinics. In the spring, students from the Latin American Linkage law schools visit Yale for three weeks to participate in study groups and attend classes in New Haven. Another initiative, the Middle East Legal Studies Seminar, is convened each year by the Yale Law School in the Middle East or nearby to provide a forum in which leaders from the area's legal communities can exchange ideas and forge ties. The Law School has numerous other programs that focus on law and the larger world. These include the Global Constitutionalism Seminar, which annually brings together a group of about 15 Supreme Court and Constitutional Court judges from around the world; the Orville H. Schell Jr. Center for International Human Rights; The Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy; and the Yale China Law Center (see item).

International Initiatives at the Medical School. For a quarter-century, the Yale School of Medicine has been instilling a sense of global citizenry among medical residents and building a community of global health activists through the Department of Internal Medicine's International Health Program, known today as the Yale/Johnson & Johnson Physician Scholars in International Health Program. Each year, approximately 40 residents-in-training work in underserved areas throughout the world -- including Haiti, Eritrea, Vietnam, Uganda and Honduras -- where they have the opportunity to enrich their knowledge and practice of medicine in settings with few resources. Scholars also include about 15 career physicians each year who are available for service abroad or are interested in potentially duplicating this program at their own institutions.

The School of Medicine also has exchange programs with medical schools and hospitals around the globe. One of these, a partnership with Kazan State Medical University (KSMU) in Russia, began in 1992 as part of a program by the U.S. Agency for International Development to help modernize the former Soviet medical system. Innovations introduced through the faculty exchange with KSMU (which was founded in 1814, the year the Yale medical school granted its first degrees) include classes for the Russian residents on evidence-based medicine and the establishment of team-based teaching on the wards in Kazan, as well as an annual training course in HIV prevention and treatment. In addition, during the past 10 years, 33 KSMU faculty and clinical fellows have spent anywhere from a few weeks to one year at Yale becoming familiar with the school's educational model as well as state-of-the-art developments in their fields. To offset the shortage of medical journals in Kazan, Yale helped provide a small reference library and computers with Internet access.

Since 2002, more than 90 scientists from China have visited Yale under the auspices of the Fudan-Yale Biomedical Research Center. The Shanghai-based center is embarking on a major project to create up to 100,000 mouse mutants, using a new transposon-based technique to knock out individual genes and study their function to gain insight into the roles played by homologous genes in humans. Researchers have already produced nearly 500 mutants and hope to greatly reduce the cost and time required to produce mouse knockouts, compared to previously devised techniques.

School of Music Overseas Ties. Many Yale School of Music (YSM) students hail from South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the People's Republic of China, and the school has close affiliations with leading institutions in Asia. YSM has a longstanding exchange agreement with Seoul National University and recently signed one with Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music. It also boasts similar partnerships and exchanges with European institutions. Through these exchanges, YSM faculty members have presented concerts and master classes overseas, and musicians from abroad have come to the Yale campus to teach and perform.

Nursing School World Programs. In keeping with Yale School of Nursing's goal of educating its students with a global perspective, it has been expanding development of faculty scholarship in international health and nursing and increasing the number of opportunities for students to study abroad. Last spring, YSN co-sponsored -- with Mahidol University in Thailand and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -- an International Nursing Conference on Prevention and Management of Chronic Illness held in Bangkok, which focused on the impact of chronic illnesses on health care systems and establishing an international network of nurse researchers and clinicians in this area of care. YSN also recently launched the Yale Center for International Nursing Scholarship. Led by Professor Ann Williams, the center will enhance YSN's ability to link research, clinical practice, education and health policies worldwide with an emphasis on the global application and dissemination of nursing knowledge.


Introduction

Educating Future Global Leaders

Forging Global Alliances

Attracting the World's Top Students and Scholars

Advanced Training for World Leaders

Learning About the World

The Yale-China Connection

Welcoming the World to Yale

International Resources on Campus


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