Partners
Michigan State University, the Lead Institution, has a long and distinguished history in international education, research, and extension. The Office of International Studies and Programs (ISP) was founded in 1956 to initiate, coordinate, and support internationally related activities. Among the many tangible results of MSU’s deep commitment to international engagement are: (1) more than 25 internationally focused centers, institutes, offices, and programs, including seven centers currently designated as national resource and language resource centers through the U.S. Department of Education Title VI program; (2) one of the largest study abroad programs in the country, offering more than 260 programs in 65 countries; (3) thousands of international students and scholars from more than 100 countries; (4) a legacy of development projects, funded by major grants, in such areas as agriculture, business, education, democratic institution building, and health; and (5) more than 140 active linkage agreements with international organizations in more than 50 countries on six continents.
For the 21rst century, MSU has engaged in a strategic and transformative journey to become a global land-grant university, making global awareness and engagement of our students, faculty, staff, and other constituencies an institutional priority. To reach this goal, MSU is focusing energy and resources on expanding its partnerships with key institutions in Brazil. Indeed, MSU has a long history of international engagement with Brazil, and many of our faculty worked to establish and improve programs of higher learning there in the 1960s and 1970s, including the Business Administration program at UFBA. Currently, our faculty includes one of the largest concentrations of Brazilian expertise found in U.S. and European universities with an estimated 27 faculty members identifying Brazil as a prime focus of their research, and more than 50 faculty members from across the colleges actively engaged in a variety of strategic programs.
Of particular importance to MSU’s efforts is strengthening and further developing institutional collaborations with UFPA and UFBA, the key Universities of Brazil’s North and Northeast regions. Much effort has been undertaken already by MSU and our Brazilian collaborators to formalize partnerships, including collaborative research amongst faculty, study abroad programs, and visits by faculty and high level administrators from MSU, UFBA, and UFPA to ensure institutional support for the partnership. In April of this year, MSU is sponsoring a visit by both of the Rectors from our Brazilian partners, and will finalize outstanding MOUs. This FIPSE would strengthen on-going efforts, and would also serve as the impetus to continue expanding the initial scope and impact of the FIPSE linkages and programmatic objectives, with the aim of institutionalizing a long-standing and sustainable partnership between MSU and our Brazilian colleagues.
The FIPSE program will be administered through the Department of Geography, which is located in the College of Social Sciences, and James Madison College. Geography is concerned as a discipline with the spatial analysis of physical and human environments. The James Madison College (JMC), Michigan State University, offers sophisticated multidisciplinary programs in the social sciences founded on a model of liberal education and designed to prepare students for law school, graduate study, decision-making roles in public and private enterprise, and careers in government, media, politics, social services, public administration, education, business and industry, and the foreign service.
Kansas State University, like MSU, is a land grant university with an established reputation as a leading research and teaching institution. In a globalizing economy, K-State wants its students to think globally and spatially, with an understanding and appreciation of other nationalities, languages, and cultures. Institutional support for this FIPSE will draw from the International Studies and the Latin American Studies programs, whose primary objective is to promote understanding of the nations and cultures of the world through interdisciplinary study. With this goal in mind, KSU views participation in this consortium as an important way to strengthen current collaborations between Brazilian institutions and KSU, and as part of a larger strategy to further internationalize students’ experience at KSU.
The Federal University of Para, the lead Brazilian University, is one of the largest and most important institutions of higher learning in the Northern of Brazil, offering 338 undergraduate and 39 graduate programs, with an undergraduate student body of an estimated 32,000 divided in the following institutes: arts (ICA), natural science (ICEN), law science (IJC), health (ICS), philosophy and human science (IFCH), geologic science (IG), technology (ITEC), biological (CCB), education (CED), communication (ILA), and applied social science (ICSA). The internationalization of undergraduate education is an important goal of UFPA, and to pursue this end they created the Office of international affairs (PROINTER), which will be instrumental to the administration of the FIPSE. Institutional support will also come through the Pro-reitoria de Ensino de Graduação. The FIPSE will be pursued through the Instituto de Ciências Sociais Aplicadas, in particular the department of Economic Sciences, and institutional support will also come from the Núcleo de Altos Estudos Amazônicos (NAEA – the Center for the Advanced Study of Amazonia), which was founded in 1973 to provide graduate education with a regional Pan-Amazon focus specifically directed at the critical identification, description, analysis, and interpretation of data necessary to address the issues confronting the region.
The Federal University of Bahia was established as the first Medical School in the Latin America. Since late 16th century, this University has evolved to be the leading research institution in the Northeastern part of Brazil. The undergraduate courses are divided in 55 courses, arranged in five areas: physics, mathematics and technological sciences, Biological sciences and health professions, philosophy and human sciences, education and arts. The office for international affairs at UFBA gives support for the institutional partnerships. The School of Administration had its Business unit founded in 1959, hence 50 years ago, having had MSU as the American University which provided organization for its structure under an USAID grant program. In 2009 once again the School of Administration has received guidance from MSU, this time to help assist it in the founding of an International Relations undergraduate course. Besides the School of Administration, ICI, the Institute for Information Sciences will join this USA/Brazil effort to develop a joint course program. ICI will team up providing methodology for the construction of social indicators aimed at measuring results achieved, as well as measuring social production, consumption and other statistics necessary for the project. CIAGS, a relatively new post-graduation program which evolved from the School of Administration, has developed experience on working on situation of diversity and adversity. CIAGS is deployed into this project to bring along its successful experience on social residence aimed at immersing students into different social environments.