During the first week of November, I had the pleasure of traveling to Colombia, South America, with, Robert Cox, our associate dean for globalization, and José Garcia, an assistant professor in our School of Engineering Technology. José was raised in Bogota, Colombia, and he completed his undergraduate work at the Universidad de Los Andes.
We visited the campuses of four universities, two in Bogota and two in Medellin. Our visit was part of a much larger effort by Purdue to work with the nation of Colombia through the Colombia Purdue Institute.
After our visits, it appears that there are a number of opportunities for us with three Colombian universities, including student and faculty exchanges, joint research collaboration, and study abroad options for our students:
- They were very interested in our curriculum transformation efforts and want their faculty to participate in our faculty development program in West Lafayette. We were also invited to offer the program in Colombia.
- There is also interest in our aeronautical engineering technology program, especially because a very large aviation maintenance facility will be opening in Medellin soon.
We are making great progress with our globalization efforts in the college. The number of students participating in semester study abroad is growing with 27 of our students scheduled to participate this coming spring semester (a 35 percent increase!). The November 13 edition Purdue Today featured a story about our globalization efforts from Innovation magazine, too.
Indeed, globalization is one of our objectives related to the transformation of the college. Our Transformation Implementation Plan reads:
- Objective 1. Global/Cultural Immersions. Embed study abroad or other global/cultural immersions into the curricula for all undergraduate programs by fall 2016.
- Strategy 1. Departments/schools work through their curricula committees to create study abroad or other global/cultural immersions, with the assistance of the Associate Dean for Globalization, for students to enroll in.
Colombia offers us a rich opportunity to increase the study abroad and other global/cultural immersions as stated in our goals.
