Committee on International Programs and Activities
2004-2005 Committee Report

Summary of Meetings:

To update the committee membership about international activities at AASU and the USG, each meeting included reports from the AASU representative to the follow USG committees/council: African Council (Steve Agyekum), Americas Council (Bill Deaver), Asian Council (Lei Zhu), European Council (Olavi Arens), and the Georgia Consortium ( Ned Rinalducci). These updates include the annual USG faculty development seminars open at USG faculty and various conferences and study abroad programs.

The chair of the committee provided at each meeting the current status of AASU study abroad programs and enrollments, international student enrollments and activities, and other USG international information.

During 2005-2006 the committee would like to work with the Teaching/Learning Center to sponsor a faculty workshop on study abroad opportunities for faculty.

Included below is the information presented at the final meeting of the year regarding study abroad enrollments, new study abroad programs, international lectures/speakers on campus, and exchange partnerships:

Study Abroad: Jim Anderson provided a handout on 2003-2004 study abroad statistics for the USG that indicated that AASU had 117 students going abroad that year and that AASU was ranked 7 th in the number of students involved in such programs. An additional handout listed the AASU sponsored or affiliated May/Summer 2005 study abroad programs including new ones in Chile, Brazil, Czech Republic and Argentina.

Teaching Abroad: Anderson also noted that AASU faculty have the opportunity to submit applications to teach at nine different study abroad sites in summer 2006 (Chile, Paris, London, Spain, Greece, St. Petersburg, Germany, Argentina, and Czech Republic.

New Study Abroad Program Options: New possibilities for study abroad program development for summer 2006 include Chengdu, China (Lei Zhu), Ecuador (Teresa Winterhalter), Rome (Bob LeFavi), Ireland (Rick McGrath), Berlin (Mike Toma), and Jamaica or Trinidad (Cameron Coates).

International Speakers/Visitors on Campus: Anderson announced that AASU had 16 international scholars and guests on campus during 2004-2005. Most of the speakers were representing foreign universities provided lectures to our students and/or faculty. This group represented the countries of Brazil, Norway, Argentina, South Africa, China, Estonia, Ecuador, Wales, Dominican Republic, Finland, Canda, and Kazakhstan.

New Partnerships with Foreign Universities: During 2004-2005, AASU signed formal faculty/student exchange agreements with the Kazakhstan Humanitarian and Law University (Astana) and Kolej Universiti Teknologi and Pengurusan Malaysia (Selangor, Malaysia). Other sites under consideration for next year include COBEC (a consortium of U.S. universities and those in Belize), Sichuan Unviersity (Chengdu, China), Vaal University (Pretoria, South Africa), and University of Koblenz (Koblenz and Landau, Germany).