India is the latest country in which Metro State is expanding its global reach.

Metro State signed an agreement with the IBS in Hyderabad, opening opportunities for exchange between Metro State and 18 IBS campuses throughout India (l. to r.: IBS Founding Director V. Panduranga Rao, Kishore Kulkharni, Linda Curran, IBS-Pune Director Dhananjay Keskar, Jim Aubrey, and Rajendra Khandehar).

A delegation from the College traveled to the country over the winter break, signing agreements with two higher education institutions there to foster, among other opportunities, faculty and student exchanges.

“We’re very excited about the doors these agreements will open for our faculty and students,” said Linda Curran, interim provost and vice president of Academic Affairs, who led the delegation. Other delegation members included Ali Thobhani, executive director of the Office of International Studies and interim chair of African-American Studies; Betsy Zeller, director of the Office of Global Initiatives, Rajendra Khandekar, professor of management; Kishore Kulkarni, professor of economics; and James Aubrey, professor of English.

Busy in the “Oxford of India”
After flying into Mumbai, the group’s next stop was the western city of Pune, considered to be the “Oxford of India” because of its concentration of well-reputed institutions of higher learning.

The Metro State delegation met first with faculty and administrators from the Pune campus of the Business School of the Institution of Chartered Financial Analysts of India (IBS), one of 18 IBS campuses located throughout India. The group next visited the University of Pune, which offers comprehensive undergraduate and graduate programs in the sciences, arts, business, social sciences and law. At the University of Pune, Provost Curran and Vice Chancellor Narenda Jadhav signed an international memorandum of agreement (IMOA) to foster faculty and student exchanges and collaborations.

Subramian Swamy (second from right), India’s former Minister of Commerce and a five-time member of Parliament, met with the Metro State delegation (l to r) : Ali Thobani, Jim Aubrey and Linda Curran,.

“Initially, we were planning to merely investigate an agreement with the University of Pune. But our interactions with them, and the personal relationship between Professor Kulkarni and Pune Vice Chancellor Jadhav, led to the more formal IMOA,” said Zeller. She added that the University of Pune serves 40 percent of international students studying in India, making it well-equipped to handle future visiting students and faculty members from Metro State.

Vice Chancellor Jadhav arranged for the Metro State delegates to meet with Pune’s mayor, Rajlaxmi Bhosale, who agreed to pursue avenues to strengthen bonds between Pune and the city of Denver.

Kulkarni and Khandekar also presented two lectures on economics to MBA students at Bharati Vidyapeeth, a post-secondary institution in Pune.

More agreements
After leaving Pune, the group traveled back through Mumbai en route to the southeastern city of Hyderabad, which is the home to the main administrative campus of IBS. After meeting with IBS officials, Curran signed an MOA with chief academic advisor and founding director V. Panduranga Rao. An important feature of the MOA is that it allows Metro State to conduct international faculty and student exchanges not only with IBS in Pune, but also with any of the other 17 IBS affiliate institutions, Zeller said.

Metro State delegates also met with administrators from the South India Education Society College of Commerce and Economics, and began preliminary discussions on future agreements.

High-level access
Much of the delegation’s success came as a result of access to high-level officials in India. The personal relationships of two Metro State faculty members born in India, in particular Kulkarni, figured largely in the outcome. Kulkarni has authored or co-authored seven economics textbooks and is the founding editor of the biannual Indian Journal of Economics and Business, a highly regarded international journal. “Kishore’s editorship opened doors for our group that were unbelievable,” Zeller said.

One example of the access afforded the group was a dinner with Subramian Swamy, India’s former Minister of Commerce, currently a Harvard professor. Swamy was elected as a member of India’s Parliament five times between 1974 and 1999, and is best known for his successes in normalizing relationships with Israel and China. The delegation invited Swamy to visit Metro State during a summer 2008 visit to the United States.

Future directions
“This trip reminded us of something very important,” said Curran, who was trained as an anthropologist and has worked in China, Tibet, Nepal and Africa.

“It’s critically important, when we work to establish agreements such as these, to ask our faculty members who have ties to and relationships in the global community to take the lead in forging the agreements and interacting with our hosts. We owe our success (on this trip) to the relationships, language skills and international experience that Kishore Kulkarni, Rajendra Khandekar, Ali Thobhani and Jim Aubrey (who taught at a rural Indian college under a 2006 Fulbright Scholarship) brought to the table in all of our discussions. I am very, very impressed with their sensitive and skillful handling of the social protocol, in particular.”