Letter of Invitation
To MSU Faculty, Students, and Colleagues concerned with Africa:
Please join us on Friday, March 23, for the Global Encounter: Africa, an important discussion among MSU faculty, staff, students, administrators, visiting international scholars and professionals, the local community from or with an interest in Africa. With a new sense of self-reliance and commitment to democracy in many countries and economic growth above 5% in a number of nations, many African countries offer new potential for economic growth and human development through bilateral and multilateral partnerships.
- Global Encounter: Africa
- Framing MSU's Global Engagement for the 21st Century
- Friday, March 23, 2007
- 8:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. (Check-in and continental breakfast 8:00 am)
- Delia Koo International Academic Center, Third Floor
- Michigan State University
You are invited to join in reconceptualizing the future approach to our engagement with Africa in the context of the growth of the importance of Africa and its natural resources for the U.S., the great opportunities and human capacity on the continent, and the growing optimism and an entrepreneurial spirit in many countries there.
In planning for the future linkages with African institutions, MSU has the resources of more than a half-century of rich, varied, and unique involvement in Africa and a record of scholarship about the continent. This has produced a depth of faculty expertise: African and American alumni with BAs, MAs, and PhDs (many in positions of authority) and a history of collaborative partnerships with a number of African universities that frequently have focused on the alleviation of poverty and increased human well-being there. As a result, in many countries across the continent, there is a generally positive image of MSU among academicians, administrators, students, and MSU alumni on which to build. Because of the depth of MSU experience, with faculty working in 32 of the 54 countries in recent years, planning for future partnerships is different from the Global Encounters for China, India, and Brazil. For Africa, we are beginning our planning with a discussion of the entire continent not because of any assumption that Africa is homogeneous but because the extensity and duration of MSU’s human investment there creates a special challenge for planning new directions.
We hope to identify partners, programmatic themes, and research and instructional opportunities where MSU and African partner institutions can have mutually transforming impacts in the decades ahead and can benefit from relationships that are equitable, transparent, and reciprocal.
Morning sessions will explore new models and activities for partnerships such as joint and collaborative degrees, jointly-appointed faculty, triangular collaboration, entrepreneurial models, etc., as well as ethical and strategic criteria for good partnerships. Afternoon sessions will consider opportunities and strategic decisions that need to be made to act on emerging new patterns of partnership – in West Africa, East Africa, and Southern Africa. The lessons learned from MSU’s current and recent partnerships will help inform these decisions. In these sessions, we will seek to be more specific about plans for next steps and how to fully engage the colleges, departments, centers, and institutes across the MSU campus.
This event offers an opportunity to think collectively about MSU's future leadership and partnerships in research, education, and outreach in a crucial part of the world.
We urge you to register on-line which includes the full schedule and additional information. Persons registering by March 21 will receive complimentary lunches. When you register, you will be given immediate access to the African Studies Center Angel Website with background documents for the discussion. Additional items will be posted here on this site.
Your input is a key to charting MSU's new directions. Global Encounter: Africa is structured to be flexible and interactive. Whether you can come for only a few hours or the entire session, your perspectives and ideas will be integrated with those of other participants. This event is critical to MSU’s decisions about expanding its international reach and creating a sustainable presence in the world, as called for in President Simon's strategic plan for Boldness by Design. In the months ahead, we will continue to shape and implement the ideas that emerge from Global Encounter: Africa and will schedule supplementary meetings to discuss particular universities, institutions, and countries that emerge as our foci.
We look forward to seeing you at this agenda-setting event.
- Kim Wilcox, Provost
- Jeffrey Riedinger, Acting Dean of International Studies and Programs
- David Wiley, Director of the African Studies Center
