Book Launch Coincides with U.S. Higher Education Delegation Visiting India

The Institute of International Education’s India office will host a reception in Delhi on Wednesday, February 1 in honor of the Institute’s newly published book, Developing Strategic International Partnerships: Models for Initiating and Sustaining Innovative Institutional Linkages. The volume explores a wide range of models and strategies for initiating and sustaining international relationships between higher education institutions.

The February 1 event will include a panel discussion about developing Indo-U.S. higher education partnerships. It will be attended by government officials and leaders in higher education from India and the United States. The panel will be chaired by Dr. P.J. Lavakare, an expert in Indian higher education who authored a chapter in the book. Dr. Lavakare is also an advisor for IIE’s International Academic Partnership Program (IAPP) with India, a year-long training program which guides U.S. institutions on how to implement and sustain partnerships with higher education institutions in India, including how to align these partnerships with other campus-wide internationalization strategies.

High level representatives of the eleven U.S. colleges and universities participating in IIE’s partnership program will be in India on an IIE-led study tour from January 29 through February 3, visiting campuses and networking with their counterparts in Delhi, Hyderabad and Delhi. The group will join the book launch to learn more about educational partnership priorities from the Indian perspective and to share best practices from the U.S. campus perspective.

Developing Strategic International Partnerships features an instructive panorama of partnership programs from around the world, and offers recommendations, models, and strategies for initiating, managing, and sustaining a range of international linkages. The book contains chapters written by experts and practitioners from various institutions around the world, and comes at a time when international partnerships are expanding rapidly among colleges and universities.

This new book aims to be a practical resource for institutions that wish to build or expand linkages with higher education institutions worldwide. It is the sixth in a series of timely Global Education Research Reports published through a partnership between IIE and the American Institute For Foreign Study (AIFS) Foundation, and can be purchased via IIE’s online bookstore.

The publication elaborates on the U.S. experience but also includes entries from other countries including India, Ethiopia, France and the United Kingdom. Developing Strategic International Partnerships includes several practical appendices with templates for Memorandum of Understanding (MOUs) and Letters of Intent for establishing international partnerships, along with sample activities for identifying partners and developing linkages. These resources will prove particularly useful for institutions that are hoping to form partnerships with colleges and universities in the United States.

Higher education institutions in the United States and India pursue partnerships to enhance academic collaboration, expand curricular offerings, advance joint research, and prepare their students with the international experiences and cross-cultural tools needed in their careers. However, many institutions face significant challenges in navigating education systems in other countries, identifying appropriate partners and developing effective institutional partnership strategies. The new book and the best practices that continue to emerge from IIE’s partnership program with India will serve as critical resources for practitioners in international higher education around the world, particularly in India and the United States.