SEAS Thinks
Globally, Acts Locally
Columbia's Global Vision: The concept of globalization permeated public
consciousness by the late 1990s and received its most articulate formulation in
Thomas Friedman’s book The World Is Flat,
published in 2005. The implications of this concept for academia were
quickly recognized by the president of Columbia University, Lee C.
Bollinger, who created the University's Committee on Global Thought (CGT),
led by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz. This committee comprises fellows with
backgrounds in philosophy, anthropology, foreign and security policy, law,
political science, international affairs, history, and East Asian languages and
culture. The major goal of CGT is to create programs and sponsor events with
the goal of "transforming Columbia into a truly global university to serve
the expanded needs of knowledge." Some of the committee's activities
included appointing faculty and graduate student fellows to CGT, inviting
visiting fellows (e.g., Nobel Laureate in Literature Orhan Pamuk) during the
fall semester of 2006, launching pilot courses on global governance and
globalization, and presenting public symposia addressing global topics such as
the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and global consequences of habeas corpus
practices in the United States.
The Globalization Challenge: President Bollinger also called on departments and schools throughout the University to meet the challenges of globalization: "The changing global landscape presents new challenges and opportunities that call for new forms of thought and action of the sort that universities can provide." The School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) responded by forming its own Globalization Development Team(GDT), co-chaired by Professor Van C. Mow, who is also the chair of Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME). SEAS already has a global reach as its faculty are respected worldwide for their state-of-the-art multidisciplinary research, which throughout the school's long history has had major social impacts, but the GDT wants to accelerate its program by thinking globally and acting locally.
SEAS's Globalization Plan: The GDT advises SEAS
to promote long-term global connections for enhancing its educational goals by
ensuring that faculty have access to new technologies wherever they are
developed; to collaborate and interact with the best universities, industries,
health care organizations, and businesses worldwide; to attract the best
undergraduate and graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows from around the
world; and to further cutting-edge research and teaching programs with
universities in other countries. So far, SEAS has established student exchange
and collaborative research programs with universities in Asia (Hong Kong,
Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok) and Europe (Holland, Germany, France, Switzerland
and Austria).
