IU Bloomington Provost Robel to visit, strengthen ties with South Korea
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University Bloomington Provost and Executive Vice President Lauren Robel will travel to South Korea next week to strengthen relationships with alumni and partner institutions and to develop collaborations in a nation that is rich in both culture and innovation.
Robel will lead a delegation that will visit universities, business and cultural institutions and meet with alumni and higher-education officials to celebrate IU's strong connections with South Korea and create opportunities for new academic, research and professional partnerships.
"Our South Korean alumni are some of Indiana University's most active ambassadors and supporters. Many of them are now in leadership roles in the public, private and higher education sectors in South Korea, and are actively working with us to support existing collaborative opportunities for our students, faculty and graduates, and to establish new ones,” Robel said. “South Korea is deeply committed to education, and the bridges we have built in business, law, public affairs and other academic areas are unquestionably beneficial for our domestic and international students as they prepare for success in a 21st-century global setting."
Robel will visit Sungkyunkwan University, known as SKKU, to discuss ongoing and prospective academic partnerships and Seoul National University to renew a cooperative agreement with IU's School of Public and Environmental Affairs. She will visit the Seoul Arts Center and the Korea National University of the Arts to explore collaboration with IU’s Jacobs School of Music and other arts and arts administration programs. She will meet with IU alumni at Samsung, a global leader in electronics and technology, and with South Korea’s vice minister of education, Na Seung-il.
The trip will begin with the annual gathering of the Korean chapter of the IU Alumni Association, several of whose members recently worked with the Korea Foundation to establish IU’s first endowed chair in Korean studies.
"On my previous trips to Korea, it has been delightful to meet with members of our strong alumni group," Robel said. "Their commitment to Indiana University is extraordinary, and their hospitality to emissaries from IU unmatched."
Among IU Bloomington's nearly 6,000 international students, 840 are from South Korea -- second in number behind China. South Korea also boasts one of the largest and most active groups of IU international alumni, with more than 1,000 active members of the Korea IU Alumni Association. IU has more than 1,600 alumni living in Korea of a total of over 3,600 Korean alumni around the world.
Indiana University has a number of collaboration agreements with universities in South Korea, including SKKU, Seoul National University and Yonsei University, involving many academic units such as the Kelley School of Business, College of Arts and Sciences, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, School of Public Health and Maurer School of Law.
The agreements are a key part of IU Bloomington's global engagement initiative, which seeks to strengthen and capitalize on the institution's robust presence around the world. South Korea is one of the countries that IU has identified as countries of strategic priority.
The recent Open Doors Report from the Institute of International Education found that Indiana University, across all its campuses, ranked fifth nationally for the number of students studying abroad. Most of the students were from IU Bloomington, which ranked 10th among U.S. institutions for the number of international students enrolled; it ranked fifth for international undergraduates.
The IU delegation, in addition to Robel, will include M.A. Venkataramanan, vice provost for strategic initiatives; Mark Need, clinical professor of law at the Maurer School of Law and faculty director of the Elmore Entrepreneurship Law Clinic; Elisabeth Andrews, communications specialist, Office of the Provost; Lesley Davis, assistant dean for international programs, Maurer School of Law; and Eric DeHaan, senior director of international alumni relations, IU Alumni Association.
Reports and updates on the trip will be available on a new blog, A Week in South Korea.
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Elisabeth Andrews
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- ecandrew@indiana.edu