Carolina Alumni Review - March/April 2008

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education and puts a lot of money into it. The 21st century is going to be, I think, a monumental shift in the center of the gravity in the world toward Asia, and I think the U.S. is such an important player and Singapore is such a strategically important entity.”

One of the most competitive study abroad programs at the University is the Carolina Southeast Asia Summer program, in which 25 UNC students spend five weeks studying abroad in Singapore and other countries in Southeast Asia. The program, which is offered free to students, is one of several initiatives funded by a $10 million gift.

to promote the joint-degree program, which started in August. The program is geared toward UNC students who are more serious about Asian studies. Undergraduates at UNC and NUS can spend up to two years at the other university studying subjects in the humanities and social science. Administrators from both schools are looking to expand the program to more subjects in the sciences.

“The summer program is ambitious and a great opportunity for students to get a sense of Asia,” Coclanis said. “The purpose is to open up their eyes to the possibilities of Asia — not necessarily making them into Asian Studies scholars, but to give students largely from North Carolina who may not have even thought much about Asia the sense that, ‘I can do it, and this might be a place where I could find a career or spend some time.’”

“Rather than for us [to] try to replicate all the resources they have in Asia, for the small number of students who want to go out and be specialists in Southeast Asia, it makes more sense for them to spend a couple of years in Singapore,” Coclanis said.

Ultimately, Coclanis says, Singapore should be just one thread in the rope of the University’s international ties. With a similar partnership with King’s College in London in the works — a partnership that may include a sort of triangular collaboration among King’s College, NUS and UNC — he is working toward developing strong relationships with universities in strategic areas all over the world.

The graduate schools at UNC are exploring what a partnership with Singapore has to offer. Collaborations are in the works with the schools of pharmacy, dentistry, nursing and the Kenan-Flagler Business School. Coclanis said that one of the ideas for Carolina North — the satellite campus expected to include corporate research space — is to partner with Singaporean companies in developing joint laboratories and research projects. Some of the collaborations with UNC already have made a difference in Singapore on a broad scale. Since working with the UNC department of psychiatry, the Singaporean government has incorporated that department’s innovative autism program into its policy on autism and related disorders.

“We want to be part of the narrative of the 21st century, and I think it’s a global narrative. It’s almost impossible to be a really great research university anymore unless you’re a global university. Talent doesn’t respect national borders that much anymore.

“It’s not a zero-sum game. The fact that we are internationalizing doesn’t mean we’re turning our back on Duplin County or anything like that. … I think what we have to do is internationalize in a strategic way that will benefit the people who pay our bills around the state.

“We are a trusted partner now, and I think it’s important and a good sign. They see us in a variety of ways as something that can add value to their University, and we see the same thing,” Coclanis said.

In the next few months, Coclanis says, UNC and NUS officials will be working

“The whole structure of opportunity and challenge is no longer from Manteo to Murphy. The world is the opportune level of refraction for many issues — diseases don’t respect national borders, and certainly immigrants don’t either. The whole world is often implicated in our plot, so we might as well rationally and out of our own choosing kind of interact and engage the world in a proactive way rather than sit here and be buffeted around by these forces.”