Illinois is once again being recognized for its international reach and global impact.
Harry Dankowicz
This time it’s for the Illinois-Sweden Program for Educational Research and Exchange, which revealed Jan. 26 that it had been awarded the Institute of International Education’s Andrew Heiskell Award for Innovation in International Education for the best international partnership in the country.
“This successful alliance provides a model for global leadership in higher education, research collaboration and public engagement,” according to an IIE news release. “INSPIRE has created a stable infrastructure and lowered administrative barriers for ongoing exchange of students, faculty and staff.”
In fact, since the program was officially created in 2010 as a pilot project of the Illinois Strategic International Partnerships Initiative, which operates out of the Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs and Global Strategies, more than 100 Illinois students have participated in exchanges with Swedish partners KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm University and Karolinska Institute.
The partnership now involves more than 100 Illinois faculty members from 11 different colleges and research collaborations that have produced 45 co-written publications in peer-reviewed journals.
“This award recognizes the unique accomplishments of the INSPIRE program in bringing together faculty, staff and administrators at all levels of our campus in a concerted effort of internationalization, one of the pillars of the campus strategic plan,” said Harry Dankowicz, a professor of mechanical science and engineering and one of the two INSPIRE faculty liaisons.
Anna Stenport
He said the program has served as a “multiplier of limited investments” and in the process has raised the U. of I.’s international profile among students, researchers, universities, policymakers and funding agencies across the world.
Using just $425,000 in institutional funds, INSPIRE projects so far have leveraged more than $17.5 million in external research funding.
Anna Stenport, a professor of Scandinavian studies in the department of Germanic languages and literatures, the director of the European Union Center and an INSPIRE faculty liaison, said the program has led to partnerships with the faculties of all four universities, which have in turn created greater student opportunities.
“INSPIRE provides opportunities for our students to conduct research in world-class labs and collaborate with outstanding international faculty,” she said. “They also have partaken in innovative study-abroad opportunities foregrounding ways to address global grand challenges.”
Major topics of study have addressed the impact of climate change on indigenous populations in the Arctic region, development of sustainable housing and transportation infrastructure, and state-of-the-art strategies for managing nuclear waste. Other academic topics have included migration, minority languages, K-12 educational reform, intellectual property and global media, human rights, water and natural resource management.
Timothy E. Barnes
“These collaborations are leading to long-term professional collaborations that increase the U. of I.’s global impact and influence, and is in many cases leading to substantial additional resources,” Stenport said. “The INSPIRE research collaborations have created a global network with a large footprint and lasting results.”
“INSPIRE is the pilot project of Illinois Strategic International Partnerships,” said Tim Barnes, the ISIP director, who nominated the campus for the award.
He said INSPIRE is the first step toward an intentional, coordinated facilitation and management of the university’s global footprint at the institutional level.
”These sorts of sustained, broadly impactful interinstitutional partnerships with leading overseas universities will play a critical role in realizing our campus’ strategic vision to be the pre-eminent public research university with a land-grant mission and global impact,” he said.
The IIE awarded Big Ten sister university Northwestern an honorable mention in the International Partnerships category for its International Program Development initiative, which supports study-abroad opportunities through international collaborations.
The Heiskell Awards were named for the late Andrew Heiskell, a former chairman of Time Inc. and a longtime member of the Executive Committee of IIE’s Board of Trustees. Heiskell was a renowned international and cultural philanthropist and a dedicated supporter of international education.
For more information: visit the websites of INSPIRE
and the Institute of International Education.
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