09/23/2009
Six young Americans from two SUNY colleges and six young Europeans from two European universities will soon travel across the Atlantic to study at each other’s universities for a semester, thanks to a nearly $400,000 grant awarded by the U.S. government and the European Union (EU).
The four-year Atlantis Mobility Project grant will provide a total of 48 scholarships for students to study public administration and public policy. The project brings together four institutions in a partnership that involves students and faculty.
On the American side, SUNY Cortland and Buffalo State College will be supported by the U.S. Department of Education and the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). The European partners, who are funded by the European Union Commission in Brussels, are Manchester Metropolitan University in Great Britain and Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania.
The Atlantis Mobility Project grant focuses on student mobility and exchange.
“Students understand today that when they graduate from college, they will live in a world without borders, work in businesses that depend on the world economy, and be part of multilingual and multicultural communities,” said Erik J. Bitterbaum, president at SUNY Cortland. “This grant allows our students to learn in an unfamiliar environment by adapting to the challenges of a new culture and developing a global perspective.”
The project was among only 25 fiscal year 2009 EU-U.S. Atlantis Program grants awarded competitively by FIPSE at institutions across the U.S. Most were awarded to major research universities.
“We are delighted that our two SUNY colleges received this grant and we are even more delighted to be able to offer an unparalleled opportunity for our students to study within the European Union,” said Cortland Project Director Henry Steck, a SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the Political Science Department at SUNY Cortland. His colleague, Assistant Professor Mary McGuire, who directs SUNY Cortland’s program in Public Administration and Public Policy, will oversee the Atlantis’ Academic Project at SUNY Cortland, which involves the academic aspects of the grant such as advising students and the curriculum.
Recruitment is underway for the program to launch next spring. A different cohort of students will participate for one semester each year for a total contingent of 48 students. Each year, 12 students will travel to study at a trans-Atlantic partner university, three from each of the four partner institutions. Starting this spring, three SUNY Cortland students will study in Romania while three students from Romania will study in Cortland. There will be a similar exchange between Manchester Metropolitan University and Buffalo State.
Students will be supported by $5,000 scholarships, which are awarded competitively. The participants will take courses in politics, ethnic studies, public policy and foreign language. They also will participate in a public policy internship at the local, regional or international level with organizations such as the European Commission.
The overall project director for the SUNY Consortium is Laurie Buonanno, a professor of political science at Buffalo State.
“The Atlantis Program brings Europeans and Americans together at the ground level for a transatlantic network to learn about what is involved in public policy,” said Buonanno, professor and chair of political science, who headed up the team that prepared the grant.
The award also will support faculty to work with their trans-Atlantic counterparts. Steck explained that the program, in part, advances the aspirations of the U.S. and the EU to bring the next generation of cross-national professionals together.
“We focus on public administration, public policy, public service — including the non-governmental sector — to build bridges between young professionals. We believe that the students will create transatlantic networks of colleagues and friends and this will help our country and the E.U. collaborate more closely in the future.”
Study across borders is important because, with increased globalization, today’s students will work together tomorrow in government, the non-governmental sectors and the business sector, McGuire said.
“You never know when they will need to be able to address internationally issues of regulatory policy, economic policy, and policy affecting such disparate areas as food safety and international police work,” she said. “We will need administrators who are knowledgeable about the institutions and the culture of each other’s countries.”
The EU is now one of the world’s largest trading blocs and among the most important U.S. trading partners. In addition, many laws and regulations in the EU affect U.S. businesses just as European business must comply with U.S. laws.
SUNY Cortland has an active program in international education, McGuire explained, and this project “opens more doors to our students in political science, public administration, international studies and many other fields.”
Securing this grant is another step forward in the increasing international engagement of SUNY Cortland and SUNY itself, according to Steck.
“Today, no university or college worthy of the name can afford to ignore the world at large or to fail to make every effort to bring greater international awareness and learning to its campus,” he observed, noting that new SUNY Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher has expressed SUNY’s priority to increase its international presence.
Stephen Burwood, director of Cortland’s Clark Center for International Education, explained the importance of the grant to Cortland students.
“In an age where the world has become smaller and far more commercially, politically and culturally competitive, it is essential that SUNY Cortland be able to offer opportunities to its students to be prepared for a very exciting global future,” he noted. “This European-American joint project offers students a vision of public administration they would be very hard pressed to achieve in a lifetime of public service; it prepares them for great things to come.”
Buonanno hopes the exchanges continue long after the grant’s end.
“This program helps us globalize our curriculum,” she said. “It will also strengthen teaching and research for faculty and staff.”