VCU news

By V. Renee Russell
VCU Global Education Office

Virginia Commonwealth University welcomed a delegation of Indian educators on Thursday, June 7, as part of the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce’s (IACC) Indo-U.S. Education Forum, a two-week visit to the United States that enables Indian universities to discuss collaboration opportunities with U.S. institutions of higher education. The visiting delegation was led by Sankaran Raghunathan, dean of the National Management School in Chennai, India.

According to the IACC, the purpose of the forum is to provide a platform for Indian universities to interact and establish long-term relationships with U.S. universities and to collaborate in key areas such as joint certifications, dual degrees, research, faculty exchanges and study abroad programs.

“Education trends are constantly changing and forums like this allow us to look at the many ways we can develop partnerships,” Raghunathan said. “In addition to identifying potential areas of future collaboration, we want to gain a better understanding of the physical learning environments that are created in U.S. universities.”

After touring the VCU campus, the delegation met with VCU President Michael Rao, VCU Provost Beverly Warren and representatives from the VCU School of Engineering and VCU School of Business. 

“These institutions are some of the world’s leaders in innovation,” Warren said. “We are always looking for ways to develop strategic partnerships in innovation and to think about education in ways we’ve never thought before.”

VCU’s Global Education Office hosted the delegation’s visit.

“The fact that VCU was one of the selected destinations for this delegation speaks to the increasingly visible role we play on the world stage both as a university and a city,” said McKenna Brown, executive director of Global Education at VCU. “These kinds of linkages provide our students with the global connections they’ll need to be competitive.”

The visit was one in a long list of VCU collaborations with universities in India, including the university’s ongoing partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology, the  Christ University-VCU MBA/MS Program and the recent campaign to establish the India Chair in Democracy and Civil Society.

VCU was one of 13 universities visited by the delegation and many of the arrangements were made by the U.S. Department of Commerce, according to Raghunathan.

In addition to Raghunathan, visiting delegates were H.D. Maheshappa, U.K. Ashoke Rao and C. Vijaykumar of the Acharya School of Management; Pradeep Alexandar of American University of India; Jyoti R. Dandekar of Bharti Vidyapeeth University; Mini Juneja and O.B. Vijayan of EIILM University; Nathalie Poirier of ICMI Studies Pvt Ltd.; A. Damodaram, Rameshwara Rao and M. Anji Reddy of Jawaharlal Nehru Technology University; Sila Singh Ghosh of the JIS College of Engineering; Rajneesh Arora of Punjab Technical University; M.G. Gopal of the Government of Andhra Pradhesh; Sapna Samtani of the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce; and Indira J. Parikh of the Foundation for Liberal and Management Education.

The VCU Global Education Office provides VCU students with a holistic educational experience that prepares them to succeed in a global society by: providing all VCU students the opportunity to study abroad through Education Abroad; offering a full range of support services for international students through International Student and Scholar Services; and fostering collaborations between VCU and international universities through VCU’s International Partnership University Initiative.