Internationalizing Princeton

A giant map hangs on the wall of Vice Provost for International Initiatives Diana Davies’ Nassau Hall office. Little colored pins mark countries where Princeton has signed a memorandum of understanding or has a long-standing program with a local university. Pins are notably absent from India, Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East, but more and more pins have popped up on the map over the past five years as the University expands its international presence.

Over fall break, University President Shirley Tilghman and four other administrators traveled to South America and formally signed a strategic partnership with the University of Sao Paulo. And by the end of this academic year, the University will have concluded three strategic partnerships — the other two with Humboldt University in Berlin and the University of Tokyo — and intends to pursue at least a few more.

The strategic partnerships aim to formalize relationships where University already has multiple existing areas of collaboration. Partnerships offer more flexibility than branch campuses of the sort that Yale and NYU have established in Singapore and Abu Dhabi, respectively, because they are less permanent.

These strategic partnerships are only one tool the University has used over the past five years to internationalize research and educational opportunities for students and faculty. The University’s decisions to forge these partnerships provide a window into its strategy. However, the steps taken by peer institutions that the University has actively decided not to take are just as reflective of its international goals.

The strategic partnership

In Tilghman’s vision, five years from now Princeton will have six or seven partnerships like these around the globe. Each current or potential partnership resulted from existing faculty ties.

Davies said the University will probably form several more strategic partnerships, but noted that it can only expand so much before the quality of the relationships is compromised.

Last year, administrators compiled a list of every foreign university where the University had established ties through faculty research, study abroad programs, global seminars and graduate student recruitment. The universities chosen for strategic partnerships came up again and again during this “mapping exercise,” Davies said.

Institutional ties with the University of Sao Paolo began when USP sociology professor Antonio Guimaraes was hired a visiting professor in 2007. The collaboration with the University of Tokyo began as their faculty began to work with Princeton’s astrophysics and East Asian Studies departments and the Wilson School. In 2010, Tilghman signed an agreement with the president of the Japanese National Institute for Natural Science, an inter-university organization based in Tokyo.

In 1995, the University joined the newly-formed Berlin Consortium of German Studies, which allowed students to enroll in courses at Berlin universities, including Humboldt. The University launched its first dual-Ph.D. program with Humboldt in May.

Wilson School professor and former dean Anne-Marie Slaughter ’80, who served as a top official in the State Department from 2009 to 2011, emphasized that these strategic partnerships are not intended to “pick winners” among different foreign universities, but instead to streamline funding where connections already exist.

“The value of bigger collaboration is that you start putting some funds in it, and that enables more collaboration, so you get a sort of snowball effect that can be very good,” Slaughter said.

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But the University is not limiting its internationalization efforts to partnerships with other colleges. While strategic partnerships represent formal university-to-university collaboration, Slaughter also said she values partnerships with other permanent organizations in areas where the University does not already collaborate with institutes of higher education.

In Kenya, for example, the department of ecology and evolutionary biology partners with the Mpala Research Centre to offer a semester abroad program.

Similarly, in some instances Princeton prefers to have a relationship with a country even if no single university stands out as a potential partner.

In China, for example, the University’s Council of International Teaching and Learning is attempting to set up an autonomous entity that will coordinate engagements with multiple universities, as opposed to a strategic partnership with a single university.

Davies said that while there are a number of good universities in China, no single university stands out for a partnership since different Chinese universities have particular strengths.

Alex Edmunds ’09, president of the Princeton Alumni Association of Beijing, said that until recently the University has favored more of a grassroots approach, which has produced more substantive relationships than the top-down approach taken by some peer schools. Edmunds said one of the greatest challenges to such collaboration was familiarity and a cultural gap, though the Chinese universities ultimately shared Princeton's goals, he said.

“I think fundamentally we all share the same world and we want humanity to improve and live a better life, and from these goals, Princeton and China are 100 percent aligned, 100 percent identical in terms of what we can do to improve the world we live in,” Edmunds said.

Over winter break, Tilghman will travel to China.

Meanwhile, the University is taking a different approach to Africa, seeking to form new connections since current collaboration is limited.

Council for International Teaching and Research Director and history professor Jeremy Adelman said a lot of student and faculty interest exists in doing research and collaborating in Africa, but the centerpiece of the University strategy will focus on capacity building rather than on full partnerships because of the fragility and resource shortage in existing African universities.

“If we are not careful, the University’s strategy for internationalization will lead to Princeton partnering with great universities around the world that look like us,” Adelman said. “These are the world’s top universities, but we’re going to leave huge swaths of higher education out, and that’s not global education.”

Unique to Princeton

The University has looked at other universities’ efforts at internationalization, with the guiding principle that internationalization is a reciprocal exchange that creates opportunities for students and faculty around the world but also brings the world to Princeton.

“Internationalization is not something that goes on out there; that’s a fallacy that most American universities use as their model,” Adelman said. “Internationalization has to happen close to home so that when you come to Princeton, you’re entering the world, and you should feel when you walk around Princeton that you’re part of the world.”

Adelman was therefore clear that the University is not following NYU or Yale in creating branch campuses.

Tilghman noted that while she could not say whether the branch campus was a viable model for Yale, she could not see how a branch campus in another country could offer a degree comparable to a current Princeton degree in terms of academic rigor and the environment.

“We considered models of that kind and we concluded — and I think correctly for Princeton — that one of the most valuable assets this university has is its reputation,” Tilghman said. “When you hold a degree from Princeton University, it has a very specific meaning.”

Other strategies pursued by peer institutions are more likely to succeed at the University. Slaughter praised the different academic calendars adopted by other universities, with terms of shorter three- or six-week courses, for allowing visiting professors and researchers more flexibility and thus encouraging more international exchange.

“If you’re somebody like me, you’re not going to leave your family for a semester, but you might leave your family for six weeks, or you might bring your kids with you,” Slaughter said.

Slaughter said she saw this change as more likely in the future with a faculty that is increasingly international and increasingly interested in going abroad.

The inflexibility of the academic calendar is a challenge in collaboration with the University of Tokyo, which doesn’t start its spring term until April. According to University physics professor and Dean for Research A.J. Stewart Smith GS ’66, who helped craft the partnership, Princeton is considering the idea of finding six-week periods in the year when University faculty could go to Tokyo with students.

Smith said faculty and student exchange was much easier with Humboldt University, where the plan is to create a summer program when both universities are out of session.

However, even in collaboration with Humboldt University, cultural differences limit current collaboration. According to David Fisher ’69, director of the Princeton German Summer Work Program and chair of the Princeton Alumni Association of Germany, undergraduate study abroad in Germany is difficult because the German university system is so different from the American system, but summer programs allow University students to pursue internships in Germany.

“American universities are much more like secondary schools, the curriculum is very structured,” Fisher said. “The German system is very different from the American system. It’s not courses with an exam at the end.”

‘Princeton in the World’

The University’s internationalization efforts were initiated in 2007, when Tilghman and University Provost Christopher Eisgruber ’83 published the “Princeton in the World” report outlining measures for expanding the University’s international presence.

The report recommended the creation of a faculty panel to look at the University’s academic offerings and research in a global context.

The report concluded that faculty research and teaching interests must drive the exchange of scholars, students and ideas, rather than top-down decisions leading to inflexible commitments like the branch campus.

“I think Princeton needs to be intellectually motivated or motivated by something that is very deeply Princeton, and I can imagine service opportunities and a gap year like that,” Slaughter said. “What I don’t think works is a kind of: 'That’s a great university. We’ll do it top-down.' ”

The report also argued for a new high-level administrator to implement international initiatives. Davies was recruited from her position as director of international programs at the University of Iowa to fill this role.

Meanwhile, a second committee led by then-Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel and Director of the Office of International Programs Nancy Kanach focused on encouraging Princeton undergraduates to pursue international experiences during their time at Princeton.

Since the report was created, the percentage of students with substantial international experience — at least four weeks either during the academic year or the summer — at the time of graduation has increased from around 37 percent to over 50 percent, according to Eisgruber.

“That’s a significant change, although I think none of us are satisfied with where the number is,” Eisgruber said. “I think most of us in the administration and involved with this effort feel pretty strongly that Princeton students will have a better Princeton experience if they find some way to go abroad either during term time or during the summer.”

Eisgruber attributed the current increased numbers to increased opportunities through the Bridge Year Program — launched in 2008 — international internships and summer global seminars, among others. He also credited the strategic partnerships and other efforts at increasing faculty and graduate student research partnerships and networks.

Where do we go next?

One of the advantages of Princeton’s program, according to University administrators, is that it allows the University’s area of focus to flexibly adapt to faculty interests. By not choosing specific parts of the world in which to concentrate, Tilghman explained, the University can avoid over-committing to a certain region.

“What we decided to do instead is to allow 100 flowers to bloom, to encourage the kinds of faculty exchanges and faculty research collaborations that were likely to put down roots both here and abroad and to catalyze ones that are fledgling and encourage ones that are really looking like they're up-and-running and watch what blooms and what doesn’t,” Tilghman said. “And what’s happened is that we’ve begun to see parts of the world where this is really being substantive.”

Adelman added that the current political climate is also a factor and can often rule out projects altogether.

“Once upon a time we might have thought of Cairo,” Adelman said. “We have to see beyond the current conjecture — and maybe next year [after] the dust has settled, we have a democratic and stable regime in Egypt — and it’s back on the burner. But we want to make sure the commitments we have and the resources we lay down are sustainable in the long run.”

Slaughter said the University has a wide enough network through alumni, faculty and other existing contacts even in areas where formal collaborations have not been established. Nevertheless, she said faculty research and teaching interests must ultimately determine where the University turns next in order to create lasting relationships.

“Princeton is brilliant at building a Princeton family and bringing people into it,” Slaughter said. “I think just by building on our own network we don’t have a problem.”

Adelman said one of his ultimate goals was for students to consider their opportunities for international engagement from the moment they arrive on campus rather than as an afterthought later in their Princeton careers, when requirements can get in the way.

What “always broke my heart," Adelman said, was when students told him as they graduated that they regretted not taking advantage of the University’s international offerings.

“Had I known back when I started out all the things I could be doing internationally that I only found out later on — by which time it was too crowded — I couldn’t plan it. I didn’t know where to go, so I wound up doing nothing,” Adelman said, citing a common claim he hears from students.

“That’s what I want to address,” Adelman said.

News Editor Teddy Schleifer contributed reporting.