3. Columbia in the World Today

Columbians Abroad

Following a tradition that stretches from Robert Livingston, John Jay, and Gouverneur Morris (1768, King's College) in the 1790s to Adolf A. Berle Jr. '64HON and Arthur Burns '25C '34GSAS in our own time, Columbians have put their expertise to work in American embassies overseas.

This tradition has been carried on more recently by University Professor Emeritus Fritz R. Stern '46C '53GSAS, in Germany; Richard N. Gardner, the Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organization, in Italy and in Spain; Michael Armacost '65SIPA, in Japan and in the Philippines; Professor Emeritus of History Ainslie Embree '47 '60GSAS and Theodore Riccardi Jr., professor of Middle East and Asian languages and culture, in India; and Howard Wriggins, the Bryce Professor Emeritus of History and International Relations, in Sri Lanka.

But most of our faculty abroad stay in the classroom. Last year was the busiest ever for Columbia teachers in other lands. Many of them were fulfilling our half of the boom in faculty exchange programs.

Members of the Law School faculty traveled to the University of Tokyo in the fall to teach; in the spring, their counterparts came to Columbia. A new Law faculty exchange was launched with the University of Munich, as other faculty went to the University of Buenos Aires to lecture on American law. Yet another new faculty exchange program, this one with Hebrew University in Jerusalem, was arranged by former Law School Dean Lance M. Liebman, the William S. Beinecke Professor of Law and director of the Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law. In recent years, Columbia Law faculty have worked overseas on issues of constitutionalism, law, and democracy. The settings have been Uganda, Mozambique, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Nepal, and China, to name a few. One such program trains lawyers in Europe to assist with political, social, and economic transformations.

SIPA faculty, along with faculty at France's leading school of international affairs, the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris ("Sciences Po"), designed a program modeled on our M.I.A. for the Universidad Externado in Bogota, Colombia. Already in place at the Universidad is a Columbia-designed M.P.A. program. SIPA also has a collaborative agreement with Central European University, which has campuses in Budapest and Prague.

The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science carried out faculty exchanges with Humboldt University in Berlin and with China's top engineering school at Tsinghua University. Two faculty from our Center for East Central European Studies taught at Warsaw University. And for the first time, faculty from our internationally renowned Journalism School flew to Spain to teach at the University of Barcelona a new two-semester program that concludes at Columbia in the J-School's summer institute. This model program is now being developed for Latin America.

Faculty exchanges helped implement the Columbia School of Nursing's international participation with curriculum export and technical assistance. Nursing School faculty assisted in developing master's degree curricula at the University of Wales and at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo; worked with the Ewha College of Nursing in Korea to develop a community-based mental health program with trained nurses; and aided the Imree Haynal University in Hungary with a distance learning program in nursing. Faculty exchanges continued between the Nursing School and the University of Gothenberg, Sweden. Under Dean Mary O. Mundinger '81PH, the Nursing School has been designated by the World Health Organization as the world's only Collaborating Center for Advanced Nursing Practice.

Medical faculty from Columbia, led by program director Dr. Richard J. Deckelbaum, the Robert R. Williams Professor of Nutrition and Pediatrics and director of Columbia's Institute of Human Nutrition, joined with faculty of the Joyce and Irving Goldman Medical School of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev to develop a new curriculum. They have created the world's only M.D. program in international health and medicine that will graduate doctors with special skills in primary care, cross-cultural, community, and preventive medicine. The thirty-six students in the first class speak twenty-two different languages.

Many of the faculty collaborative agreements with universities abroad included student exchanges as well. Columbia and Warsaw University share a cooperative program in economics, with graduating students receiving a master's degree from Warsaw and a certificate from Columbia. At another center of faculty exchange, "Sciences Po" in Paris, selected French-fluent SIPA students took courses with third-year students as part of a successful exchange program. Hebrew-fluent law students applied for the new study abroad program at Hebrew University, similar to the French-language law program at the University of Paris II (Panthéon-Assas). The Law School also offered opportunities for study at the University of Amsterdam, and at the University of Buenos Aires with a focus on Latin American law.

A new study abroad program for law students was established with the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. And two other new English-language law programs were undertaken with Kyushu University in Japan, studying Japanese law, and with the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, where students can witness the building of a new democracy. Programs for Columbia law students are also being developed with the University of Rome and the University of Leuven, Belgium.

The Law School offers a four-year double-degree program with the University of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne).

The Law School's four-year double-degree program with the University of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne) requires two years at Columbia Law and two years at the Sorbonne, with graduates eligible to take both French and U.S. bar exams.

A number of first-year law students spent the summer at law firms in Central and South America. Others found internships in Asia, assisted by the School's Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Legal Studies Centers. Among the interns were sixty law students working with human rights organizations. Columbia requires of its law students forty hours of pro bono work. Half the students, including these summer interns, do more than the requisite.

Students in the Film Division of the School of the Arts had their films screened in international festivals in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, France, England, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Scotland, South Africa, and Spain.

Ignoring travel guide warnings of the threat of violent attack against foreigners, a group of volunteers led by Dr. Neil A. Feldstein, P&S assistant professor of clinical neurological surgery, traveled to Guatemala City to treat needy children with spinal problems. Over the past five years, 200 patients in Guatemala have been treated with cardiac surgery to correct congenital defects and with follow-up care under a program developed by Dr. William Schechter '76C, assistant professor of clinical anesthesiology and clinical pediatrics, and his colleagues. Last year Dr. Schechter established a similar program in the Dominican Republic, in which Columbia was joined by Harvard, Ohio State, and Heart Care International.

Dr. Steven M. Roser, the Georg Guttman Professor of Craniofacial Surgery, led a team of sixteen surgeons, anesthesiologists, and nurses to Totonicap´n, Guatemala, to perform surgery on children and adults with cleft lips and palates.

A two-month elective in the tropics is offered to fourth-year P&S students, among many international electives. Students can choose any place in the tropical world and any medical speciality. International clerkships for medical students are offered by the Center for the Study of Society and Medicine, a multidisciplinary program that examines the complex interactions between medicine and society as new discoveries raise new ethical questions.

Professor Sheila M. Rothman '86 '90GSAS organizes an international exchange program for about a dozen fourth-year medical students interested in human rights and refugee problems. Students have gained hands-on clinical experience in Ethiopia, Jordan, Pakistan, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere. To be eligible, students must be involved in community activities while at P&S and take a third-year 16-hour elective in human rights.

The Architecture School, led by its brilliant transatlantic dean, Bernard Tschumi, offers a New York-Paris program, "The Shape of Two Cities," with the fall semester at Columbia and the spring in Paris. Home for the spring semester is Reid Hall, Columbia's bustling academic and cultural center in the Montparnasse section of Paris, built before the French Revolution and used as American Red Cross headquarters during World War I. Reid Hall serves both graduate and undergraduate students from Columbia, as well as Barnard and more than a hundred other colleges.

To earn the master's degree in French cultural studies in Columbia's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, students must reside at Reid Hall, where they do half of their course work. The other half takes place at Sciences Po, Paris III (Sorbonne Nouvelle-Centre Sensier), and Paris VII (Denis Diderot). Some of the graduates continue their studies in Ph.D. programs at the Ecole Normale Sup&ecute;rieure (Sorbonne). Collaboration between the Sorbonne and our French and Romance Philology Department allows for two doctoral defenses, in Paris and in New York, to earn both the Columbia Ph.D. and the Sorbonne doctorat.

Reid Hall, directed by Associate Provost Danielle Haase-Dubosc '69GSAS, also offers an undergraduate program in French art and architecture, courses that focus on the New Europe, and a broad range of French instruction and courses in the humanities and social sciences.

We established the Berlin Consortium, based at the Free University in Berlin, in 1995, to offer students from Columbia, Barnard, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale an opportunity to study firsthand the emerging impact of a united Berlin and Germany on the rest of Europe.

Columbia students are also offered language immersion programs: summer immersion in Italian language, customs, and culture in Scandiano, Italy, and the Chinese language program in Beijing for American students, a nine-week course of intensive Mandarin hosted by Remnin University. The Mandarin course is taught by three instructors from our Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, and seven faculty members from universities in Beijing. Students live with Chinese families during the nine-week stay.

Columbia students abroad in China, Germany, and Italy

Note that 198 Columbia College students participated in study abroad programs in sixty countries. Selected juniors in the College, following a rigorous competition, spent the year at Oxford and Cambridge. A talented College senior from Indiana, Yi-Ping Ong '99C, won the Kellett Scholarship and is spending two years of postgraduate study at Oxford.

The College also produced a Marshall Scholar studying at Cambridge, Fulbright scholars studying for advanced degrees in numerous nations, and DAAD scholars studying in Germany. Graduating seniors are also eligible for the Henry Evans Traveling Fellowship and juniors for the Richmond B. Williams Traveling Fellowship, both of which encourage foreign travel. The new Irish Fellowship, created with the Ireland-U.S. Council for Commerce, allows a student to embark upon international business studies in Ireland.

Columbia College juniors with a special interest in Japanese language, history, culture, and social organization competed for the chance to spend a year at the Kyoto Center for Japanese Studies, which combines intensive instruction in Japanese with a variety of courses taught in English.

Frank Wolf '71GSAS, dean of continuing education and special programs, oversees many of these study abroad activities.

Students in the health sciences also have opportunities to pursue a portion of their training abroad. P&S students take advantage of exchange programs with St. Bart's and the Royal London School of Medicine and Dentistry, the University of Paris and the American Hospital in Paris, Kao University in Japan, the medical school at Flinders University of South Australia, and the University of Padua in Italy. New P&S exchange programs are being developed in Ireland and Nepal.

In the Business School, the Chazen M.B.A. Exchange Program, designed to strengthen academic preparation for overseas assignments, is teamed with twenty-one exchange partner schools (up five from four years ago), from the Chinese University of Hong Kong to the Stockholm School of Economics.

Almost one-third of the School's M.B.A. candidates are in Columbia's top-rated Executive M.B.A. program--designed for students whose careers are already under way--and more than half of these are international managers. Global companies often station their executives in New York so they can attend Columbia EMBA sessions. Last year, however, international EMBA seminars were held in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Four hundred forty graduates of the Business School live in Japan; close to 250 are residents of China, including 130 in Asia's financial center of Hong Kong. Our Law School has a significant alumni base in China, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea. From the whole University, some 2,500 Columbia alumni live in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Taipei, and Seoul, the four Asian cities I visited during my first year at Columbia, and again last year for the third time.

Richard K. Naum, vice president for development and alumni relations, tracks well over 14,000 alumni in 176 countries other than the United States.

Consider this perspective: last year's SIPA graduates found jobs in thirty-five countries. A decade ago, SIPA had only a handful of alumni working in Moscow at the U.S. Embassy. Today there are seventy-five SIPA alumni in Moscow, half of them Russians, working throughout the city.

Columbia takes pride in the thousands of distinguished alumni in every part of the globe--political and intellectual leaders, scholars, teachers, diplomats, chief executives, scientists, engineers, doctors, journalists, lawyers, architects, and artists. As international students return from Columbia to their homelands to deal with many different challenges, they take with them friendships that will last through the years and bridges of understanding and commonality they have built at Columbia through the shared experience of learning. That perhaps is our greatest contribution toward the goal of a secure and peaceful world.

I close this report on faculty, students, and alumni abroad by noting our farthest-flung alumnus. Until John Glenn's recent flight, Dr. Story Musgrave '64P&S was the oldest human being to travel in space. He did it aboard the space shuttle Columbia.