UHCL President William A. Staples and Nguyen Duc Nghia, vice president for academic affairs at Vietnam National University- Ho Chi Minh City, sign an agreement to continue cooperative education programs between UHCL and VNU-HCM. Delegates from VNU-HCM visited Clear Lake in May.

Cultural understanding is the starting point for successful business relationships in today’s expanding environment of global interdependence. As part of UHCL’s commitment to enhance cultural awareness and diversity, the School of Business actively recruits international students through educational partnerships with universities in Vietnam, Taiwan and Sri Lanka, as well as Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

Personal interaction with students from other parts of the world enhances the educational experience of all students at UHCL. International students, like their American counterparts, come to UHCL to get a quality education, to broaden their experiences and to improve their career opportunities. Our students are the next generation’s leaders, and their positive experiences with other cultures today will influence their views of the world tomorrow.

Global partnerships also allow faculty to bring international perspectives into the classroom. Faculty exchanges foster collaborations on research projects and serve as a mechanism to attract students from around the world to UHCL.

One of UHCL School of Business’ first international partnerships began in 1989 with the Institute of Technological Studies in Colombo, Sri Lanka. UHCL developed a lower-level curriculum, patterned after Alvin Community College’s program, that would be taught in English at ITS and would meet admission requirements at UHCL as part of a 2 + 2 transfer plan. Many students traveled from Sri Lanka to UHCL for their undergraduate degrees for several years until the Sri Lanka program expanded to a full four-year degree.

Another important collaboration is an agreement between the UHCL School of Business, Arizona State University and University of Kentucky to offer healthcare administration courses at Zayed University in Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

The School of Business also has had an active student exchange program with National Sun Yat-Sen University in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, since 1987. Professor Lou White teaches classes in Taiwan as part of this program and has accompanied dozens of UHCL student interns to Taiwan in the last 10 years where they concentrate on building foreign relationships and learning to handle team diversity.

Our newest international partnerships are graduate transfer programs with Vietnam National University-Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi University of Technology. These agreements have played an important part in the development of our international environment at the university. In 1999, UHCL had only two students enrolled from Vietnam. Today, more than 300 students have participated in the program.

The level of collaboration continues to grow as the School of Business recently established a one-year program that offers MBA foundation courses in Vietnam with future plans to deliver online MBAcourses supported by UHCL professors regularly visiting Vietnam to provide additional instruction.

Recognizing international relationships are a vital part of a thriving national economic policy, UHCL is cognizant of the key role cultural understanding plays in our university community as well as the larger national and world communities. We are a strong supporter of international programs and will continue seeking global partnerships and opportunities.

William Theodore Cummings is dean of UHCL's School of Business and professor of marketing.