Washington University in St. Louis announced on Wednesday the formation of the McDonnell International Scholars Academy, an education and research program that will link the university with 15 higher-education institutions in East and Southeast Asia.
As part of the program, Washington University will play host to a group of Asian students each year, providing them with full scholarships for graduate and professional study. The scholarship program, which will start in the fall of 2006 with 20 students, is designed to develop a “worldwide network of top scholars, researchers, and business and governmental leaders,” the university said in a written statement.
All McDonnell scholars will be recent recipients of undergraduate degrees from the Asian universities. In addition to completing graduate or professional degrees at Washington University, they will participate in seminars, workshops, and other extracurricular leadership training.
Each McDonnell scholar will have an academic adviser who will travel with the student back to his or her home country at least once a year, building “academic commerce” -- in the form of collaborative research and student exchanges, among other activities -- with the student’s alma mater, said Mark S. Wrighton, chancellor of Washington University.
The program is intended to “develop opportunities for addressing some of the most challenging problems the world faces” in the areas of poverty and development, international conflict, infectious disease, and the environment, Mr. Wrighton said. It also seeks to “build international cooperation and understanding to contribute to strengthening the view of America from abroad,” he said. The program will also hold a series of conferences, with the first, on the role of international research universities, to take place next fall.
The McDonnell International Scholars Academy was created with a $10-million gift from John F. McDonnell, retired chairman of the McDonnell Douglas Corporation and vice chairman of the university’s Board of Trustees, and the JSM Charitable Trust. Several corporate sponsors have also committed to support the program, Mr. Wrighton said.
Existing ties with Asian institutions prompted Washington University to start recruiting scholars there, but Mr. Wrighton said he hopes that students will eventually come from as many as 50 partner universities around the world. “Ultimately we’ll be global,” he said. The program’s organizers hope the scholarships will help reverse a trend of declining enrollment of foreign graduate students in the United States after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The program’s current partner institutions are: China Agricultural University, Fudan University, Peking University, and Tsinghua University, all in China; the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Hong Kong; the Indian Institute of Technology, in Bombay; the University of Indonesia, in Jakarta; the University of Tokyo; the National University of Singapore; Korea University, Seoul National University, and Yonsei University, all in South Korea; National Taiwan University, in Taipei; and Chulalongkorn University, in Bangkok.
Background articles from The Chronicle: