Opportunities multiply with trip to India
When Liselyn Adams embarked on a Quebec-organized trip to India last November, she was not entirely sure what would come out of it. As a participant, she had been asked to identify key resource people or institutions to connect or reconnect with. “You never know what is going to come up when you meet face-to-face,” said Adams, Vice-Provost, International Affairs.
The trip brought together leaders in the fields of business, aerospace research and development, and higher education as the three sectors of the “mission” to India in order to make connections and develop projects. The trip was headed by Raymond Bachand, Minister of Economic Development, Innovation and Export Trade.
Adams was part of the education contingent, led by Assistant Deputy Minister Hélène Tremblay, Ministry of Education, Sport and Leisure. “The connections made among people who go are as important as the connections made over there,” she said of the whirlwind tour that covered Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi in one week.
Concordia was represented in the research sector by Suong Hoa and Mamoun Medraj (both of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering). The science sector was specifically focused on aviation, a field for which Hoa’s work has been recently recognized (see Journal, Dec. 7). The trip allowed Concordia to strengthen ties with the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), well-regarded science and engineering facilities which have participated in student exchange programs.
“Because I had two people there to take care of the science and engineering contacts, I had the luxury of focusing on the humanities, fine arts and the social sciences,” Adams said.
She was able to discuss the possibility of creating 2 + 2 programs (programs where students spend two years at Concordia and two years in a partner institution elsewhere) in Communications and Psychology, and there was strong interest in having one of Concordia’s actuarial mathematics programs offered in India.
She said that there was resonance with both in our Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies and in our Political Science Department. Faculty members there were also interested in the kinds of work that William Reimer (Sociology) and Marguerite Mendell (School of Community and Public Affairs) are doing in terms of economic and rural development. Joint research is already strong in translation studies, HIV/AIDS, biology and English.
Adams was able to connect with researchers involved in both Canadian and Quebec studies programs in various institutions. Overall she visited institutions as varied as the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, an exclusive program with 800 students guided by 150 faculty members, to the sprawling Delhi University, with a student population of 350,000.