PARTNERSHIPS FOR INTERCULTURAL UNDERSTANDING INDIA AND THE UNITED STATES Supriya Baily, Ph.D. George Mason University AIE Conference, Mumbai. October 2014

Partnerships as a methods of fostering intercultural understanding… Goals for this presentation include addressing: 1. Overall responsiveness 2. Culture 3. Identity 4. Environment Fostering institutional responsibility

Some Indian Uses of History on a Rainy Day Professor of Sanskrit on cultural exchange; passing through; lost in Berlin; reduced to a literal, turbaned child, spelling German signs on door, bus, and shop, trying to guess go from stop; desperate for a way of telling apart a familiar street from a strange, or east from west at night the brown dog that barks from the brown dog that doesn’t memorising a foreign paradigm of lanterns, landmarks, a gothic lotus on the iron gate suddenly comes home in English, gesture, and Sanskrit, assimilating the swastika on the neighbour’s arm in that roaring bus from a grey nowhere to a green. AK Ramanujan

Conceptual Framework  Centered on the role of higher education and the national context.  Growing institutional commitments to global awareness, global citizenship and global understanding.  Changes in higher education in the west.  Growth of market in non-western contexts.  Growing policies around partnerships.

Transformative Higher Education ConsequenceConstructionConnection Unterhalter, 2010

Methodology Critical Stance Interviews Policy Documents News Analysis Observations

A sampling of mission statements A public, comprehensive research university established by the Commonwealth of Virginia in the National Capital Region, we are an innovative and inclusive academic community committed to creating a more just, free, and prosperous world. (GMU) To provide a liberal; as well as a professional education so that each student acquires a respect for moral values, a sense of their duties as a citizen, a feeling for taste and style, and a better human understanding. All these are required for leadership (IIT Madras) To Empower Women to Assume Leadership, To Develop Critical Thinkers and Concerned Citizens, To Contribute New Perspectives to the World of Knowledge, To Enhance Access and Inclusivity in Quality Education, To Sustain Democratic Spaces for Creative Explorations, To Provide a Context of Learning that Enhances Professionalism, Humanism and Social Responsibility (Lady Ram College, New Delhi).

Emergent Themes Goals of HEI speak to notions of internationalization Functions of globalization are dominant Unequal give and take Only a small group benefits

Concluding Thoughts  Funding on both ends for low income students continues to be a concern.  Division between those who are able to tap into and those who cannot appears to be growing.  Pedagogies of consequence, construction and connection.  Future role of technology and engagement?  Does the rhetoric match the needs and whose interests are being served?

Supriya Baily, Ph.D. George Mason University THANK YOU!