Letter from Vice Provost for International Affairs

Emory is celebrating international partnerships at home and abroad. Early this year in India, Emory celebrated the launch of innovative partnerships involving medical and health sciences faculty, which is the subject of the feature story in this issue. Here in Atlanta, Emory celebrated the launch of Korean language classes with support from the Academy of Korean Studies, and this spring the launch of Chinese studies in Atlanta public schools through the Confucius Institute led by Emory and Nanjing University faculty with support from the Chinese Ministry of Education. Emory’s international award winners are also featured inside this issue. The long-standing Atlanta-Tbilisi partnership was celebrated with the presentation
of this year’s Sheth Distinguished International Alumni Award to Emory Law School alum from Georgia David Tkeshelashvili. Professor Rey Martorell, a major force in Emory’s international research partnerships and chair of the Hubert Department of Global Health, received the Marion V. Creekmore Award for Internationalization.

Emory continues to welcome increasing numbers of international students and scholars with some 2,530 from 123 countriesin 2008. At the same time, each of Emory’s schools sends many students and scholars abroad, in a variety of diverse programs. The Halle Institute brought a political science senior seminar to Berlin and Brussels over spring break to learn more about Germany and the European Union, with generous support from Atlantik-Brücke and The Halle Foundation. Among the trip’s architectural highlights were tours of Germany’s national Parliament in Berlin, and the European Parliament building in Brussels where they met Hans-Gert Pöttering, president of the European Parliament.

In this issue, learn more about Emory’s study abroad programs from undergraduates on the Journeys program trip into the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, professors leading fascinating study trips in Ecuador and Israel, and graduate students conducting pioneering research in Thailand and Nepal. You will also find a story from an Emory senior whose service-learning experience took her to Lhasa the summer before the violent clashes began this spring.

Cartooning in conflict was the theme addressed by Kenya’s award-winning editorial cartoonist Gado, when he came to Atlanta in February 2008 at the close of the “Cartooning for Peace” exhibition in the Schatten Gallery. He spoke at Emory and on CNN about the challenges of cartooning in the election’s violent aftermath.

Finally, read about a remarkable international conference at Emory this spring on the reality of virtual worlds, where businesses have already found that gross sales transactions rival those of some small countries, that generated much attention among networks that span the globe. Read more inside about what Goizueta Business School’s Benn Konsynski describes as an event that looked “like the bar scene from Star Wars.”

Holli A. Semetko
Vice Provost for International Affairs
Director, Office of International Affairs & The Claus M. Halle Institute for Global Learning
Professor of Political Science