São Paulo – Early this month, the São Paulo State University (Unesp) signed a student and professor exchange agreement with the Lebanon-based Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth. The deal was signed during the Brazilian institution’s 35th anniversary celebration and signed by the Unesp acting vice-dean, Julio Cezar Durigan, and the dean of the Lebanese university, René Chamussy.
“It is a general standard agreement enabling the exchange of graduate and postgraduate students, researchers and professors,” explains the Unesp head advisor of Foreign Relations, José Celso Freire Junior. According to the professor, this is Unesp’s first agreement with a Lebanese university and the two institutions are now considering initiatives to put the agreement to work.
Unesp and Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth first got in touch through the Agence Universitaire de La Francophonie (AUF), integrated by both. “The initiative arose out of mutual interst in establishing new collaborations with interesting potential partners,” says Freire Junior. The agency comprises institutions that teach French and maintains cooperation programs for research and training in the language.
“In the globalized world we live in today, being able to cooperate academically with institutions from an area of the globe where we had no partners is really important. The high level of Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth will surely contribute for this collaboration to be fruitful,” says Freire Junior.
The professor claims that the internationalization of higher education around the world is crucial to the development of universities. According to him, the Unesp is showing interest in increasing its internationalization level through serious policies and adequate resources. In 2012, the institution will invest 7 million reais (US$ 3.9 million) in this field. According to him, cooperation agreements provide a foundation to the development of teaching institutions’ internationalization policies.
Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth is a private catholic institution founded in 1875 by Jesuit priests. According to its website, the university counts on 1,873 professors and 12,000 students. It has five campuses in Beirut, three regional centres spread across the country, and one international centre in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. The university offers courses ranging from Medicine to technology and human sciences and vast facilities, including a language centre, a museum, a publishing house, among others.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum