News and Information
Emory University
Atlanta, GA 30322

Release date: Feb. 25, 1997
Contact: Nancy Seideman, Director

Emory University Increases Leadership Role in International Education

Emory University has adopted a campus-wide strategy designed to increase its leadership in international education. The new strategy, called "Internationalizing Emory," calls for the university to expand its international programs and opportunities for students, faculty and staff. The strategy is intended to foster greater international awareness, expand international exposure and connections, and increase international scholarship and service among the Emory community, according to Marion Creekmore, vice provost for international affairs.

As an endorsement of the new plan, Emory University President William M. Chace and other university officials have made the commitment of additional funds aimed toward increased internationalization a top priority. One example includes the establishment of a new $250,000 fund for internationalization, which is used to support programs and projects that aid Emory's goal of furthering international research, learning and service. Faculty, staff, students, departments, schools, centers, divisions, organizations and programs within the university are offered a chance to submit grant proposals for research, teaching and training projects, language training, and faculty, staff or student exchange programs.

Another initiative reflecting Emory's commitment to interdisciplinary teaching and research in international studies is a $106,000 project, with support from the Ford Foundation, for advanced training and research on interdisciplinary international issues such as how countries adapt to industrialization and development in post-colonial countrie.

University-wide initiatives

Claus M. Halle Institute for Global Learning to play key role in international education

The new Claus M. Halle Institute for Global Learning, which opened on campus last fall, will play a key role in new international learning initiatives at Emory, according to Marion Creekmore, vice provost for international affairs and the first director of the institute. The institute is considering bringing distinguished international visitors to campus as Halle Fellows. Other plans include organizing faculty and visiting expert/scholar discussion forums on academic and public policy issues.

The institute's first initiative is a series of faculty development seminars directed by Tom Remington, Halle Professor of Global Learning and an expert on comparative politics, particularly Russia and the former communist sphere. Beginning in January 1998 and continuing over the next three years, the annual seminars will examine the evolving political, economic and security institutions of post-Cold War era Europe. Faculty from across the university will spend the spring semester in research and discussion at Emory, followed by a trip to Europe for on-site research and consultations with scholars and policy-makers. The first seminar will conclude in fall 1998 with a conference at Emory based on the research results of the participants.

Call Nancy Seideman at (404) 727-0640 for information.

Emory extends global outreach to alumni, business in Asia, Latin America

In keeping with the goal to increase Emory's international outreach, the university's Division of Institutional Advancement is expanding activities in particular regions of the world. Building on the success of a May 1996 trip to Asia by Emory University President William Chace, Board of Trustees Chairman Bradley Currey and former President Jimmy Carter, Emory administrators will travel to Japan and China in February-March 1998 to meet with alumni,

university administrators and business people to continue strengthening institutional ties in those countries. Glenn Kellum, associate vice president for international relations, says that Emory will be focusing on areas of the world that have concentrations of alumni as well as areas where the university could boost both old and new academic ties.

Recognizing the growing social, political and economic ties between the United States and Latin America as witnessed by Gov. Zell Miller's trade mission and President Bill Clinton's recent trip, Kellum says that Emory senior administrators and President Chace are planning a trip to Latin America for the summer of 1998.

Call Elaine Justice at (404) 727-0643 for information.

Emory, Carter Center, Georgia Tech, Agnes Scott, Kennesaw to sponsor regional conference on U.S.-China policy

Emory University, The Carter Center, Georgia Tech, Agnes Scott College and Kennesaw State University, together with the American Assembly, are organizing a Southeast regional conference Feb. 19-22 at Emory to discuss U.S. policy toward China. The conference is aimed at helping move the nation toward a broad-based bipartisan consensus on the issue. U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, an Emory alumnus and member of the Board of Trustees, will serve as honorary chairman of the conference. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter will be keynote speaker. A series of four panels will discuss and make recommendations on key U.S./China policy issues. Agnes Scott President Mary Bullock and professor Michael Oksenberg, senior fellow at Stanford University, will chair the conference, and Georgia Tech professor John Garver is conference director. Also participating in the meeting will be Paul Courtright, director of Emory's Asian Studies Program, and Emory historian Irwin Hyatt.

The estimated 60 invited conference participants are drawn from national, state and local government, private business, academia, the print and electronic broadcast media, labor unions and human rights groups. About 15 percent of the participants will be high level officials of the U.S. government, prominent executives and nationally known China specialists. Other participants will be invited from across the Southeast.

The Southeastern Conference on U.S. policy toward China is one phase of a nationwide consensus-building exercise initiated in 1995 by the American Assembly, an affiliate of Columbia University founded by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower "to illuminate issues of public policy." The final product of the conference will be a report reflecting the negotiated consensus of the conference together with recommendations about the nature of a prudent U.S.-China policy, which will be given wide distribution.

Call Nancy Seideman at (404) 727-0640 for information.

Emory hosts large percentage of international students, scholars from Asia

A total of 198 new international students enrolled at Emory last fall, and China is still the leading country of origin for Emory's international students (Taiwan and Korea are second and third). Total international student enrollment was 609 in 1996-97 and 527 in 1997-98. The largest percentage of internationals enrolled in proportion to total enrollment is in the Goizueta Business School, followed by the Rollins School of Public Health. In addition to its international students, Emory also hosts a large number of foreign scholars (defined as university faculty and researchers) each year, with a total of 634 visiting campus in 1996-97. As with students, the leading country of origin for international scholars is China (101 in 96-97), followed by Germany (41), Japan (40) and India (38).

Call Deb Hammacher at (404) 727-0640 for information.

Foreign language initiative helps students use language skills across disciplines

As part of a growing national trend to get foreign languages into the heart of American higher education, Emory University is participating in an inter-collegiate effort to develop language programs that cut across the entire arts and sciences curriculum. Giving students an opportunity to use their foreign language skills throughout their course work is becoming increasingly important on campuses across the country; other colleges and universities with "language across the curriculum" (LAC) programs include Brown University, SUNY-Binghamton, University of Connecticut, St. Olaf College, University of Wisconsin and Agnes Scott College in Atlanta.

Locally, an inter-collegiate initiative has Emory joining forces with Agnes Scott, Oglethorpe University and Spelman College to develop LAC programs. At Emory a task force of faculty members from many disciplines has been planning and developing LAC courses for the past four years. The first course developed through the task force was offered in the fall 1997 semester-a political science course on the European Union with an additional once-a-week component taught in German-and two more courses are being offered this spring in political science and history.

Call Deb Hammacher at (404) 727-0644 for information.

School-based initiatives: Emory College

New efforts foster expansion of study abroad programs

With the inception of the Center for International Programs Abroad last year, Emory College has made a major commitment to establish an extensive, academically sound study abroad opportunities in the major regions of the world. Building on its already strong study abroad program, primarily in Western Europe, Emory College in 1997-98 is offering study abroad programs in Vienna, Austria; Costa Rica; at select universities in England; Lille, France; Berlin and Frieburg, Germany; Jodhpur, India; Rome, Italy; Tel Aviv, Israel; Osaka, Japan; Nairobi, Kenya; and Salamanca, Spain. New programs are under development for Ireland; South Africa; Jamaica; China; the Republic of Georgia; St. Petersburg, Russia; Prague, the Czech Republic; Pecs, Hungary; and Korea.

During 1997-98, more than 450 Emory undergraduates are spending a semester, a summer or a year studying abroad in both Emory and non-Emory programs. To enable more undergraduate history majors to take advantage of study abroad opportunities, the history department last fall announced the establishment of two prizes: The Cuttino Prize, named for long-time Emory history professor George Cuttino, will cover up to $10,000 for study abroad for any rising senior pursuing research on an approved senior thesis. In addition, the department will offer fellowships of $4,000 each to rising seniors to pursue study abroad.

Call Deb Hammacher at (404) 727-0644 for information.

Emory ranks 10th in alumni Peace Corps volunteers

The Peace Corps announced recently that Emory University ranks tenth among colleges and universities in producing Peace Corps volunteers at schools with undergraduate enrollment of less than 5,000. In the Peace Corps' 36-year history, 257 alumni have joined the organization.

Call Nancy Seideman at (404) 727-0640 for information.

Emory journalism students to report from South Africa

Journalism students at Emory will embark on an international reporting assignment in May 1998, when the journalism program begins an annual four-week reporting and study experience to be headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa. Students will receive course credit for completing the program, which includes internships with various Cape Town news media. The new study abroad program consists of four components, says Loren Ghiglione, James M. Cox Jr. Professor of Journalism and director of the program. First is a one-semester course

called "Journalism, Ethnography and Public Culture in South Africa," covering health and security issues, the social, economic and political history of the country, and basic ethnographic methods for urban research. Students also will complete an advanced news reporting and writing course, where they will report on homelessness, housing and other urban issues in Atlanta with an eye toward cross-cultural comparisons during their South African assignment. The third component is the trip itself, and last will be a conference in September 1998 to give students a chance to present their reporting, which will be critiqued by U.S. and South African journalists as well as Emory Africanist faculty and graduate students.

Call Nancy Seideman at (404) 727-0640 for information.

Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka brings international perspective to Emory

Wole Soyinka, the first African to receive the Nobel Prize for literature, is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts at Emory. Soyinka brings his international education and experience to Emory at lectures in theater, African American studies and creative writing. He travels extensively abroad fighting for democracy in his native Nigeria, from which he is in exile. Soyinka provides Emory faculty and students with a first-person account of world affairs often ignored by the American media, and the responsibilities of the United States' role as the sole remaining superpower.

Soyinka's writings have always been closely tied to his political activism; his most acclaimed works are the memoirs Ake and The Man Died­­based on 27 months in solitary confinement following his 1967 arrest by the Nigerian government­­and the play Death and the King's Horseman. Two of his current projects include Radio Kudirat, an opposition radio station broadcast across Nigeria, and the Area Boy Project, a Jamaican arts program designed to eliminate that country's segregating "garrison" system. His most recent works include a play, The Beatification of Area Boy­­which provided the impetus for the Area Boy Project­­and an essay, "Open Sore of a Continent," which chronicles Nigeria's plight. Soyinka works with Theater Emory to stage readings and productions of his works, and hosts a fellow Nobel laureate at Emory's Nobel Conversations lecture series each fall. The inaugural lecture featured Elie Wiesel, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu has committed to participate in the fall of 1998.

Call Deb Hammacher at (404) 727-0644 for information.

School-based initiatives: Business

Goizueta Business School expands international outreach, education

Reflecting the global nature of business, Emory's Goizueta Business School has made "globalization" a major theme in its mission, taking dramatic steps in the last four years to expand its international programs. Approximately 60 percent of its faculty conduct research, consult or teach in the international arena; 30 percent of its MBA students (representing more than 40 countries) and 8 percent of its BBA students are from outside the United States. Every year, between 10 and 20 percent of the MBA class spends at least one semester abroad at another university, and executive MBA students are required to participate in a two-week study abroad trip during their final semester. Interest in study abroad is also escalating among BBA students, who this year are studying in more than a dozen countries on three continents.

The business school has exchange partnerships with 22 universities in Asia, Europe, Latin America and former Soviet countries and offers the largest number of dual degree international MBA programs of any business school in the country. Through partnerships with Nijenrode University (The Netherlands), the University of Linz (Austria) and HEC (France), MBA students can earn two graduate management degrees in five years of study. The school also belongs to the MBA Corps, which places MBA graduates in yearlong internships in a number of countries in Central/Eastern Europe, and offers special courses and informal discussion groups in several foreign languages.

Other steps the business school has taken include:

· mandating that at least 20-25 percent of students come from abroad;

· admission preference to students with global interests and second language skills; and

· giving funding preference to academic research initiatives abroad.

Call Jim Elliot at (404) 727-0568 for information.

School-based initiatives: Law

Emory Law School's proselytizing research being applied to present-day international rights issues

Emory University's Law and Religion Program is wrapping up a three-year research project that takes the most comprehensive and in-depth look ever at the problem of religious proselytizing in sub-Saharan Africa, the former Soviet bloc and Latin America. Now the fruits of that research are being applied to some present-day human rights issues, as researchers have consulted with the Office of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), an office of the executive branch of the European Union and a major player in human rights questions.

Funded by a $490,000 grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts, the proselytizing project has brought together 125 scholars and activists from around the world to conduct and publish research on the growing clashes between indigenous religions and foreign missionizing religions in regions of the world that have experienced rapid democratization and political change. The program took to the road over the last two years, with groups of researchers working on one of six teams focusing on: Russia; Eastern Europe; Ukraine; Southern Africa; East, West and Central Africa; and Latin America. Since the Emory project began in 1994, at least four new major efforts have sprung up to address the same issue, by the World Council of Churches, The Helsinki Committee, the U.S. Department of State, and the OSCE.

Overall, the project will culminate in the publication of nine or 10 books by the end of 1998, the publication of 75 to 100 journal articles and editorials, and a host of catalytic efforts, according to project co-director John Witte, director of Emory's Law and Religion Program.

Call Elaine Justice at (404) 727-0643 for information.

Law

Study of human rights in Africa to yield policy recommendations on rights of women

Under the direction of Sudanese scholar/activist Abdullahi An-Na'im of Emory Law School's Law and Religion Program, scholars from five African nations are completing a study on "Women and Land in Africa: A Human Rights Perspective" that they hope will result in real changes in those countries' policies and laws. The study was initiated in 1996 with a $318,000 grant from the Ford Foundation in an effort to help African scholars and Africanists from around the world conduct research and public policy analysis of the legal, religious and human rights aspects of cultural transformation on the African continent. According to An-Na'im, teams of local researchers in Senegal, Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda and Ethiopia have conducted grassroots studies in those countries to develop concrete policy and law reform proposals. The studies will be completed this spring, followed by a continent-wide workshop this summer in Africa that will bring together researchers, policymakers, activists and media to discuss the studies and make recommendations for intergovernmental and international policy. The final proposals will be communicated to governmental and inter-governmental agencies and policymakers for possible implementation. "The goal is to develop a complete model of human rights analysis and action that can, with some modifications, be replicated for other sets of issues and concerns," says An-Na'im.

Call Elaine Justice at (404) 727-0643 for information.

Medicine

Emory School of Medicine helps improve health care in Republic of Georgia

The present state of health care in the independent Republic of Georgia is just short of agonal. In the early 1990s, children were going years without routine immunizations. In the spring of 1992, the American International Health Alliance (AIHA) worked with the Emory University School of Medicine, Grady Memorial Hospital and Morehouse School of Medicine to set up the Atlanta-Tbilisi partnership, one of 21 such partnerships between U.S. institutions and republics of the former Soviet Union. The partnership's goal is to contribute expertise, manpower and supplies to improve health care in the Republic of Georgia.

Emory's volunteer effort, led by Kenneth Walker, M.D., professor of medicine, has three targets: the Ministry of Health, and consequently the entire country; Tbilisi State Medical Institute, which is the national medical school; and City Hospital No. 2, a 400-bed general hospital similar to Grady. Since 1992, dozens of Emory faculty physicians, nurses and medical students have visited Tbilisi-and vice-versa.

The program includes a wide variety of initiatives that are transforming medical care in the Republic of Georgia from the ground up. Emory doctors have engaged in projects ranging from development of a comprehensive plan to transform the children's hospital and maternal hospital in Tbilisi into a model national perinatal center, to establishing joint research projects on resistant tuberculosis, to addressing a newly emerging AIDS epidemic there. The university's Health Sciences Library has established of a state-of-the-art "virtual medical library" network across the Republic of Georgia that is connected to the Internet and to Emory's library. The medical school also has taken a leading role in health reform efforts across the country, has encouraged American manufacturers to donate updated medical equipment, and has established several ongoing information exchange and clinical programs at Emory for both doctors and medical students of Tbilisi.

Call Sarah Goodwin at (404) 727-3366 for information.

Public health

Rollins School of Public Health fights 'hidden hunger' worldwide

More than two billion people worldwide, most in developing nations, do not consume minimal levels of three critically important micronutrients: iodine, vitamin A and iron. Most of those affected are children and women. The enormous strides made globally toward eliminating this little-known problem of "hidden hunger" may be attributed in large part to the Program Against Micronutrient Malnutrition (PAMM), based in the Department of International Health at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health.

Where the problem is endemic, the consequences are staggering, including: a 15 percent reduction in the intellectual functioning of whole populations, 30 percent increase in childhood deaths and 30 percent reduction in adult work productivity. Solutions are simple; in most cases, simply adding iodine to the salt supply solves the problem.

Under the direction of Glendon F. Maberly, M.D., professor of international health at the Rollins School of Public Health, PAMM and The Task Force on Child Survival at The Carter Center are working to eliminate micronutrient malnutrition through training, technical support, advocacy, information management, quality assurance, laboratory and program development, research and development, and legislative and regulatory recommendations. With the support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), UNICEF and the World Bank, PAMM has assisted more than 200 participants in 42 countries since its inception six years ago.

Call Sarah Goodwin at (404) 727-3366 for information.

Nursing

International collaboration sheds light on postpartum depression across cultures

Women's postpartum depression has been studied extensively during the last decade, particularly in the United States and Great Britain. There is less reported research, however, from other countries describing the occurrence and prevalence of specific symptoms associated with the phenomenon. A research team in Emory University's Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing recently concluded a collaborative, two-year, multi-country research project that looked at the nature and course of depressive symptoms among groups of new mothers.

Using both quantitative and qualitative methodology, team members Dean Dyanne D. Affonso, Ph.D.; Linda J. Mayberry, Ph.D.; Dr. Chong Yeu Liu-Chang and Dr. Aninyda K. De worked with site coordinators in eight countries (Italy, Australia, Guyana, Taiwan, South Korea, Sweden and Finland) and two U.S. cities (Boston and San Jose, Calif.) to evaluate postpartum depression from an international and cross-cultural perspective. While postpartum depression has been proposed to be a "culture bound syndrome" in the United States, resulting from the lack of social supports for women following childbirth, preliminary findings from this study indicate that women's perceptions of the acute need for attention from health care providers was consistent across all the research sites.

Researchers say that study findings have implications for structuring a continuum of care for childbearing families amidst the economic constraints that demand a more cost-effective health care system in each country.The project was funded through the Nina Rusk Carson Endowment, established in 1993. Team members are currently finalizing research data analyses in preparing for publication in several international journals.

Call Sarah Goodwin at (404) 727-3366 for information.

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