From the Director
Where Do We Go With IFAS International Programs?
One of the continuing challenges that I have as Director is to provide vision and focus to our international work while encouraging the breadth of good ideas that come before us on a regular basis. In particular, I wrestle with the geographic thrust of our work, noting that IFAS/IP cannot provide leadership to do good things everywhere, but also recognizing that individual faculty often have special interests and skills that pull us in multiple directions. How do we resolve this dilemma? Or is it a dilemma at all?
Let’s start with some first principles:
- Our international capacity is limited only by our expertise and resources; our expertise is vast but our resources are not;
- As a public institution, we have responsibilities to serve the state and the region; we can do that better to the extent that we engage with international partners, especially those whose problems mirror ours;
- International efforts should build upon and be embedded within our historic core missions in education, research, and outreach;
- International activities should be shaped by our existing core strengths and priorities, but should also cause us to stretch and grow as individuals and as an institution;
- International programs belong to the faculty and staff; the role of IFAS/IP is to lead, nurture, and facilitate these efforts.
Having laid out those principles, the question that arises is: where do we go with our international programs? Should we be heavily invested in the Western Hemisphere, specifically in Latin America and the Caribbean, since this is our neighborhood? Or, as an internationally prominent institution, should IFAS be much broader than that region, extending ourselves into Africa and Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East? Or, should we focus on the finest institutional partners we can find in Western Europe and the Pacific Rim? Or should we try to be effectively present everywhere?
Let me offer my own thoughts relative to these questions: It seems to me that we are asking the wrong question if we define our international activities solely on a geographic basis. Rather, I would argue, our international activities should be framed by the first principles stated above, most specifically by the spectrum of expertise that is resident in IFAS and the value that an international dimension brings to that array of expertise. It is what we do well that should be projected into the world. It is what we are especially good at that should serve as the platform for our international dialog. It is our expertise that should define where we go and what we do.
That said, I invite you to read this issue of FOCUS to learn more about where our expertise is taking us around the world right now. I don’t think that we have a dilemma at all. From China to India, from Africa to Europe, the Gator Nation is truly everywhere.
