A new UK-US alliance has been announced in HE: University of Birmingham and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have announced a strategic partnership that will establish a framework for collaborative research/teaching and study abroad exchange.
The BRIDGE (BiRmingham-Illinois Partnership for Discovery EnGagement and Education) alliance is “a statement for the growing global ambition of both the universities,” according to a spokesperson for the University of Birmingham.
The two institutions are planning curricula to enable “significant numbers” of students to take part in semester exchange programmes
As well as increasing both universities’ research capabilities, the partnership will create opportunities for student exchange. The two institutions will work together to develop study abroad programmes and are currently planning curricula to enable “significant numbers” of students to take part in semester exchange programmes.
The alliance builds on more than four years of collaboration between the two institutions, which includes more than 25 established faculty-to-faculty links in 14 academic disciplines including Economic and Physical Geography, Biomedical Engineering, Maths and History of Art.
“Four years on, with those collaborations firmly embedded, we judged the time was right to sign a strategic alliance between our two universities,” David Eastwood, the University of Birmingham’s Vice-Chancellor, said.
“We hope to achieve research collaborations producing outstanding outputs, which we are already beginning to see,” he continued. “In a number of areas we have complementary expertise and that will give us, between the two universities, the critical mass to compete.”
Dr Phyllis Wise, Chancellor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, added: “All of the things that we are thinking about for the future of higher education don’t know geographic or national borders and so this is a great partnership I look forward to growing”.
The British Consul General in Chicago, Stephen Bridges, praised the partnership, saying: “It is illustrative of Birmingham’s commitment to developing partnerships of academic and strategic excellence in the Midwest of the USA.”
