The Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor of Swansea University are visiting Texas to further strengthen and develop partnership agreements with top universities in the Lone Star State.
Swansea University is already working with Rice and A&M universities and the Houston Methodist Hospital Research Institute in Texas, and the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor, Rhodri Morgan and Professor Richard B. Davies, will now be signing agreements with the University of Houston and the University of Texas in Austin.
These large-scale partnerships bolster Swansea University’s position as an outward-looking, globally orientated institution.
The Texas partnerships provide a substantial increase in opportunities for staff and students through collaboration and exchanges. Swansea University academics are able to tackle more demanding research challenges, and students will have the option of studying at Texas universities as part of their degree programmes.
Vice-Chancellor of Swansea Univeristy, Professor Richard B. Davies, who will be meeting representatives from the oil and gas industry as well as senior figures from Texan universities during the visit, said: “Our globalisation strategy emphasises the importance of strategic partnerships with strong universities elsewhere in the world.”
The new agreement with Houston will include collaboration on areas as diverse as engineering, energy, arts and humanities, medicine, and computer science.
Currently the Institute of Life Sciences and Centre for NanoHealth at Swansea is already collaborating with the Methodist Hospital Research Institute. Swansea University is also working with Texas A&M University of the development of a therapeutics manufacturing facility, as well as working with Texas A&M and Rice University in developing a programme of research and training relating to global water, energy and fuel crises and their resolution.
Professor Davies continued: “In addition to undergraduate, postgraduate and academic staff exchange programmes we are interested in joint activities which can extend from collaborative working with industry to shared appointments of academic staff.
“We are particularly excited about the opportunities this offers for increased student mobility. Swansea has run overseas exchange programmes for many years and we have seen how educationally beneficial it is to study in another country and we know how positively employers view this type of overseas experience.”
The University of Houston will also form a partnership with the Wales Observatory on Human Rights of Children and Young People, which is based at Swansea University, as part of a process of internationalising the Observatory. During the visit, former First Minister of Wales, Rhodri Morgan, will give a lecture on Wales and children’s rights at the Graduate School of Social Work.
The partnership with Austin will include joint research in the fields of physics and glaciology, and staff and student exchanges in English and Public Affairs. Swansea is seeking to form a partnership with the Ransome Center at UT Austin, in a project to digitise Welsh works in the University of Austin’s archives, including many of Dylan Thomas’s papers. If successful, this will see Swansea becoming the home of the digital hub of the Dylan Thomas archives.
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