Presidents talk southern strategy
Strengthening ties with Mexico topic at Rice-hosted AAU meeting

BY MIKE WILLIAMS
Rice News staff

Members of the Association of American Universities (AAU) met at Rice University this week to take a long view of higher education in the United States and its connections with peer institutions abroad, particularly in Mexico.

Rice hosted the biannual meeting of AAU presidents Sunday through Tuesday, with most of the meetings occurring on the Rice campus. More than 40 presidents and chancellors of major U.S. and Canadian research universities focused their discussions on four points of interest: energy, K-12 education, the role of new technology in higher education pedagogy and advancing dialog with research institutions in Mexico, several of which participated at Rice’s invitation in conversations at the AAU meeting regarding higher education relationships between Mexico and the United States.

Rice President David Leebron said inviting the presidents of Mexican institutions “created the chance for understanding what we can do together and what some of the obstacles are.”

Leebron said the United States ought to be sending more students to Mexico and hosting more students from Mexico. “When you consider the importance of that relationship and the proximity … Mexico ought not to be providing only a relatively small number.” He said the AAU, which includes 61 universities in the United States and two in Canada elected to membership by vote and invitation, could help create cooperative structures that heighten the visibility of Mexican institutions among their U.S. peers.

On energy, Leebron said AAU members had previously discussed new technologies that universities could foster, but this meeting was focused more on policy issues and how universities could play a stronger role in achieving the best energy policies for the future. “What are the barriers to conservation and changes in behavior? What are the international consequences?” he asked. “How does this develop over decades?”

The leaders discussed how to lend a hand to current and future K-12 students through their college careers, particularly in science, technology, engineering and math. Leebron also noted consensus among the presidents around the need to understand new technologies that go beyond “online education” and to find efficient ways to use them to enhance and preserve “what we think of as the world-renowned and esteemed quality of American higher education.”

AAU President Robert Berdahl, former president of the University of Texas at Austin and former chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, discussed the Washington, D.C.-based organization’s central role in working with government agencies to keep American universities competitive with China, Russia and India, all of which are “investing significantly” in top-notch research facilities.

“We’ve been, historically, the go-to nation in terms of attracting the best and brightest students from abroad who want to study in American universities. This landscape is changing,” Berdahl said.

Henry Yang, chancellor of the University of California at Santa Barbara and outgoing chairman of the AAU, noted American institutions graduate 30,000 Ph.D.s in science and technology a year. “Forty percent are foreign-born, but 92 percent of those express a wish to stay in this country. About two-thirds of them end up staying.”

Jared Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon University and incoming chair of the AAU, said concerns that corporations are setting the agenda for universities through industry-funded research are misplaced. “We look at industry not only as a source of money, but as a source of problems” that university labs have the opportunity to work with industry to solve, he said.

Yang added the best way for industry to take advantage of technologies developed by American institutions “is to hire our students.”

Leebron said higher education is one of the major ways in which the U.S. engages with other parts of the world. “We have a whole range of perspectives,” he said. “Some of them are 50- or 100-year perspectives on fundamental research that truly is going to change the world — though not while we’re here. Some … will solve more immediate problems. It’s important to have that broad perspective.”

While the presidents were engaged in AAU business, University Representative Y. Ping Sun accompanied their partners on campus and neighborhood tours that included the BioScience Research Collaborative, the Shepherd School of Music and Houston’s Menil Collection and Rothko Chapel, along with presentations by several Rice faculty.

The visiting leaders were grateful for Rice’s Texas-style hospitality. “This is a wonderful campus, and we have a fascinating host,” Yang said of the meeting, his 31st. “David and Ping gave us one of the best meetings we have had, and Houston is a wonderful city.”