Georgia State Awarded $2.1 Million in International Projects

Georgia State University was awarded three of the 19 new USAID-supported partnerships granted in 2008 through the group Higher Education for Development, including nearly $1.5 million to bolster Alexandria University’s executive MBA program in Egypt.

Higher Education for Development works with the support of the U.S. Agency for International Development and higher education institutions in the U.S. and overseas to address global social and economic needs.

The two-year partnership between the J. Mack Robinson College of Business and Alexandria University will allow Robinson College faculty to help revamp the Egyptian school’s EMBA curriculum and help train its faculty, said Bijan Fazlollahi, professor and director of Robinson’s Center for Business Development in Transitional Economies.

“We’re trying to make it the kind of program that fits the business world,” Fazlollahi said.
Georgia State was also awarded nearly $400,000 for a three-year partnership with Cairo University. Jorge Martinez, the director of the International Studies Program at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, said the partnership will help the Cairo economics and political science faculty boost its curriculum and become a regional hub for economic research.

“We want to share our experience and knowledge base with their faculty,” Martinez said.
Georgia State was also granted $250,000 through a partnership with the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional of Mexico in a project to strengthen the English language teaching curricula at UPN and provide the foundation for an English teacher education program.

In all, Georgia State was awarded more than $2.1 million in HED projects in 2008, and received the largest project awarded this year.

“The diversity and high caliber of award winners in this year’s HED competitions is impressive,” said Terry Hartle, HED board chair and senior vice president of government and public affairs for the American Council on Education. “It’s a testament to the remarkable contributions that higher education has to make for the development of countries and communities."

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