Check out 10 ways Carolina collaborates with universities worldwide
Tar Heels connect with global partners with study abroad programs, in creative courses and through joint research.
Global collaborations are crucial to Carolina’s mission of leading change to improve society and helping solve the world’s greatest problems. The University ranks among the best in study abroad participation and is also a Fulbright top producer.
Overall, around 47% of Carolina undergraduates study abroad before graduation. At the same time, students from universities across the world study abroad at Carolina. The University has established exchange partnerships with nearly 90 institutions globally.
Check out 10 ways UNC-Chapel Hill works with universities worldwide.
No. 1: Collaborative Online International Learning courses allow Carolina students and professors to connect with global counterparts without leaving campus. Featuring shared learning and activities with students from international universities, COIL classes foster a sense of community while bridging cultures. Examples of COIL courses at Carolina include Japanese and public health classes, a journalism course on the global media landscape and a Spanish class in which students write children’s books.
No. 2: One of Carolina’s longest-running international partnerships is with Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen. The German university and Carolina have a joint seed fund for research collaboration that has enabled data science projects on topics like medicine and climate resilience. The seed fund is administered by UNC Global Affairs, which provides pan-University coordination for collaboration with global partners.
Karla Pollman, president of Tübingen, visited UNC-Chapel Hill last year and said the University is Tübingen’s “closest partner in the U.S.”
No. 3: A leading example of a successful school-level international collaboration is UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy’s participation in the PharmAlliance, which turned 10 last year. Through the partnership, Eshelman, the University College London School of Pharmacy in England and the Monash University Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in Australia work together on student exchanges, collaborative research grants and publications and doctoral training.
Carolina and Monash have also launched a joint pharmaceutical sciences master’s program.
No. 4: Carolina partners with five universities to run Carolina Global Launch, an exciting program enabling first-year students to study abroad during their fall semester and then enroll at Carolina in the spring. Students immerse themselves in a new culture and earn credits toward their Carolina degrees while living in Spain, Scotland, Ireland, Costa Rica or South Korea. Other first-year students at Carolina can study at these universities the following semester through the Spring Forward program.
No. 5: Carolina partners with 28 universities in Japan, North Carolina’s largest inward investor. One of the leading collaborators is Nagoya University. Nagoya views Carolina as one of its “most important partners in North America” and has an office in Research Triangle Park. The two institutions have partnered on student exchanges and research, including work on supporting aging populations.
No. 6: The National University of Singapore, founded in 1905, serves 40,000-plus undergraduate and graduate students and is ranked No. 20 in the world by U.S. News & World Report. Over 1,100 students from NUS (440) and Carolina (700) have studied at the partner school, and science students have opportunities to pursue summer lab research.
Carolina mathematics and data science professor Yifei Lou has teamed up with NUS faculty to plan workshops on machine learning and computational mathematics.
No. 7: Carolina’s partnership with Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland is growing quickly.
Navin Bapat, a political science and peace, war and defense professor, received a Global Partnership Award to deepen scholarly connections with Queen’s and a Faculty Award for Global Excellence recognizing his contributions to global education, research and partnerships. Dramatic art professor Adam Versenyi has collaborated with Queen’s on COIL courses, and Queen’s recently opened Seamus Heaney Centre is hosting Tar Heel students in UNC-Chapel Hill’s creative writing program in Belfast this year. The two universities also awarded joint funding to five faculty pairings last year and are seeking proposals for a second round of seed funding.
No. 8: Since 2011, Carolina and Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador have jointly operated the Galápagos Science Center, the only research institute of its kind in the Galápagos.
There, faculty and students from both universities collaborate on work dealing with the impacts and interactions among the social, terrestrial and marine sub-systems of the islands’ fragile ecosystems.
No. 9: Carolina’s TransAtlantic Masters program allows students to earn a political science degree at UNC-Chapel Hill and another degree from a partner university in Europe. Students begin this “choose-your-adventure” academic journey with a semester in Chapel Hill and then study in Spain, England, Germany, Sweden, France or Italy.
No. 10: Carolina partnered with the University of Helsinki in Finland to help students explore global security careers. The two institutions received funding from the U.S. Embassy in Helinski for the Women in Global Security exchange program, in which six students and two faculty members from the Finnish university traveled to North Carolina and six Carolina students, one faculty member and one staff member went to Finland and Estonia.
