Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/269179
48 March/April 2014 BizEd nodal partnership, students from Indian and U.S. schools will learn about doing business with China; Chinese and American students will learn about doing business with India; and Chinese and Indian students will study how to do busi- ness with the U.S. In the grand finale, all the bilateral pairs will form truly multicultural teams to work together on a global proj- ect—perhaps in Singapore. Promote STEM education for all: Western business schools have traditionally considered science, technology, engineering, and math to be foreign fields that their stu- dents should avoid—but that needs to change. The majority of students entering MBA programs in China and India have engineering back- grounds, and anyone who wants to communicate with them must have a basic level of proficiency in STEM subjects. As we move through the 21st century, it's becoming increasingly apparent that for business educa- tion to close the skills gap, innova- tive collaboration is necessary. To create a global workforce, business students in the West must learn how to work and lead in the East, just as students from the East must understand how to work in the Western world. No longer can we say East is East and West is West; they each must embrace and learn to understand the other. Govind Hariharan is professor of eco- nomics and the executive director of the India China America (ICA) Institute at the Michael J. Coles College of Busi- ness at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta, Georgia. A Treaty for Education The Obama-Singh 21st Century Knowledge Initiative was a keystone educational partnership between the United States and India that was announced in November 2009. The two countries pledged US$5 million each to enhance collaboration between U.S. and Indian institutions. The money will support faculty exchanges, research, and other partner- ships between American and Indian schools that receive grants of approxi- mately $250,000 to carry out their joint projects. The areas of focus for the grants are energy, climate change and environmental studies, education and educational reform, public health, and sustainable development and com- munity development. Eight educational partnerships were selected in November 2011 for the inaugural 2012 awards. The lead U.S. schools were Rutgers, the University of Montana, Cornell University, and the University of Michigan; the lead Indian schools were Mahatma Gandhi University, Banaras Hindu University, the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, and IIT Kanpur. Each of the eight lead universities has developed partnerships with one or more schools from the other country. A similar list of grantees was announced in 2013 and included the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore—the first for a business school in the initiative. IIMB has joined with the University of North Carolina on a joint project called "Partnering for Success: Advancing Sustainability Research and Education in India." The joint working group of the Obama-Singh Initiative plans to allocate the $10 million in grants over a five-year period. Eight to ten university part- nerships will receive grants annually.