New Mexico State University President Barbara Couture will participate at the fifth Global University Summit in Chicago through Tuesday.
Held concurrently with the G8 Summit, the Global University Summit brings together leadership of major research universities and industry from across the world to deliberate on critical issues facing higher education globally in the 21st century. Presidents and senior officials representing more than 80 leading research universities from the U.S. and around the world will be attending. The theme for 2012 is “Developing Talent to Drive Innovation in a Global Society.”
“New Mexico State University will bring an important and unique perspective to the summit,” Couture said, “especially as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Morrill Act, which enabled the development of land-grant universities.
“Our mission of providing opportunities for higher education to many who are the first in their families to go to college closely parallels the summit goal to help societies across the globe develop a thriving world,” she said. “Our excellence in research, our partnerships with industry, and our status as a Hispanic-Serving Institution also clearly point to NMSU’s role in summit conversations about enabling competitiveness through innovation and discovery, and building collaborations between universities and the private sector.”
Global University Summits are always held in conjunction with the G8 Summit to draw the attention of world leaders to the needs of higher education and its vital role in helping deal with the challenges of the present and the future. The G8 (Group of Eight) Summit is an annual forum for the governments of eight of the world’s largest economies. The fifth Global University Summit is sponsored by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Committee on Institutional Cooperation.