A celebration of Wales and the US
Wales higher education celebrated the burgeoning university relationships and activities between Wales and the US, at its Wales reception at the National Association for Study Abroad (NAFSA) in Los Angeles in May.
For the second year running Wales International Consortium held a Wales Reception during the event, sponsored by ISA media who designed the WIC on-line Guide to Universities in Wales. http://www.i-studentadvisor.com/wic/
The event was attended by over 100 people from 34 different organisations including universities in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, British Council USA, Australian Dept of Education, and Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage as well as many US alumni.
Wales International Consortium (WIC) co-ordinated participation of the largest representation from Wales that has ever attended the event with Aberystwyth University, Bangor University, Cardiff University, RWCMD, Swansea University, Trinity University College, University of Glamorgan and University Of Wales Newport all in attendance. The Wales booth will also see the launch of some brand new interactive games and tours of Wales introducing visitors to the landscape, culture, technology and history of Wales.
2009 is set to be a very exciting year for Wales higher education in the U.S. In March 2009 Wales International Consortium participated in a virtual exhibition hosted in the U.S.. College Week Live is conducted entirely on-line, enabling potential students from anywhere in the world to “visit” the virtual exhibition hall, watch and listen to university films and audio, download prospectuses and course literature and participate in on-line conversations in real time with current students in Wales. Via a web cam, Jason Chapko, an American studying Chiropractic at University of Glamorgan, spent an hour chatting to potential students about what it is like to study in Wales.
St Davids Day saw the Empire State Building lit with the colours of the Welsh flag for the third successive as part of the annual Wales Week in New York which has continued to be a highly successful event for raising the profile of Wales in the US and has included representation from the HEI’s creative industries departments for the past few years .
In the summer of 2009 the Smithsonian Institutions – the national museum of the United States – will bring the vibrant culture of Wales to the heart of America’s capital as part of it its internationally renowned Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Wales programme “Wales Smithsonian Cymru” will draw on the diversity of Wales’ cultural life, from the strength of deep rooted traditions through to innovative new technologies and will have an over arching theme of sustainability. The higher education institutions of Wales will be making significant contributions to the sustainability theme including Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences who will be displaying a study of the history of tropical climate they have undertaken with the US National Museum and Tanzania. Dr Calvin Jones, of Cardiff Business School will be among the speakers at a series organized by Wales’ Centre for Alternative Technology at the Natural History Museum, Washington, on ‘Zero Carbon Transistion’. Dr Jones will be imagining a zero carbon regional economy – one which enables the truly sustainable production of goods and services to serve people's needs. His talk will look at how Wales has sought to develop policies to move its economy from one formerly focused on fossil fuel energy production and heavy industry to one which is more resilient to changes in climate and energy availability. The presentation will outline the key economic and political barriers that make such whole-scale change difficult.
There have been many new partnerships and links formed between Wales and US higher education in the last year which 
promise to strengthen further the profile of Wales universities in the US. These include Swansea University joining the Texas-United Kingdom Collaborative. Since its inception in 2003, the Collaborative has brought together some of the world’s leading scientists, engineers, and medical experts to foster collaborative research projects in areas such as biomedicine, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and ICT. In 2008 an agreement was also signed between Cardiff University and the American Ivy league University of Pennsylvania.
Cardiff University has also recently announced it will welcome two Marshall Scholars as a result of the University’s partnership Scholarships with the Marshall Foundation. Two students from the US will begin Master’s programmes in 2009 and a third will begin in 2010. In addition Cardiff has established two prestigious awards with the Fulbright Commission for US students to follow postdoctoral research awarding £20,000 for the first year of a postgraduate degree from 2010 to one student every year.
“The profile of Wales and of Wales higher education continues to rise in the US, which is evident not only from the many new research partnerships and links that are being established between Wales and the US but also the rise in US students choosing to study in Wales. In 2008/09 the number of full-time students from the U.S. rose to 263, an increase of 20% over last year. Since 2004/05 the figures have increased by over 200%. We are pleased that US students are choosing Wales because of the quality of its research and teaching and we look forward to being able to develop further the relationships between US and Wales higher education by establishing exchange agreements and creating new research partnerships. Wales is also working to offer more scholarship packages to ensure that the highest calibre of students from the US choose to study in Wales,” said Professor Iwan Davies, Pro Vice Chancellor of Internationalisation at Swansea University.