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Running a Liaison Office Overseas: Models, Goals, and Challenges

Universities worldwide have set up liaison offices overseas to strengthen research cooperation, promote their study programs, work together with partner universities and institutions in different countries, or provide student services. In Brazil, several international universities have representatives or liaison offices. This session tries to explore the different types of liaison offices with a special focus on Brazil, discuss the challenges these offices face, and develop strategies for successfully running such offices. Questions concerning the benefits for local universities, the effects on joint research, governance issues, and the sustainability of such endeavors will be addressed. The following universities will present their strategies:

Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

The network of Freie Universität Berlin comprises seven liaison offices abroad, located in Brussels, Cairo, New Delhi, New York, Moscow, Beijing, and São Paulo. The offices’ academic foci depend on the strategic goals in the respective region and, therefore, vary by location. All offices support the university’s researchers in reaching out internationally. With their regional expertise and local networks, the university’s liaison offices identify suitable foreign cooperation partners; give support in recruiting junior scholars and scientists; market academic programs; publicize new research projects t; assist researchers from Freie Universität in organizing conferences abroad; provide information on new developments in academia and research in the target countries and regions, and organize international alumni activities. The office in São Paulo has a strong focus on recruiting and pre-selecting doctoral students and postdocs, specifically for the Brazilian scholarship program Science without Borders. It therefore developed its own doctoral study events providing information on how to pursue a PhD at Freie Universität.

Contact Information: Dr. Christina Peters, Head of Liaison Office São Paulo / Britta Piel, Program Manager at Center for International Cooperation (CIC)


Technische Universität München (TUM), Germany

Technische Universität München(TUM) has offices and research centers on several continents: Africa (TUM.Cairo), Asia (TUM.Beijing), Latin America (TUM.Sao Paulo) and Europe (TUM.Brussels). It initiates cooperative research projects and exchanges with scholars and students. As the first German university in 2002, it opened its own campus abroad: TUM Asia in Singapore.
In February 2012 TUM founded at the German House of Science and Innovation São Paulo (DWIH-SP) its own Liaison Office for Latin America. The office is mainly active in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and Peru. The work is based on many years of cooperation with institutions in the region.
TUM São Paulo focuses on building and developing a long-term and successful relationship between Latin America and TUM and to jointly solve the challenges of the future with knowledge and technology transfer in both directions. Connecting TUM scientists to their counterparts in Latin America and relations with the industry are also in the focus of the liaison office.
TUM is an active partner in the “Ciência sem Fronteiras”-Program and is the most successful German university in terms of the total amount of Scholars - almost 250 until 02.2015.

Contact Information: Sören Artur Metz, Liaison Officer, TUM São Paulo – Liaison Office for Latin America


Columbia University in the City of New York

The Columbia Global Centers are about connecting the local with the global, finding scholars with shared interests around the world, and engaging others in global conversations. They are transforming Columbia into a global university for the twenty-first century, one offering an ever-expanding number of opportunities for our faculty and our students to conduct their research and focus their learning wherever their intellectual interests take them. The eight global centers –located in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Mumbai, Nairobi, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and Santiago – form the platform of Columbia[s global strategy. The centers are designed to function as nimble hubs providing a foundation for students, faculty, affiliates, and alumni to explore the most important global issues from a global perspective. The Columbia Global Center in Rio de Janeiro, the newest of the eight centers, was launched in March 2013. In its first two years, the Global Center has signed a variety of exchange and shared research agreements with Brazilian universities and public sector institutions and looks forward to expanding these relationships in the future to institutions throughout Brazil. Already in the first two years of existence, the Rio Global Center has engaged a large variety of the schools and departments of Columbia University in Brazil. Some examples would include: the School of Architecture (urban renewal in Rio), the School of Public Health (health monitoring in favela communities), the School of International and Public Affairs (best practices in public sector management), the School of Arts (short courses in film direction and television writing), and the Law and Business Schools (training courses for business executives). Columbia has also been an active partner with Ciência sem Fronteiras and has seen a large increase in the number of Brazilian students enrolled on the Columbia campus in New York City.

Contact information: Dr. Thomas Trebat, Director, and Bruna Santos, Program Officer, Columbia Global Centers | Latin America (Rio de Janeiro).

Author(s):

Christina Peters    
Freie Universität Berlin / São Paulo Liaison Office
Germany

Britta Piel    
Freie Universität Berlin
Germany

Thomas Trebat    
Columbia University in the City of New York / Columbia Global Centers
United States

Bruna Santos    
Columbia University in the City of New York / Columbia Global Centers
Brazil

Sören Artur Metz    
Technische Universität München / São Paulo Liaison Office for Latin America
Germany