U of R signs ground-breaking agreement with India
Allows students from India to enrol in kinesiology program in Regina
Martin Weaver
News Editor
The University of Regina has once again taken strides to meet the strategic goal of internationalizing itself.
On June 8, 2011, U of R president and vice-chancellor Dr. Vianne Timmons announced that a new partnership was made with Karunya University in India, which will see up to 30 Indian students a year sent to the U of R campus starting in 2013.
The students will study their first two years of university in India and then come to Canada for their last two. Upon completion, the students will be granted a bachelor of kinesiology from the U of R, making it the first program of its kind to be offered to Indian students.
The project started nine months prior, when Dr. Timmons went to India on a trip and met with the chancellor from Karunya University. They discussed the need for education in the health and fitness field.
Dr. Craig Chamberlin, dean of the U of R’s faculty of kinesiology and health studies, was excited for the announcement. He expressed that it meant a lot to the department.
“We’ve been growing and developing as a faculty and I think we’re at the point where we’re one of the leading faculties in the country in kinesiology,” he said.
He added that U of R students may benefit from this experience as well.
“It gives them the opportunities to interact with a culturally different group of students and start to learn from each other,” he said.
Dr. Chamberlin says it’s important that the U of R keeps on internationalizing and the faculty of kinesiology and health’s contribution to this will go a long way.
This wasn’t the first big announcement regarding internationalization. In recent years, the university has enrolled students from Nigeria and has just recently planned to open a Confucius Institute teaching Chinese culture and language.
This announcement follows similar ventures at other Canadian universities to try to strengthen educational ties to universities in India – an emerging market.
York University in Toronto plans to create its own campus in the country. The $25 million campus is set to open in the fall of 2013. It will be located in the Indian city of Hyderabad, located about 700 kilometres east of the coastal city of Mumbai.
The school will house Canadian and international students and will be operated by York’s Schulich School of Business.
“For Canadian schools to really be competitive, they must be part of the global competition and marketplace,” dean of the Schulich School of Business Deszo Horvath said in a statement in the Globe and Mail.
There are also plans for Carleton University in Ottawa to open their own Canada-India Centre for Excellence in Science, Technology, Trade and Policy.
According to 2008 statistics published in the Globe and Mail, a total of 160,000 Indian students chose to study at universities outside of their country. Less than 4,000 of those students were studying in Canada
