Expert and Alumni Round on Transatlantic Exchange
w/
Prof. Dr. Robert Stewart (Professor Emeritus for Journalism at Ohio University)
Prof. Dr. Matthew LeRiche (Director of the Global Leadership Center at Ohio University)
This event commemorates the annual Transatlantic Student Summit between Leipzig University and Ohio University. It serves both for taking inventory on previous programs as well as creating a launch pad for future exchange. The conversation will gather the perspectives of faculty and alumni involved in the exchange programs of previous years. Focus will be set on questions of what and how to move into a new decade of fruitful exchange.
The event is open to all Ohio-Leipzig Exchange alumni. Please register at mail@dai-sachsen.de
Background on the Ohio-Leipzig Transatlantic Student Summit
“To bring to the students on both campuses the opportunity to work on a truly international project and produce something that has direct relevance for professional development” –these words by Professor Crister S. Garrett, one of the program’s founding fathers,, quite fittingly describe the central academic and professional merits of the Ohio-Leipzig Transatlantic Student Summit: international experience and collaborative work on concrete and real-life issues, combining academic and practical applications and perspectives. Beyond these more technical objectives, the program of course always aspired—and quickly emerged—to be about much more: Developing networks and friendships through the exchange of knowledge and perspectives to foster coherence, mutual understanding, and common progress—virtues of timeless relevance for liberal and open societies.
What’s Local to the One is Global to the Other
In 2009, American Studies Leipzig and the Global Leadership Center at Ohio University partnered up for the first time to bring together students with various academic and regional backgrounds to engage themes relevant on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly to the regions and communities that both universities are part of. After a two-week period of intense collaborative work, each annual Transatlantic Student Summit culminated in presentations to a variety of professionals from the fields of diplomacy, consultancy, academia, and the private sector. Recent summits focussed on a variety of issues: economic, migration, and health policy; on the opioid crisis and the remediation of former brown coal areas – always true to the motto: what’s local to one is global to the other.
Stories of Friendship
The Transatlantic Student Summit builds on, and is part of a longstanding and successful partnership between Ohio University and Leipzig University, looking back at a rich history of collaboration and mutual affinity. Spanning decades and continuing to thrive through new projects and exchanges, collaboration between OHIO and Leipzig has extended into exchange programs and research projects in fields such as journalism, communications and media studies, chemistry and biochemistry, and American studies. Within this gratifying and encouraging setting, the Ohio-Leipzig Transatlantic Student Summit offers a unique place that puts a spotlight on the neuralgic interface of science, policy making and communication. This is where the merits of transnational and interdisciplinary exchange come together, or to use the words of Professor Garrett once more: “There are so many global problems and challenges we have, they involve the conversations between social sciences and natural sciences. Students realize that when we talk about natural, social, and policy sciences—they are all related.” And of course, there is not only academic achievement to be gained, but new and lasting friendships that form in the annual student cohorts and carry this spirit into the future.