SPEA partners with Jamaican university
May 25, 2007
KOKOMO, Ind.—Indiana University Kokomo faculty from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs will assist The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus in Kingston, Jamaica, in establishing UWI’s Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health program. The partnership could involve faculty and student exchanges, joint research and conferences, and sharing of technical information.
SPEA Assistant Dean Robert Dibie, Ph.D., helped initiate the partnership, after delivering the keynote address at a UWI Environmental Policy forum in October 2006. Assistant Professor of Public Affairs Karl Besel, Ph.D., and Assistant Professor of Political Science Matthew Bradley, Ph.D., also presented at that conference.
Dibie and other SPEA faculty have tentative plans to teach at UWI and collaborate on tourism and environmental pollution research there. Dibie will serve as an external examiner in UWI’s master’s and doctoral program in environmental policy.
A public university, UWI is the region’s premier educational institution, serving students from the 16 nations of the Caribbean Commonwealth, Dibie explained. “It offers a wide range of undergraduate and graduate programs . . . with a strong emphasis on Caribbean issues, science, and technology.”
UWI invited Dibie to give a series of lectures on environmental policy at the Mona Campus in October 2007.
In 2006, IU Kokomo established another international partnership with Babcock University (BU) in Nigeria. Recently, BU invited Dibie to conduct an ethics workshop and present a series of lectures in Nigeria in June 2007. While at Babcock University, Dibie will serve as a consultant in helping the institution establish a post-graduate program in public management.
SPEA offers undergraduate and graduate programs in public management, covering such disciplines as public administration and policy, nonprofit management, criminal justice administration, and homeland security. To learn more about SPEA programs, visit www.iuk.edu/spea or call (765) 455-9417.
