The Lally School of Management and Technology has signed a five-year agreement with Zhejiang University’s School of Management, hoping to enhance and strengthen the global reach of its entrepreneurial business and technology program. Among the top five universities in China, Zhejiang is one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious institutions.
The agreement was signed on August 4 by Zhejiang’s Dean Zhongming Wang, RPI Provost Robert E. Palazzo, and Dean of the Lally School of Management and Technology David Gautschi, and is set to formally launch in November 2009. “It’s an extremely exciting opportunity for the Lally School,” said Gautschi.
The core part of the agreement focuses on a linkage between Zhejiang and Lally’s Severino Center for Technological Research. The Severino Center’s primary goal is to ease the transition into entrepreneurial opportunities; the Lally School’s program appealed to Zhejiang “because of our emphasis on technology,” according to Gautschi.
Zhejiang University also partakes in collaborative efforts with Harvard University and Stanford University, which Gautschi says “puts Rensselaer in good company.”
The collaboration with Zhejiang will involve cooperation on a faculty exchange, innovation in corporate entrepreneurship, and an annual workshop for entrepreneurship held with representatives from both schools.
In January, Gautschi expects a virtual collaboration between the two schools, as well as a coordination of curriculums. This will allow students at RPI to take advantage of Zhejiang’s courses and vice versa.
Next summer, students will be able to take advantage of internships in Hangzhou, the picturesque city where Zhejiang is located, with companies such as Albany International, General Motors, Merck, Motorola, Robert Bosch, Siemens, Air Liquide, Panasonic, and Toshiba. Students will then then spend their fall term at Zhejiang.
Next year, Gautschi also expects a student exchange between RPI and Zhejiang. “The campus is a modern facility and also offers an enclave specifically for international students,” he said. Most of the classes at Zhejiang are offered in English, which Gautschi said may make the school a good addition to the Rensselaer Engineering Education Across Cultural Horizons initiative with the School of Engineering sometime in the future.
“We are very enthusiastic about our collaboration with the Lally School of Rensselaer,” said Wang in an RPI press release. “Our two institutions have very complementary strengths relating to global entrepreneurship and technology commercialization.”
“In serving the mandate of The Rensselaer Plan to transform the Institute into a pre-eminent technological research university with global reach and global impact, the formal agreement with Zhejiang University certainly hits the mark,” said Gautschi. “[Zhejiang] is a pre-eminent university in China with outstanding faculties of science, engineering, and management. The fit with Rensselaer is very good in terms of research interests.”
