Build­ing on the University’s efforts to expand its pres­ence in Latin Amer­ica, Uni­ver­sity Pres­i­dent Shirley Tilgh­man and four of her col­leagues in the admin­is­tra­tion will travel to South Amer­ica over fall break to for­mal­ize arrange­ments for a strate­gic part­ner­ship with the Uni­ver­sity of Sao Paulo in Brazil.

In her 2007 “Prince­ton in the World” report, Tilgh­man out­lined the University’s plans to enhance its global pres­ence in the face of a grow­ing trend toward inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion in higher education. In the past few years, Yale and New York Uni­ver­sity have made strides toward inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion by open­ing cam­puses in Sin­ga­pore and Abu Dhabi, respec­tively. While the Uni­ver­sity has not announced any sim­i­lar plans to open a branch cam­pus, it has begun to develop a rela­tion­ship with Brazil specif­i­cally over the past few years.

A for­mal sign­ing cer­e­mony, expected to take place next Wednes­day between Tilgh­man and USP rec­tor Joao Grandino Rodas, is one of sev­eral events sched­uled dur­ing Tilghman’s week­long visit.

Tilgh­man will be joined by Uni­ver­sity Vice Pres­i­dent and Sec­re­tary Robert Dur­kee ’69, Assis­tant Vice Pres­i­dent for Alumni Affairs Mar­garet Miller ’80 and anthro­pol­ogy pro­fes­sor Joao Biehl, who is Brazil­ian and con­ducts research on the coun­try, will join Jeremy Adel­man, a his­tory pro­fes­sor who directs the Coun­cil for Inter­na­tional Teach­ing and Research. They will arrive in San­ti­ago, Chile on Sun­day, Oct. 28 and return home from Buenos Aires, Argentina on Nov. 3.

Dur­ing their stay, they will visit a host of uni­ver­si­ties and sec­ondary schools in San­ti­ago, Chile, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Buenos Aires, Argentina and meet with alumni. But Adel­man said the pri­mary pur­pose of the trip is to strengthen Uni­ver­sity ties with peer insti­tu­tions in Chile, Brazil and Argentina.

“We want to be engaged in deep­en­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for stu­dents and fac­ulty to move back and forth across bor­ders within the pro­grams and projects that the two uni­ver­si­ties code­sign,” said Adel­man, who devised the global partnership.

The USP part­ner­ship will build upon a long­stand­ing aca­d­e­mic rela­tion­ship between the two uni­ver­si­ties. Last spring the Global Col­lab­o­ra­tive Net­works fund awarded a grant to Biehl and Por­tuguese pro­fes­sor Pedro Meira Mon­teiro for a joint three-year fac­ulty research project with USP.

The pro­gram, called “Race and Cit­i­zen­ship in the Amer­i­cas,” offers a research plat­form for stu­dents and fac­ulty to “dis­cuss the inter­face of race and cit­i­zen­ship in Brazil in com­par­i­son to the United States,” Mon­teiro said. It is one of a hand­ful of global net­work projects rec­og­nized by the Coun­cil for Inter­na­tional Teach­ing and Research to pro­mote col­lab­o­ra­tive schol­ar­ship across borders.

Adel­man noted that a sec­ondary pur­pose of the trip is to increase the University’s vis­i­bil­ity among prospec­tive under­grad­u­ate stu­dents in South America.

“We’ve not tra­di­tion­ally had big foot­prints in South Amer­ica, and we’d like to be con­sid­ered by the best stu­dents there,” Adel­man said.

Accord­ing to Adel­man, the Uni­ver­sity decided to part­ner with USP specif­i­cally because it is ranked as the top insti­tu­tion of higher edu­ca­tion in Latin America.

The Uni­ver­sity “is very con­cerned with part­ner­ing with insti­tu­tions that have qual­ity like ours,” Adel­man said. He added that USP is unique in that it fos­ters “mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary engage­ment,” has a diver­sity of inter­ests and is in a loca­tion that appeals to students.

Dur­ing her stay, Tilgh­man will also attend a series of alumni gath­er­ings in each of the four major cities. The Tiger­tones, an all-male a cap­pella group at the Uni­ver­sity, will per­form at the events in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo dur­ing their fall break trip to Brazil.

“It’s very excit­ing for us to have Pres­i­dent Tilgh­man here,” Prince­ton Club of Brazil Pres­i­dent Roberto Pons ’86 said. Pons said he found it sur­pris­ing that since his grad­u­a­tion from the Uni­ver­sity over 25 years ago, not one Uni­ver­sity pres­i­dent has made a trip down to South America.

“We feel very hon­ored and spe­cial that she is tak­ing her time to come to Brazil and do some­thing here at the end of her tenure,” he added.

Accord­ing to Pons, there are approx­i­mately 50 alumni cur­rently resid­ing in Brazil, and every year a grow­ing num­ber of grad­u­ate stu­dents travel to the region for their studies.

The fall break trip com­ple­ments recent on-campus ini­tia­tives to fur­ther the University’s ties with Latin America.

This win­ter, Mon­teiro and Biehl will host eight vis­it­ing schol­ars from Brazil at an on-campus col­lo­quium on Feb. 22 and 23. The event will be sup­ple­mented by a series of work­shops on race and cit­i­zen­ship to take place later in the spring.

In addi­tion, the Depart­ment of Span­ish and Por­tuguese Lan­guages and Cul­tures will once again offer the Prince­ton in Brazil pro­gram, which debuted last sum­mer. A total of 22 under­grad­u­ates par­tic­i­pated in the month­long immer­sion pro­gram, codi­rected by Mon­teiro and Direc­tor of the Por­tuguese Lan­guage Pro­gram Nicola Cooney, last year at the Insti­tuto Brasil-Estados Unidos in Rio de Janeiro.

Accord­ing to Mon­teiro, the grow­ing inter­est in Brazil­ian stud­ies reflects a con­tin­ued trend of eco­nomic and infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment in the region. Brazil will be a media hotspot over the next few years as it hosts both the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Sum­mer Olympics.

“This sort of goes par­al­lel with a broader Prince­ton inter­est in Brazil,” Mon­teiro said. “It’s about a new mar­ket, it’s about a coun­try that is really grow­ing and a coun­try that has some­how pro­tected its econ­omy from the finan­cial cri­sis we are still fac­ing here in the United States.”

While a large focus of the trip will be on Brazil, the group plans to visit neigh­bor­ing insti­tu­tions in Chile and Argentina as well. Adel­man explained that although the Uni­ver­sity is not cur­rently con­sid­er­ing any strate­gic part­ner­ships in Chile, it is com­mit­ted to devel­op­ing rela­tions with close col­lab­o­ra­tors and col­leagues in the area. He noted that a num­ber of grad­u­ate alumni hold teach­ing posi­tions at the Pon­ti­f­i­cial Catholic Uni­ver­sity of Chile.