August 9, 1999 Volume 21, No. 18

Ithaca College Teams up with Scottish Institution for Exchanges Ithaca College will be collaborating on the development of educational programs with Queen Margaret University College, located in Edinburgh, Scotland. Under a recently signed five-year agreement, the two institutions will promote study-abroad opportunities, faculty exchanges, and joint research projects at one another’s campuses. Queen Margaret has about 3,000 full-time and 2,000 part-time students in both undergraduate and graduate programs. Ithaca College president Peggy R. Williams and her counterpart at Queen Margaret University College, principal and vice patron Joan Stringer, recently signed an agreement to collaborate on educational programs. With them were Tanya Saunders, assistant provost for special programs, and Adrian Sherman, director of international programs. "The two institutions are very similar," says Adrian Sherman, director of the Office of International Programs. "In particular, Queen Margaret has programs in theater, the health sciences, and communications that match up well with what Ithaca offers." Last semester some theater students from Ithaca’s London Center were invited to attend a production at Queen Margaret’s recently acquired Gateway Theatre, the new home for its Department of Drama. Sherman says the London Center hopes to return the favor by hosting a visit this fall. "This agreement establishes a more formal arrangement between the two schools," he says, "though we have kept it as general as possible in order to allow us to be as creative as possible. We don’t want to discount anything before we have the opportunity to attempt it." Sherman says there have been discussions about the idea of Ithaca students mounting a production of their own in the Gateway Theatre during Edinburgh’s famous Fringe Festival, and the two colleges may even explore creating a joint degree program, perhaps in the area of cultural studies. In the meantime, an exchange of students and faculty will help get the formal collaboration off the ground.