Penn-Singapore partnership comes to fruition

In recent years, Penn's campus has expanded west and east, to the north and to the south. And the University's influence is now being felt overseas in Singapore. Last week, Singapore Prime Minister Goh Tok Chong met with University President Judith Rodin to talk about various ways the University can work with Singapore's developing industries. "It is very clear that people are recognizing that American industry is developing from the research engines in our University, and that fuels our economy," Rodin explained. This summer, a two-year long partnership between Penn and Singapore came to fruition when the new Singapore Management University admitted its first class. SMU's undergraduate business curriculum is largely modeled on Wharton's own course load, and its president is a former Wharton deputy dean. "They were very pleased with the cooperation they've gotten from Wharton," Rodin said of Singapore. But she said it is too soon to tell whether the program is an overall success. "We'll see after the first class how much they were able to develop the entrepreneurial business curriculum they were aspiring to," Rodin noted. Next on the agenda for Singapore and Penn: the life sciences. Rodin said on Thursday she and Goh discussed various ways the University could collaborate with the developing country. "We're still exploring what that collaboration might be," she said, noting that it could be anything from a greater number of students traveling to Singapore to joint ventures in research. "They're very eager to get up to speed in the life sciences," Rodin said. In Goh's day at Penn, he visited both the University City Sciences Center on Market Street and the Biomedical Research Building II/III laboratory -- all to familiarize himself with Penn's investment in the life sciences. Penn's involvement in the field of functional genomics grabbed the attention of Singapore, Rodin said. "They're very interested in functional genomics, which is something we've made a push in," she noted. But Rodin cautioned that nothing was decided yet. "We're still at an early stage," she said. To help plans move forward, the head of the Singapore Economic Development Board is expected to visit this fall. And the small South Asian archipelago nation has asked that Provost Robert Barchi take a Penn delegation to Singapore. While a partnership with Singapore will likely focus on helping the developing country catch up to the world's leading industrial countries, Penn has a few things to gain as well. "It helps us by exposing us in that part of the world," Wharton Vice Dean on Executive Education Robert Mittelstaedt said. And Rodin said that international partnerships expose the University to resources they might not already have, as well as get Penn's name out to more and more people. The University is likely to explore similar partnerships with other countries. "We're exploring some things with Great Britain; we're exploring some things with other countries," Rodin said. As to the possibility of students in Singapore waking up to find a University of Pennsylvania campus in their neighborhood, Rodin said it is not in Penn's plans. "Building a Penn somewhere else is probably not something we are going to do," she said.

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