Provost Ron Daniels may have just completed his first year at Penn, but his projects reach as far away as Botswana.
The initiative in the landlocked south African nation was part of what Daniels hopes will become a much larger presence for the University on the international stage.
Last year, the Provost's Office commissioned a Task Force on Global Engagement, which issued recommendations in February for ways the University could increase its international profile and bring more foreign scholars to campus, Daniels said.
So Daniels himself took off for Botswana in August. He returned after a week-long visit, having made a long-term commitment of University resources to fight AIDS there.
For the past five years, Harvey Friedman, chief of the Infectious Diseases division at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, has been working with Infectious Disease professor Steve Gluckman and other Medical School faculty to help administer HIV care in this country, where an estimated 40 percent of adults are HIV positive.
Friedman, who himself goes to Botswana every three months, said that Penn faculty and students are currently working in two major hospitals there.
This past year, the provost decided to get involved.
Daniels said that Penn is working with the University of Botswana to start a medical school and graduate teaching program to train fellows, interns and residents.
He says he hopes to transform the existing program from a few researchers traveling to Botswana into a full-fledged attack on AIDS.
Daniels' office will pay a salary for a new program director, who will "represent the program and help us build it," he said.
"The idea is to . really see this as a cluster of activity that would enlist the involvement of people throughout the University," he added.
Therefore, Daniels said, he wanted Penn's involvement in Botswana to extend beyond the seven full-time Medical faculty, 30 to 40 medical students and 15 to 20 residents there at a time.
For example, Penn's involvement in Botswana has given Management professor Ian MacMillan a chance to implement some of his own ideas. He has been working for about two years with the Wharton School, the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Medical School to develop a program that will allow nurses to make diagnoses for HIV-positive patients in order to reduce doctors' workloads.
But the provost's international outlook is not confined to Botswana.
MacMillan, for example, is also working with the School of Veterinary Medicine to increase the animal food supply in Zambia and boost catfish farming in Malawi.
Daniels' office has established Penn's Global Initiatives Fund, which finances researchers' global projects with up to $125,000. Two professors already have grants.
JoAnn McCarthy, the assistant provost for international affairs, added that the Office of International Programs is working under the provost to encourage new projects and make sure that people are aware of existing opportunities to get involved.
"Our message is garbled," she said. "Penn doesn't get credit for the extraordinary amount of global engagement that we're already undertaking."
