Global Contacts Bring New Perspectives

In October I had the pleasure of spending a week in Chonju, South Korea, visiting Chonbuk National University College of Veterinary Medicine. For a decade Professor Ibulaimu Kakoma, who accompanied me, has maintained contacts with students and faculty there. He currently is involved in a research project that unites the University of Illinois, Chonbuk, and Makerere University in Uganda.

During our trip we signed a memorandum of understanding with Chonbuk National University to continue the relationship between the two institutions. I spoke with veterinary and graduate students and with faculty members, three of whom had spent time at our College as a PhD student, post-doc, and faculty member on sabbatical.

Among our activities in South Korea were visiting a pig processing plant and a beautiful national park in the mountains. I also worked the necropsy floor and read slides with a group of graduate students that included citizens of Pakistan and Japan as well as of Korea.

International connections such as these bring value to our College, both by increasing our visibility in the world scientific community and by expanding our awareness of other peoples and the ways we can have a positive impact on other institutions and populations. These collaborations make possible research and teaching opportunities that we wouldn’t otherwise have. In South Korea, for example, they study infectious diseases not seen in our country.

Byung Moo Rim, DVM, PhD, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Chonbuk National University, welcomed Dean Herbert Whiteley and Professor Ibulaimu Kakoma during their visit.

A great many College faculty are invited to lecture in other countries, share data and materials with their counterparts abroad, and host visiting students and scientists. Many are also engaged in long-range scientific collaborations around the world.

• The Laboratory of Molecular Parasitology, headed by Dr. Roberto Docampo, has collaborative projects under way in Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Great Britain, Finland, France, and Sweden. Its work seeks chemotherapeutic control of parasitic protozoan diseases, such as African sleeping sickness, Chagas’ disease, malaria, and toxoplasmosis, which affect an estimated 3 billion people worldwide.

• Dr. Val Beasley directs the Envirovet Summer Institute, which has brought together veterinarians, veterinary students, and wildlife biologists from every continent to study terrestrial and aquatic wildlife and ecosystem health in developed and developing countries. This past summer a new regional variant of the course focused on the shared ecosystems of the nine countries that border the Baltic Sea in northern Europe.

• Our Veterinary Teaching Hospital has a memorandum of understanding with Hannover University in Germany. More than 20 German students have completed part of their clinical studies here in the past decade.

• Dr. Mike Kinsel of our Zoological Pathology Program participates in the Namibian Carnivore Monitoring Program, which is building an unprecedented database on the demographics, habitats, diseases, genetics, and reproductive issues of Namibia’s population of lions, leopards, cheetahs, and other carnivores. The projects goal is to identify effective conservation measures.

It’s a small world. We can’t afford to be isolated on the prairie of Illinois. We need international activities—both ones that bring visiting students and researchers to Illinois and those that carry our people abroad—to have an understanding of what’s happening globally. Faculty experiences directly benefit our professional and graduate students and help us bring an international perspective into everything we do.