We arrive in Sao Paulo after a long but uneventful flight and are taken to our hotel to “freshen up”. The city and state of Sao Paulo are at the heart of the economy of Brazil, and it is not surprising that our business delegation starts here. First impressions are of a large industrious city, rather bleak and uncompromising, a perspective that is not aided by the rain and unseasonable cold.
We meet as a University group for breakfast with Minister David Willetts. There is a little gallows humour about student recruitment this year, with different experiences on offer from the universities present. As ever, David is an enthusiastic and well informed host, and suggested that we should find some time to discuss our student recruitment challenges this year (more later on this). Despite our occasional differences, I remain of the view that the sector is well served by him as Minister at a time when public spending is under such pressure.
We get an outline of the programme for the day which is evolving all the time – a morning to sign some new agreements and for discussions with existing and potential partner universities. The UK Vice-Chancellors find at short notice that they are required to give a short speech, and each of us gets the opportunity to set out our stall to the assembled group of local universities. I took the opportunity to showcase some of our existing and evolving collaborations, particularly in engineering and the life sciences. Not surprisingly I made much of the potential that the University has to contribute to the technological innovations that will be needed by Brazil in the exploitation of their offshore oil and gas resources, to food security and bio-diversity, and to support their commitment to sustainable energy.
Sao Paulo is home to some of the country’s best universities especially the University of Sao Paulo (USP), the Federal University, Sao Paulo (UNIFEST) and University Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). We have existing relations with each, and UNICAMP is now a partner university in the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN). It was a great opportunity to strengthen and elaborate our existing relationship through discussions with the Rectors of those universities. I was also particularly pleased to meet with senior representatives from British Gas (known these days as “BG”) who are investing heavily in research and development in Brazil and are looking for UK university partners, including Southampton.
The day also included an afternoon seminar on knowledge and technology transfer, and an evening reception where we joined our business delegation colleagues. As I had experienced before, these occasions are highly productive, and I was pleased to meet with senior colleagues from existing industry partners such as Babcock, and Arup, as well as making new connections ranging from NATS (National Air Traffic Systems), and General Dynamics, through to shoe designer and manufacturer Kat Maconie who (not surprisingly) was wearing an extraordinary pair of shoes to the reception! (http://www.katmaconie.com/#/shoe-perfection )
The trip was a great chance to catch up with my colleague and fellow Australian, Martin Bean, the VC of the Open University. He is an inspiring and fun character and always challenges me to consider current and emerging opportunities in distance education.
It will be obvious by now that I haven’t mentioned the Prime Minister. He is actually in New York, taking his slot at the UN General Assembly today and will be with us tomorrow.
Read Part Eight – The Global Citizen:
http://isoton.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/vice-chancellors-blog-part-eight-the-global-citizen/