On Tuesday, Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi was named a co-chair of a newly formed task force within the Association of American Universities (AAU). The venture is designed to facilitate further strategic work between American and Indian universities.

“It is an honor to be selected to help fortify the vital relationship between American and Indian universities,” Bendapudi said in a release. “I myself came to the United States from India to earn my doctorate from an American university, and have experienced firsthand what a transformative impact these kinds of partnerships can have.

“By building stronger bridges between our nations and our institutions of higher education, with a focus on leveraging the enormous potential of research across international lines, we can further empower our faculty and researchers while maximizing the influence of our scholarship for the global good,” she continued. 

The task force is already hard at work at Penn State. Bendapudi, in her address to the Faculty Senate in January, said that the university has already started to re-evaluate its transfer credit policies for international universities. These new policies are poised to meet the needs of prospective international students in India, while also providing existing international students with additional opportunities at Penn State.

“AAU is proud to work with our Indian counterparts to expand U.S.-Indian research and educational collaboration, and we look forward to working with India’s leading research universities to create a roadmap for a future of even more robust partnership,” said AAU President Barbara Snyder in a statement.

Bendapudi’s fellow co-chairs include Sunil Kumar, the provost of Johns Hopkins University and the incoming president of Tufts University, and Robert J. Jones, the chancellor of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.