Poole College Establishes College-wide Office of Global Programs

The NC State Poole College of Management has created an Office of Global Programs, expanding to the entire college resources that have supported its undergraduate international academic programs for nearly a decade.

“This new office provides a centralized resource to support international initiatives in all of the college’s academic degree programs,” said Richard Warr, interim associate dean for faculty and academic affairs. “It also provides a new resource for our faculty, who are increasingly interested in developing or expanding study and research engagements with international colleagues.”

“The Office of Global Programs will work with faculty members to help create those opportunities and bring new support to our graduate programs’ international initiatives,” said Robert Sandruck, who will serve as director of the office. He joined Poole College in 2010 as director of what was then the college’s Undergraduate Global Programs unit in the Office of Undergraduate Programs.

Facilitating College-wide Collaboration

In his expanded scope as director of the new Office of Global Programs – Poole Global for short – Sandruck builds on the college’s success in supporting international undergraduate study programs, creating a service unit that will also provide logistical and other support for international study opportunities in the college’s Jenkins MBA, Jenkins Master of Accounting, and Master of Management – Global Global Luxury and Management (GLAM) programs as well as graduate programs in economics. In doing so, it will also help the college leverage its worldwide partnerships to expand its global footprint, he said.

Sandruck and his team will be meeting with faculty and staff members in the college’s various graduate programs “to determine how we can add value in support of their programs’ international focus,” he said.

Located in the Office of Undergraduate Programs suite – 2150 Nelson Hall – Global Programs initially focused on facilitating undergraduate student participation in study abroad programs including summer, semester and the IBDD  programs, which is offered together with the IPBS partners (International Partnership of Business Schools), which the college joined in 2009.

It also supported collaboration with SKEMA Business School, a global business school based in France, after SKEMA established its U.S. campus on NC State’s Centennial Campus. ”SKEMA is one of our key international partners,” Sandruck said.

Creation of the Office of Global Programs was triggered during a meeting Sandruck had with GLAM program staff, he said.

“We realized how similar our respective work was, yet we had never communicated,” he said. Both the GLAM and undergraduate teams were recruiting students for global dual degree programs, and engaged with similar international organizations, such as the Italian and French chambers of commerce in New York.

“We both had similar processes,” Sandruck said, “so why were we doing this separately?” In a meeting with Kristie McGowan, GLAM program director, they realized the synergies that existed between the two programs. Discussions for the new college-wide program began with then-dean Annette L. Ranft and continued with Interim Dean Frank Buckless, who facilitated the change.

Resources for Faculty

The new office will also be available to assist faculty members pursuing international research initiatives. “We have great partners around the world and could make connections for faculty engaging in international research opportunities and sabbaticals,” Sandruck said. “We hope to launch several initiatives this year that will help faculty members engage with our global academic partners,” he added.

Faculty and academic program directors interested in working with the new unit are encouraged to plan ahead. “We need to be thinking about a year out,” he said, noting that the college’s summer 2020 program for undergraduate students studying abroad is already set.”

Ellen Frost, who has served as assistant director of global programs in the college’s Office of Undergraduate Programs since July 2016, is now associate director of the college-wide program. She will focus primarily on providing support for Poole College students heading out to their international experiences.

“I am excited to take the strategies that have been successful for undergraduate programs and adapt them to the needs of the entire college,” Frost said, “and I look forward to strengthening the relationship the office has with a variety of units in the college and around the university, to further develop the portfolio of international programs in Poole.”

A new program coordinator will be added to the team, to manage students coming to Poole College as international exchange students or as participants in GLAM and IPBS partner programs, and to support dual degree recruitment.

“The goal is to provide support across all our degree programs,” Sandruck said, noting that across the university, “Each of the colleges has invested in some kind of staffing for their colleges’ global programs. Each approach it a little different, but we remain the institutional leader. One out of every five students who go abroad at NC State is a Poole student, so we are sending more students proportionately than any other college, and hope to see that kind of growth in our international programs continue.”

Contact Details

• The new Office of Global Studies will remain in the college’s undergraduate programs suite for now (2150 Nelson Hall).
• For more information or to discuss international partnership ideas, send an email message to the Office of Global Programs’ email address – poole_global@ncsu.edu – or contact Sandruck directly at robert_sandruck@ncsu.edu.