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Gronsky to head new Global Engagement Office

By Public Affairs

Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer made the following announcement in a CalMessage sent Tuesday to members of the campus community:

I am pleased to announce the establishment of the Global Engagement Office (GEO) whose charge will be to facilitate and coordinate the campus’s international initiatives and to foster coherence among them. GEO will also build on and encompass the functions of the International Visitors and Exchange Office (IVEO), which was established in 2009 to oversee the development of exchange agreements with international partner institutions and to coordinate visits of high-level international visitors to the Berkeley campus. The new and expanded office will operate under the name of GEO and will be led by Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Ron Gronsky, Special Faculty Assistant to the Chancellor for International Relations. More information about GEO may be found online.

By establishing the Global Engagement Office, I am following up on a recommendation from the February 2012 International Strategy Task Force (ISTF) report to “better coordinate international initiatives by centralizing responsibility in one senior administrator.” The specific charge to GEO includes the following functions:

* Gather and disseminate information about UC Berkeley’s global activities;
* Gather and disseminate information from relevant campus and Office of the President offices about risks that must be assessed before sanctioning activities or operations abroad;
* Facilitate coordination with campus regulatory and advisory bodies in the vetting of proposed institutional operations abroad for compliance with University, Campus, State, and Federal policies and regulations (while individual faculty involved in activities abroad are not required to work through GEO, they are welcome to contact the office for guidance or advice);
* Convene groups to elaborate global strategies in the wake of the ISTF report;
* Scan for opportunities that advance Berkeley’s strategies in the global arena;
* Facilitate identification of global partners for on-campus individuals, programs, and initiatives, assisting individuals and programs with review and approval processes;
* Alert campus leadership upon discovery of duplicated effort or inadvertent competition for the same resources;
* Engage faculty and the administration in setting or amending policy;
* Work with key administrators in Research, University Relations, Chancellor’s Office, Summer Sessions and Study Abroad, University Extension, and other units to ensure coordination among the varied global initiatives that emanate from their offices;
* Brief the senior administration regularly on the status and breadth of campus global initiatives, including an annual report to me at the end of June 2013.

I am grateful to Professor Gronsky for his willingness to take on this new responsibility, which is effective immediately. This initiative, and all our collective efforts on this front, is important for continuing to build on Berkeley’s already extraordinary profile internationally.

George Breslauer
Executive Vice Chancellor & Provost