The Howard University School of Business’ partnership with the University College of Dublin’s Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School saw the Prime Minister and U.S. Ambassador to Ireland paying a visit to Howard’s campus last Thursday.
The Prime Minister and U.S. Ambassador to Ireland visited Howard’s campus on Thursday, March 16, as product of a new-found partnership between Howard University’s School of Business (SOB) and the University College of Dublin’s (UCD) Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School.
With Howard’s graduate and undergraduate business students having recently visited UCD, the partnership is now in full fruition. According to UCD, the partnership between the two schools involves opportunities for “intensive study tours, lectures, collaborative projects with an emphasis on entrepreneurship and site visits to leading international firms.”
The UCD and Howard SOB partnership has drawn Ireland’s diplomatic leaders to Howard’s campus in the name of building a multicultural and diverse nation by way of the initiatives between the two universities. Prime Minister of Ireland, Leo Vardark, the U.S. Ambassador to Ireland, Claire Cronin, and the President of UCD, Mark Roger, met with Dr. Anthony D. Wilbon, the dean of Howard’s SOB, to discuss the partnership between the two universities. Wilbon discussed the origins of the relationship and his encounters with the diplomatic leaders with The Hilltop.
“We’re building a relationship with the University College of Dublin – started about two years ago – trying to work on collaboration around student exchanges, potential faculty exchanges, and so forth, and starting with that initial conversation, it bridged into us getting our students over there to understand the culture and what the environment would be like to go to graduate school there… So we took students there about three weeks ago and visited the University College of Dublin,” Wilbon explained.
“As a result of that, the Prime Minister was in town to do some other events around the politics of Ireland…and decided to stop by and kind of get a sense for what the relationship was and how it fits within the broader structure around the country and university building diversity as their population shifts to become much more multicultural,” Wilbon then clarified.
The Prime Minister was in town to visit President Biden in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, according to a press statement from the White House.
One of the 15 students that traveled to Dublin was Faith Bourne, a senior marketing major, who said she enjoyed her experience.
“It was enjoyable. It was a lot of sessions. A lot of it was about ESG [Environmental Social Governance] and investment in the country to see how they had expanded over time – I think it was supposed to parallel things that could be beneficial for the Black community. It would be something that mirrors our experience and it would be helpful to listen to how they had progressed…then see something similar that we could utilize for ourselves,” Bourne explained.
The relationship between Howard’s SOB and UCD only continues to grow as UCD students visited Howard’s campus last Thursday and UCD now offers scholarships to Howard graduates.
Copy edited by Jadyn Barnett
