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Excerpts from A University Turns to the World

I have often considered how to appraise U.S. development assistance, particularly the university research and development efforts in which MSU has figured prominently. From an American foreign policy perspective, they have been part of foreign aid and, as such, could be seen as an important part of the successful effort to contain Soviet expansion during the Cold War.

From a higher education or academic perspective, they have contributed significantly to the goal of bringing an international perspective to the campus and the classroom. Sending people to provide technical assistance abroad might also be viewed as contributing to staff development. Furthermore, projects with research goals generated data and significant new insight into such topics as food security in Africa, nutritious use of beans and cowpeas, tropical diseases, and educational planning.

Yet, from a more humanitarian and international development perspective, what was the impact of these programs on people in the developing countries? Did we, indeed, make a difference in the level of poverty, hunger, and disease in the countries in which Michigan State people worked? Have the institutions abroad that we helped to start and to strengthen contributed well to development? Did the people we educated have a better life and contribute to education, growth, and development in their home countries? . . .

In my own view, progress in developing countries has been accelerated greatly by these university efforts. The university technical assistance contribution, including training and research, was intertwined with other strands of aid, and our contribution to the mix was always hurt or helped by local trends. University technical assistance results cannot easily be appraised separately, apart from the aid effort generally. When they are, however, one can find all degrees of failures, but a much larger proportion of success stories.

Development is a never-ending story, and what may appear as a great success or failure one moment may contribute in opposite and unexpected ways if viewed again a few years later. Most development assistance interventions have their full share of unintended and unforeseen consequences. We do know that, given the right conditions, assistance to development has a strongly positive effect on the people in the developing country. Unfortunately, the right conditions have not always prevailed at the outset of foreign aid efforts. . . .

In some cases, the technical assistance project was on target and well received, but the situation in the country as a whole changed or dissolved in ways far beyond our "control." The work in Pakistan was successful, but the country fell apart, with the western provinces remaining and the eastern side becoming Bangladesh. The Vietnam project helped bring better management as the country erupted in civil war. Nigeria became embroiled in internal fighting, although the project to build a new university was highly successful by most standards. Tropical disease laboratories were established in the Sudan, but the country became increasingly inaccessible, torn by civil strife and anti-Western passions. . . .

I have seen the changes over the years in some developing countries assisted by MSU. Some are now considered to be middle-income rather than poor countries, and can no longer receive development funding from aid agencies. These include Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Turkey, Taiwan, South Korea, and Thailand, among others. Every one of them still has an array of problems, but at a level of urgency far different than those we encountered when we began with agriculture in Colombia, business education in Brazil, education and communications in Costa Rica, agriculture in South Korea and Taiwan, and education and administration in Thailand, to name a few. There are continuing problems amidst progress in all developing countries, and in many that we might consider "fully" developed as well.

There are also specific success stories of broad impact. Eradication of smallpox worldwide, the Green Revolution that countered periodic famine in Asia, and oral rehydration therapy for cholera are three very important examples that improved the lives of millions. One can also point to reliable data showing more education, longer life spans, declining famine, expanding democratic process, and other such measures of progress in the developing world. One way or another, Michigan State has been a part of all of these.

Ralph Smuckler, MSU international programs dean for more than 20 years, has written a new book soon to be released by MSU Press: A University Turns to the World: A Personal History of the Michigan State University International Story. The book recounts a nearly 40-year period in Michigan State University's long and proud history of international involvements.

A major expansion of these involvements occurred after World War II with MSU President John Hannah's recognition that the world was destined to become ever more interdependent and his conviction that American universities, particularly land-grant institutions, should be actively involved internationally in combating "hunger, misery, and despair" (as Hannah phrased it in a letter to U.S. President Truman).

In 1956, Hannah established the Office of International Programs, headed by a dean, the first such office among major universities in the United States. This office, later renamed the Office of International Studies and Programs (ISP), has played an important leadership role in MSU's international activities ever since.

Ralph Smuckler, who served as dean of ISP from 1969 to 1990, joined MSU's political science faculty in 1951 and quickly became involved in a number of international projects. He joined ISP under its first ISP dean, Glen Taggert, in 1957 and served as his deputy until Taggert left MSU to become president of Utah State University. Smuckler was appointed dean in 1969 on President Hannah's recommendation, a position he occupied until moving into President DiBiaggio's office in the summer of 1990. By the time Smuckler retired from MSU in 1993, he had witnessed, and been a major player in, the university's rise in international engagement and prominence and the institutionalization of international priorities across the campus and across the mission.

A University Turns to the World, with commentary based on personal involvement, chronicles a period that included a large number of technical assistance and development projects; the creation and growth of internationally oriented centers, institutes, and programs on the MSU campus; and the participation of the university in national organizations that helped to set international education policy in this country and foreign aid policy with respect to the developing world. Smuckler spent a number of those years away from campus, heading up projects in Vietnam and Pakistan and spending a sabbatical year in Washington, D.C., working on national policy issues.

The book's forward is written by Clifton R. Wharton Jr., MSU president from 1970 to 1979. He states:

Ralph Smuckler probably is the only person who could write this book. He has a true passion for his work, having committed himself to international aid programs long before "global" became a fashionable term. Through his personal experience in Asia, Latin America and Africa, he saw the benefits from such activities accruing both to the nations receiving aid and to the United States, and he devoted himself to bringing to bear the academic and scientific resources of American universities to advance these efforts. His book has captured, fully and accurately, how Michigan State University, the original 1862 model for the Morrill Act that established land-grant colleges, became the model for internationalism among public universities. His chapters on Vietnam, Africa and Pakistan illuminate how this heritage was put into global practice. This important book distills the wisdom Ralph has accumulated over a lifetime career and should be mandatory reading for all academic leaders, students and all those who share his vision that the land-grant principles of education and outreach know no boundaries.

As suggested by the accompanying excerpt from the chapter on "The Development Project Experience," Dean Smuckler has done more than write a book that touts MSU's international accomplishments-he has taken pains to evaluate them in a critical way from a perspective influenced by the passage of time, the accumulation of new experiences, and a recognition of major historical forces.