Newswise — Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernández is visiting the University of Illinois at Chicago this week to discuss joint projects in public opinion research, higher education and health care.
"UIC has a longstanding partnership with President Fernández and the Dominican Republic," said Allan Lerner, professor of public administration and director of the UIC Office of International Affairs. "He is committed to making government more transparent and to strengthening democratic institutions. Health care and education are high on his agenda, and UIC is heavily engaged in research, curriculum development and public service in those areas."
The Survey Research Laboratory in the UIC College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs, under the direction of Tim Johnson, professor of public administration, is providing advanced education to Dominican visitors on public opinion research. Improving the reliability of data is critical, said Lerner, "to assure international funding sources that they can accurately measure the problems they are trying to alleviate."
The project is sponsored by a Dominican nonprofit organization, Fundaglobe (Global Democracy and Development Foundation) to improve the Dominican Republic's contributions to worldwide academic, governmental and commercial interchange. The Dominican visitors training at UIC will work in Fundaglobe's National Opinion Center.
The Dominican president's agenda also includes meetings with Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Mayor Richard M. Daley and Cook County Board President John Stroger. UIC is one of only three U.S. universities that he will visit. The others are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and New York University, where projects are underway in information technology and law, respectively.
For more information about the UIC Office of International Affairs, visit http://www.uic.edu/depts/oia/home
UIC ranks among the nation's top 50 universities in federal research funding and is Chicago's largest university with 25,000 students, 12,000 faculty and staff, 15 colleges and the state's major public medical center. A hallmark of the campus is the Great Cities Commitment, through which UIC faculty, students and staff engage with community, corporate, foundation and government partners in hundreds of programs to improve the quality of life in metropolitan areas around the world.
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