McRobbie to Toast New Center in Germany

McRobbie took the helm at Indiana University in 2007.

Indiana University President Michael McRobbie is set to travel next week to Germany to celebrate the opening of the school’s third Global Gateway office. IU says the trip will include a five-member delegation and help "renew a historically important" relationship with Free University Berlin.

The universities trace collaborations back 50 years. The German office joins similar offices in New Delhi and Beijing. The trip that kicks off November 2 will include meetings with German education executives and representatives from the European nation’s equivalent to the National Science Foundation, the German Research Foundation.

McRobbie says "part of Indiana University’s proud history of global engagement is our role in establishing the Free University of Berlin in 1948, which has grown to become one of Germany’s and the world’s great universities and which was a beacon of free and independent thinking and learning in darker times. Our long-standing partnership with the Free University and other university partnerships in many other countries, as well as our global gateway offices, confirms IU as a truly international university engaged with the world through research and scholarship and through the education of the next generation of global citizens."

During the visit, McRobbie will speak at an annual conference for the Council on International Educational Exchange, which is the leading U.S. non-governmental international education organization. He is also slated to meet with U.S. ambassador to Germany John Emerson.

The delegation will include IU Vice President for International Affairs David Zaret, IU Vice President for Research Fred Cate and IU first lady Laurie Burns McRobbie.

President McRobbie has been well-traveled abroad in recent years with visits including Africa in 2013, Turkey last year and a May 2014 East Asia trip that had stops including Vietnam, China and Japan.