Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Wichita State Signs Transfer Student Partnership With College in Sri Lanka

  • 09/25/17

WICHITA, KS – Wichita State University (WSU) Provost Tony Vizzini and College of Engineering Dean Royce Bowden on Friday, September 22, signed an agreement with Lalith Gamage, vice chancellor of the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT), creating a partnership that will allow international students to transfer from SLIIT to WSU and complete a degree in four years.

The partnership, which starts next semester, will create a pathway for engineering students to take two years of courses at SLIIT and finish with a four-year degree at Wichita State two years later. The agreement is designed for students working toward a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering or engineering technology – mechatronics.

This is believed to be the first "2+2" agreement involving an institution in another country, says Deepak Gupta, WSU associate professor of industrial engineering, who helped negotiate the agreement. In August, Wichita State signed a 2+2 agreement with Cowley County Community College; more partnerships between WSU and area community colleges are planned for the future.

Often when students transfer, not all courses meet WSU degree requirements. This results in most transfers taking three additional years to complete instead of two. With 2+2 agreements, partner institutions work to ensure all courses meet transfer requirements, allowing a seamless transition that ensures students don't waste time or money on classes that aren't a good fit for their final goals.

The partnership with SLIIT grew out of efforts to recruit international students from the region and was supported by numerous administrative, faculty and staff members from the Office of Academic Affairs, College of Engineering, Office of the Registrar and Office of International Education at WSU, as well as faculty and staff members from SLIIT.

"Having a relationship like this will streamline our recruiting efforts," Gupta says.

SLIIT is located in Malabe, a suburb of Colombo, the commercial center and largest city of Sri Lanka. The Colombo metro area has 5.6 million people.

SLIIT was founded in 1999 as an institution created to meet workforce demand for information technology and computer science specialists. It has added engineering to its disciplines as it has grown, says Gamage, himself an electronic and telecommunication engineer.

"We have greatly benefitted from partnerships like this one," he says.

Featured

  • Dallas ISD Voters Approve $6.2B Bond Package

    Dallas ISD voters have approved a record-setting $6.2-billion bond package that district leaders say will modernize aging campuses, eliminate portable classrooms and reshape learning environments across one of the nation’s largest school systems.

  • abstract illustration of school gym

    How the Gymnasium Can Serve as a Model for Learning Space Design

    Multipurpose gyms work because flexibility was built into the brief from the start, not retrofitted later. The same logic applies to academic spaces.

  • nursing students talk while studying in a hallway

    Elsevier Launches VR Simulation Solution for Nursing Students

    Elsevier has introduced Shadow Health Lab with Virtual Reality, a simulation platform that allows nursing students to interact with virtual patients and build clinical judgment skills in a safe, realistic environment.

  • Campus Safety Requires Using Every Resource Available

    Across the U.S., school and campus leaders are facing a security landscape that has changed dramatically over the past decade. Incidents on school property have increased in recent years, with several consecutive years setting record totals. According to analysis of data by CNN, dozens of shootings now occur on school grounds annually across K-12 and higher education environments.