— Office of Global Engagement — Partnerships — International Agreements

International Agreements

UNMC has active partnership agreements around the globe, laying the foundation for profound and enriching international educational and research experiences for both faculty and students.

UNMC's goal for international agreements is to build on the academic standing of the collaborating universities. The collaboration should enhance each institution’s competitive advantage in the discipline as well as their international standing while nurturing outstanding research that leads faculty and students to rigorous scholarly and professional training in an international setting.

Our office assists with these partnerships by:

Developing and implementing new and established guidelines and policies for international agreements.
Drafting, revising, and editing the content of international agreements and coordinating the review and approval process.
Liaising with UNMC Legal Affairs, Business and Finance, Research Compliance and Export Control to process agreements and ensure compliance with university, state and federal laws and policies.
Maintaining university-wide databases of all pending and finalized international agreements.

Types of Agreements

These are the types of international agreements in which UNMC most commonly enters:

Memorandum of Understanding

International Agreement

The general international memorandum of understanding declares an intent to explore opportunities to collaborate in areas that would be mutually beneficial to each institution. These may lead to more specific activities and goals, which could then be expressed in the form of detailed agreements. A memorandum of understanding:

Expresses an intent to explore a closer relationship with an institution.
Publicly records the mutual interest to collaborate.
Provides a symbolic foundation for the institutional relationship.
Contains no financial commitments and is explicitly non-binding.

Procedure:

The interested UNMC faculty or staff member completes the international MOU request form and submits it via email to our office.
Our office works with export control for the initial screen.
We work with UNMC faculty and staff and with the partner institution to draft the MOU.
We route the draft to secure approvals from general counsel and the export control office.
We prepare the final documents and secure the signatures.
The UNMC faculty or staff member sends a scanned copy of the MOU via email to our office.

The agreement provides a strategic advantage to UNMC for concrete and specific activities of importance, such as:

Carrying out UNMC's strategic international goals and providing a diplomatic framework for institutional relationships.
Codifying a partnership involving significant collaboration and creating a legally binding document.
Specifying activities, resources, outcomes, obligations and limitations by each partner.
Possibly including, but not restricted to, student exchanges (reciprocal or non-reciprocal), study abroad programs, faculty/scholar/staff exchanges and cooperative degree programs.

Procedure:

1. The interested UNMC faculty or staff member:

Discusses the collaboration with the appropriate chair, dean or vice chancellor.
Discusses with the associate vice chancellor for global engagement.

2. The faculty or staff member completes the international agreement request form and submits it to:

The appropriate dean or vice chancellor for review and approval.
Our office via email.

3. Our office works with the faculty or staff member and the partner institution to draft the agreement. The draft is then sent for review and approval by:

All related chairs, deans and vice chancellors.
General counsel.
Export control.

4. Our office prepares the final documents and secures the signatures.

The faculty or staff member must submit to our office via email a scanned copy of the entire agreement.

Zenghan “Hannah” Tong, PhD

Director, Academic Partnerships

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Phone: 402-559-3797