The Secretary of State of Indiana negotiated the establishment of academic and mobility partnerships between the University of Debrecen and the higher education institutions of the state of Indiana in the United States. During his visit on Monday, Diego Morales discussed with rector Zoltán Szilvássy and also met with students at the university’s Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences and Environmental Management.
Through his own life story, Diego Morales feels it is his mission to provide young people with the widest possible range of opportunities, among other things, he came to the University of Debrecen with his wife, Sidonia Nicolae, who is the honorary consul of Hungary in the State of Indiana, and with Béla Kocsy, a diplomat specializing in agriculture and the environment in Washington. Indiana’s first Latino secretary of state came to the country as a legal immigrant from Guatemala at the age of 14. He completed his studies on scholarship at Indiana University and Purdue University, then at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. He served in the United States Army, after which he entered politics. He has been the 63rd elected Secretary of State of Indiana since November 2022.
The American delegation was received by Rector Zoltán Szilvássy and Endre Harsányi, Vice Rector responsible for the development of agricultural and food science. At the meeting, Diego Morales offered his intervention in establishing partnerships between the University of Debrecen and the higher education institutions of the state of Indiana and advocated the initiation of academic collaborations and student mobility programs. He also added that thanks to Béla Kocsy, Hungary is becoming more and more widely known in Indiana for its higher education capabilities.
Rector Zoltán Szilvássy, explaining the research and development strategies of the university, emphasized that the institution not only has faculties covering scientific fields, but also sectoral cabinets based on set strategic objectives and, in addition to all this, accredited clusters according to the so-called four-helix innovation structure. Recently, market-leading foreign companies that have settled in Debrecen have cooperated with the institution in many areas, and through these partnerships, the University of Debrecen became a member of prestigious international networks, the only one among Hungarian higher education institutions.
Several opportunities for scientific cooperation were touched upon at the meeting, including in the fields of agricultural, medical and pharmaceutical sciences, as well as in the development of functional foods as their connection point. Diego Morales invited the leaders of UD for a personal visit to Indiana and to the leading universities there, with which he is also advocating for student exchange programs, to establish and initiate concrete contact. Deputy Rector Endre Harsányi also emphasized the outstanding opportunity of mobility for agricultural students in Debrecen, as Purdue University is among the five best agricultural universities in the world based on the rankings.
As part of the university program, the American guests also met students at the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences and Environmental Management. The Secretary of State of Indiana shared his life’s journey with undivided agricultural engineer and precision agricultural engineer training, as well as vocational college and PhD students, to encourage as many young people as possible to seize opportunities by passing on his experiences.
(unideb.hu)
