Explore current partnerships
Types of Partnerships and Activities
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The University of Rochester engages in a variety of partnerships collaborations with schools around the world. Explore this page to get a high-level overview of these types of activities.
Ready to take action?: You can explore our current partnerships, or learn how to start a new partnership.
Academic partnerships
Academic partnerships and collaborations are critical to the University’s global mission. These partnerships span all of the major academic departments and activities at Rochester, enabling student and faculty mobility, collaboration, and capacity building.
Types of academic partnerships
General cooperations agreements
At Rochester, General Cooperative Agreements aren’t required to work together on research or move between places, unless you want to officially agree to work together on specific programs in the future. Examples are a Memorandum of Understanding or Letter of Intent.
Student exchanges
Student exchanges are programs where students (mostly undergraduates) from another school comes to the University of Rochester, and students from Rochester go to that partner school. During these exchanges, students can take classes and get involved in service, research, internships, or other specialty activities. These are typically supported by an International Exchange Agreement with the partner school.
Faculty exchanges and mobility partnerships
Faculty mobility allows for new opportunities for faculty development, teaching, and research by allowing faculty to move between the University of Rochester and a partner school. They might trade places to teach, go on extended visits for training, travel for conferences or sponsorships. The partnership can be reciprocal (two-way exchange of faculty) or non-reciprocal (one-way travel of faculty).
Collaborative degrees
Collaborative Degree programs are less common but can offer students opportunities to study and get degrees from multiple schools. This program provides an opportunity for students to pursue two degrees either at the same time or one after the other. Some of the course hours can be applied to both degrees. These are supported by a Collaborative Degree or Joint Degree Program agreement.
Education abroad opportunities
Additional education abroad opportunities may include but aren’t limited to:
- A faculty-led or instructor-led experience
- Direct enrollment opportunity
- An offering of a host school abroad
- Internship opportunity
- Service-learning experience
Research partnerships
The University welcomes research collaborations and partnerships with researchers from all over the world to investigate critical issues of global significance.
Research partnerships may be as simple as a Rochester graduate student working in the laboratory at a foreign partner school. They can also involve a funded center combining faculty from different areas of study from both schools to explore many issues.
To properly document activities relating to specific research collaboration projects, a research collaboration agreement or other research related agreement is often necessary. These and many of the University’s research-related agreements are supported by the Office of Research and Project Administration (ORPA). You can review research agreements supported by ORPA, and contact your ORPA research administrator to learn more.