The second largest university in the United States has signed a landmark Agreement for Collaboration with Soran University. The University of Central Florida (UCF) ranks among the nation’s top state universities in fields ranging from biomedical sciences to Middle Eastern studies. Like Soran, UCF is a relatively young institution. In the 50 years since its founding, UCF has risen from rural obscurity to its current status as a major metropolitan research institution of 60,000 students. The Agreement that both universities have now formalized will pave the way for specific, cooperative projects between Soran and UCF, such as building interdisciplinary degrees in Kurdish studies, co-hosting conferences, arranging student exchanges, and designing medical curricula.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, 18-19 February 2014, Dr. Howri Mansurbeg, Dr. Nahro Zagros, and Dr. Tyler Fisher visited the UCF campus in Orlando, Florida. The two intensive days of discussions with administrators, professors, and students began with a meeting and tour with Pulitzer-prize-winning scholar John Bersia. Largely due to Professor Bersia’s efforts, UCF surpasses other American universities in its commitment to sustaining and building degree-level studies of Kurdistan.

At Professor Bersia’s invitation, Dr. Nahro subsequently led a seminar for students at UCF’s Burnett Honors College. After Dr. Nahro’s masterful, extemporaneous lecture, the students raised a wide range of questions concerning Kurdish culture, domestic and foreign policy. The Honors College is home to UCF’s best undergraduates, and their questions reflected their keen intellectual engagement. Several continued their discussions with Dr. Nahro and Dr. Howri even after the class time had elapsed.

The students’ enthusiasm proved infectious. Many of them returned the following day, with friends in tow, for the Burnett Honors College’s Distinguished Speakers Luncheon, where the Soran University delegates spoke about the past and future of higher education in Kurdistan.

One challenge facing the future of Kurdish education is the need for medical training at the university level. UCF, which just graduated its second cohort of physicians, offers a model for cultivating a medical school from the ground up— a model which Soran aspires to emulate, drawing on UCF’s expertise and experience. Soran’s representatives toured the facilities at the UCF College of Medicine, where they observed classes in session and the latest designs in medical library resources, and came away with a wealth of ideas and strategic contacts.

In the midst of the visit to UCF, the Soran delegation took a brief detour to Rollins College in the neighboring town of Winter Park, where they participated in a forum with Rollins faculty, students, and President Lewis Duncan. Rollins is a small, private liberal arts college— the oldest institution of higher learning in Florida— in contrast to the size and age of UCF. Appropriately, the forum focused on comparatively analyzing the development of educational traditions in the liberal arts and in Kurdistan today. Dr. Howri perhaps best summarized the tenor of the forum when he observed that Kurdistan’s wealth of natural resources presents the region with stark alternatives: it can become another Norway or another Nigeria, and education is the key to ensuring the most desirable future. Dr. Jayashree Shivamoggi, Rollins College’s Director of External and Competitive Scholarships, praised the insights that Soran’s representatives offered at the forum: “Dr. Howri is a visionary and Dr. Nahro is an amazing scholar. I felt very privileged to meet them and invite them to our campus. Their aspirations and dreams for a world-class university in Soran are truly inspirational.”

To cap their two-day visit, the President of UCF, Dr. John Hitt, invited the delegation from Soran University to join him for a meal in his private box at a basketball game (UCF vs. Cincinnati). The rousing game was a fitting culmination to a highly successful visit. The Soran trio could cheer on the black-and-gold UCF Knights in the knowledge that they were cheering for a university that is now linked to Soran’s own endeavors.

Now that Soran’s President Muslih and UCF’s President Hitt have signed the Agreement for Collaboration, both institutions will, in the words of the memorandum, strive “to promote mutual cooperation in education, scientific research and outreach.” In the immediate future, this will entail developing a premier Kurdish Studies program at UCF and undertaking joint lines of research. Ultimately, the partnership between Soran University and UCF promises to be a model for establishing collaborative relationships between Kurdish universities and their counterparts abroad. With its new links to UCF, Soran University continues to enhance its profile on the world stage.