International
\ˌintərˈnashənəl\
Globally connected.
More and more, global networks are driving innovation and generating prosperity. As Canada's most international university, McGill works hard to help build these crucial connections. It starts with our students, who hail from some 160 countries: Almost 20 per cent of our 35,300 students come from outside Canada, bringing a diverse range of languages, perspectives and backgrounds to the classroom. The University helps students further broaden their world view with field study programs, exchanges and internships. McGill also prides itself on recruiting the world's best professors to share their ideas, energy and cutting-edge research. In fact, of the more than 900 professors hired since 2000, nearly 60 per cent came from distinguished universities and research institutes outside Canada.
West, meet East. And while you're at it, say hello to North and South, too, because McGill is all about global collaboration. Take agriculture research, for example. Canadian agronomists worked long and hard to develop soybeans suitable for Quebec. With their high economic yield, and ability to trap carbon dioxide in the soil, the beans are a welcome addition to Quebec fields. Funny thing, though: Chinese farmers had been growing the same plants, in a similar climate, for more than a thousand years. "We spent 100 years selecting from long-season southern U.S. cultivars and gradually bringing them north into Canada," says Don Smith, professor in McGill's Department of Plant Science, "when we could have just gone to northern China for a weekend and got the seed." As scientific director of both Canada's Green Crop Network and the McGill Network for Innovation in Biofuels and Bioproducts, Smith collaborates across Canada and with partners in the U.S., China, India and Brazil. They're putting their heads together to develop crops that better sequester greenhouse gases and contribute to an alternative, sustainable energy supply. "Brazil already produces half of its fluid fuel requirements on just one per cent of their agricultural land – it's amazing. We think we know everything in a developed country like Canada, but it's so far from true."
Education flows both ways. Frustrated by the large volume of harvest lost to improper storage and processing in his native India, Vijaya Raghavan has devoted his career to getting more fruits and vegetables from the field to the market – and onto people's plates. The James McGill Professor in the Department of Bioresource Engineering has supervised close to 100 graduate students. More than half those students came to McGill from outside Canada, and many put their educations to good use in their home countries, a fact that gladdens a man who strives to use knowledge to "make life better for people." By introducing current post-harvest processes – such as microwave drying and vacuum cooling – to farmers in India, China, Thailand and, most recently, Benin and Malaysia, Raghavan has shown them how to preserve, and thus be able to sell, more food. He's made great efforts to share that knowledge with as many people as possible, pushing to establish post-harvest technology specialists at three of India's state agricultural universities. "That," he says, "is a big impact I'm very happy about."
