Ajay Vinzé named associate vice provost for graduate education
Global engagement is imperative for Arizona State University’s success as an educational leader, says Ajay Vinzé, who recently was appointed associate vice provost to coordinate international graduate student initiatives.
Vinzé divides his time equally between his new role in graduate education and the W. P. Carey School of Business, where he is a business professor and associate dean of international programs.
“We want to expand on ASU’s wonderful reputation and engage institutions with similar reputations around the world,” he says. “There is much to gain from global partnerships, including exchanges of research and innovative approaches to addressing broader challenges.”
An extensive list of accomplishments during Vinzé’s 15 years at ASU have created a unique opportunity for him to enlarge global exchanges with world institutions as well as attract international students to ASU’s highly-ranked graduate programs.
Vinzé was the founder and inaugural director of the Center for Advancing Business through Information Technology (CABIT) from 2002 to 2007, a research center that builds public, private and academic alliances through collaborative projects. He subsequently led the highly-ranked W.P. Carey Executive MBA program from 2007-2010.
As a Fulbright senior specialist (2008-2013), Vinzé has engaged with global business and academic communities, lectured at numerous universities in Asia, Europe and Lain America, and more recently spawned research projects in the Balkans and Latin America.
Vinzé’s research projects have been conducted in partnerships with leading U.S. organizations such as the Arizona Department of Health Services, Avnet, Cisco, IBM and Intel. He has also led international collaborations in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, India, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Trinidad and Tobago.
“The world is getting smaller and young people globally have similar aspirations,” Vinzé says. “They have the same gadgets, the same technologies, the same hunger to succeed. This serves ASU well, as academic units are spawning innovative academic programs, like the accelerated bachelor’s-to-master’s degrees, to help domestic and international students succeed.
“My role as associate vice provost will take a university-wide focus,” says Vinzé. “I plan to be a support person and conduit for different academic units across ASU. We have to build our capabilities synergistically. As with most global goals, relationship building takes time and sustained effort. I hope to leverage relationships that ASU has built over many years.”
“The most surprising thing I find when I travel is that ASU is all too often a well-kept secret. When I meet folks internationally and describe who we are as an institution - one of the largest universities in the U.S., with an award-winning faculty, a cadre of excellent students and highly-ranked programs – it is an eye-opener. We need to further publicize our excellence at ASU.”
Vinzé was recognized for his work at ASU with a 2012 Faculty Excellence Award for his research. He is presently the Earl and Gladys Davis Distinguished Professor of Business.
“Professor Vinzé has an outstanding record of developing international partnerships both for his own research and in his role as associate dean in the W.P. Carey School of Business,” says Andrew Webber, vice provost for graduate education. “He will be a great asset as we continue to build graduate education initiatives with our international partners.”