PDF: 2962 pages, 5.2 MB - Bay Area Council Economic Institute

Indian Students: Innovation and Quality of Life Are Still a Draw
The Munger Chair of Computer Engineering and Munger United States-India Student Program
in Computer Engineering at Fresno State University were established in 2002 with a $1.95 million
endowment from Lajpat Rai Munger and family. Munger came to California in 1966 from
Hoshiarpur, Punjab. He and his sons grow pistachios on 7,000 acres in Delano. The endowments
strengthen distance learning links between students at Fresno State and in Hoshiarpur,
where the Munger family has also established a medical dispensary and an 11-acre information
technology campus.
CSU East Bay (Hayward) has a significant number of Indian students and ties to India, in part
due to the large local Indian community in the East Bay and the South Bay. CSU trustee and
Providian Financial Corp. CEO Shailesh Mehta donated $100,000 in 2003 toward a $23.5 million
business technology center completed in 2006. More than $7 million in private donations were
raised for the project (largely from the Indo-American community), which is the first major new
academic building on the Hayward campus in 30 years. Hayward has established an Asian Quarter
abroad program in Manipal for marketing students, as well as student/faculty exchanges and
business consulting programs with Indian companies.
San Jose State University (SJSU) boasted a sizable number of Indian students in 2004, although it
is not clear whether SJSU’s 1,068 graduate and 311 undergraduate Indian students were Indian
nationals in the U.S. on visas with SJSU as their sponsoring university (the reporting criteria used
by the Institute for International Education) or whether the figures also reflect students of Indian
origin or nationality.
SJSU’s College of Engineering has a $1 million Global Technology Initiative, sponsored largely
by Silicon Valley tech industry donors, that hosts a two-week trip abroad for engineering students,
including tours, meetings and lectures. The 2008 trip was to India, led by graduate business
advisor and mechanical engineering professor Dr. Raghu Agarwhal. The Lucas Graduate
School of Business at SJSU signed a memorandum of understanding with IIM-Bangalore for
faculty and student exchanges beginning in the fall of 2008. In May 2007, the school hosted a
visit and talk by Indian School of Business dean Rammohan Rao.
San Jose State’s College of Business links to Silicon Valley through its Silicon Valley Center for
Entrepreneurship, headed by Dr. Anuradha Basu, a specialist on entrepreneurship in the College’s
organization and management department.
The University of San Francisco (USF), a Jesuit Catholic institution, had 784 international
students (about 9% of the total student body) enrolled as of September 2007. Of
those international students, 51 were from India.
USF has an active Indian Student Association, with approximately 20 members. Every year, the
association sponsors events that highlight Indian culture. The USF alumni office reports 58 USF
alumni living in India for whom current mailing addresses are available, although the total number
of alumni is significantly higher. Among USF’s 367 full-time faculty members, at least four
are from India.
Exchanges with India have included a visit in the summer of 2004 by a group of 24 USF students
from the Erasmus project (a USF living-learning community) and USF president Stephen
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