Current Projects
The International Center has an active Croatia program aimed at strengthening government capacity through partnerships with organizations such as the Association of Cities and Towns, the Ivo Pilar Institute, and the University of Zagreb.
The International Center also coordinates the University of Georgia’s Croatia Maymester Study Abroad program. The Center also engages students in service-learning projects in Croatia. Ten undergraduate students have participated in service-learning internships in Croatia, and three graduate students have participated in international outreach there. The Center’s Croatia program is generously supported through a $500,000 gift from the Lawrence Phillips family. Their donation is helping the International Center explore public health policy challenges.
Past Projects
From 1998 until 2006, the International Center's work in Croatia was focused on building outreach capacity at the University of Zagreb. This work, led by Dr. Rusty Brooks, focused on building an institutional commitment to, and an organizational capacity for, conducting outreach and engagement activities similar to the outreach programs at The University of Georgia. To this end, the Center received two grants from Higher Education in Development to partner with the University of Zagreb. These two grants—the first in 2001 and the second in 2003—totaled more than $160,000 and were targeted at developing a sustainable rural development model for rural Croatia. These two projects resulted in the University of Zagreb instituting in their university charter—the first specific objective for outreach—at a university in Europe. It also resulted in a rural county adjacent to Zagreb donating a school building to the university for the establishment of a rural outreach center. These two projects led to additional cooperation between the University of Zagreb and The University of Georgia, including the first service-learning study abroad at The University of Georgia and the first study abroad led by outreach faculty, conducted in Croatia in 2001.
