Message from the IGkNU Team
In tropical South Texas, near the banks of the Rio Grande, a group of future-oriented students is gathering to prepare for leadership in the world society. The engine of their gathering is the Integrated Global Knowledge and Understanding Collaboration (IGkNU), a group of faculty, staff, and students from every college at the University of Texas-Pan American. IGkNU* exists to enable the UTPA community, including all of our partners in universities and other institutions nationally and internationally, to work together, leveraging each others’ work, resources, ideas, and energy, to better understand how the global community works and how to make it secure, prosperous, and meaningful for people.
The professionals and students of IGkNU are focused on preparing the next generation of leaders for the global society. The students of IGkNU are devoted to mastery of the critical skills, research expertise, team communication skills, and global knowledge necessary to lead community, government, business, and non-profit teams that will thrive in the marketplace of an integrated world. The faculty and staff are committed to help each individual IGkNU student prepare for success in the career path she or he chooses.
The IGkNU was founded by a grant from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), under the Intelligence Community Centers of Academic Excellence (IC CAE) program, implemented to more broadly educate university students for national security and intelligence professions. Because IGkNU programs offer unparalleled ways to combine knowledge from different academic disciplines, plus the skill to integrate and apply them to real-world problems, opportunities abound for students from every major. For UTPA faculty, colleagues at other universities, and professionals in government, business, and non-profit organizations, IGkNU is an elastic network of contacts, collaborations, and expert knowledge ready to take form to meet near and long range goals that address transient and permanent challenges.