Anthony Fisher is director of external relations at the University of West Indies in Barbados.
Chattanooga State Community College President Jim Catanzaro is seen in this file photo.We cannot retreat from the world, Anthony Fisher will say today. We must lead. We must look out for ourselves, but we also must partner with others, with people we don’t even know yet.
Fisher will look out at his audience, a group of Chattanooga State Community College students set to graduate at noon today, and tell them that the world is small and that connections are more important now than ever before.
Fisher knows. He is the director of external relations at the University of the West Indies in Barbados, an island nation in the Caribbean. His job is to create partnerships.
Today he is also a graduation commencement speaker. But he flew to Chattanooga this week for another reason. He and Chattanooga State President Jim Catanzaro spent Friday morning discussing how their two schools can partner.
Catanzaro hopes Chattanooga State and the University of the West Indies can start working together formally in the next couple of months. By the summer, he hopes college students in Barbados will watch his community college’s online lectures. By next spring, he thinks some students and teachers from both schools will trade places, learning about a new country for at least a semester.