Former Oberlin College President Nancy S. Dye has been tapped as the first president of the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh, which has the goal of developing female leaders in southern and southeastern Asia.

COURTESY ASIAN UNIVERSITY FOR WOMEN

Former Oberlin College President Nancy Dye (center) visits the future site of the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh with her husband, Griff.

The university will begin its first program in April with 125 to 140 students recruited from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan and Nepal. There were 1,200 applicants.

Instruction will be in English, and the university will accept its first full undergraduate class in fall 2009 with 300 students, spokeswoman Melanie Hui said.

Dye was Oberlin College’s first female president, a position she held for 13 years until June 2007.

She said Wednesday that the Bagladesh university will impact not only the students, but the societies where they live. Bangladesh is a country bordered by India and Burma.

“I strongly believe that liberal education that enables women to learn the art of critical thinking and develops the imagination is a powerful way — possibly the most powerful way — to foster women’s autonomy,” Dye said.

Last fall, at the inauguration of Marvin Krislov, Oberlin’s new president, Dye said she was excited about her work in establishing the new university.

She said the first classes will be offered in leased facilities while a campus designed by Israeli architect Moshe Safdie is expected to be built at an initial cost of $80 million.

Funding for the university, which will be in the port city of Chittagong, will come from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Goldman Sachs Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Citigroup Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Its mission is to educate promising young women from diverse cultural, religious, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds with inclusion of women from poor, rural and refugee populations. The average cost per student is projected at $10,000.

The university is billed as the first private regional women’s college in the area, according to a story in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Dye’s husband, Dr. Griff Dye, a clinical psychologist, joined a private agency in Bangladesh surveying post-traumatic effects of the cyclone Sidr, which killed thousands of people.

The couple plans to move to Bangladesh in 2009, according to Hui.

Contact Cindy Leise at 653-6250 or cleise@chroniclet.com. 

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