President Richard Brodhead returns from India just in time for Homecoming, having spent the past week exploring India for sites for the Fuqua School of Business' expansion.

Fuqua Dean Blair Sheppard announced Sept. 15 that the school is developing outposts in St. Petersburg, London, Shanghai, Dubai and New Delhi. The sites will eventually house all of Duke's MBA curricula, but they will initially support the Cross Continent MBA program beginning in August 2009, as The Chronicle revealed this past July. Students enrolled in the two-year degree program will spend one to two weeks at each of the five international sites and conclude their coursework with a four-week stretch in Durham. Tuition for the program will cost $101,900, according to Fuqua's Web site.

Elizabeth Hogan, Fuqua's assistant dean for marketing and communications, said the sites have been in the works for about a year, and discussions with partners began several months ago. Fuqua will collaborate with the Graduate School of Management at St. Petersburg State University, and partners for the remaining four sites-including for India-will be publicized in the coming months.

"I don't think anyone would dispute that with India's size, its economic and political strength and its vast pool of talented students and academics, it is a place from which we can learn a great deal," Brodhead said in a statement earlier this month. "At the same time, we are building lasting relationships that will help secure a shared future of teaching and learning with India."

Brodhead's trip to India was expected to nurture a number of existing ties between Duke and the country, including the University's service-learning and study abroad programs, the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy's collaboration with the Indian Administrative Service and a Talent Identification Program conducted last year.

The president was accompanied by Sheppard, Prasad Kasibhatla, associate dean for international programs at the Nicholas School of the Environment, Sanford Director Bruce Kuniholm and Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations.

In particular, Brodhead and Sheppard will receive input on the Cross Continent MBA program site in New Delhi, Schoenfeld said. The president will dine with Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, two prominent Indian businessmen and Fuqua graduates, who will also serve on the New Delhi site's advisory board, Schoenfeld added.

"University leaders will get very valuable input on the program, plans for the best way to position the program and also a number of other initiatives as well," Schoenfeld told The Chronicle this month, noting the Nicholas School's research agreement with the Tata Energy and Resources Institute and Duke University Hospital System's possible biomedical research partnerships. "This is more than just a single-purpose trip."

To prepare for his visit, Brodhead met before his departure with 10 of the nearly 300 Indian-born graduate and undergraduate students who attend Duke, an on-campus foreign constituency upped only by China.