Garrick Utley’s epiphany about globalization came during a visit to Shenzhen, China, two decades ago.

“I recall saying to myself, ‘My God, if this is what they’re doing to manufacture products for export from just one region, just imagine what the Chinese could do with their vast hinterland,'” Mr. Utley said. “I then recognized that it wasn’t only that the world was becoming one global village – what we were starting to see was thousands of global villages linked to one another through the process that we now call globalization.”

It could be said that, at the time, he was prescient. Or it could be said that, as a world-traveling TV correspondent, Mr. Utley was simply being observant.

Today, annual trade among the world’s 191 nations is more than $17 trillion. Markets are opening up in formerly closed societies, and the inchoate economic development Mr. Utley saw on China’s coastline has not only spread into the interior, it has transformed the country into an economic superpower – one that Deutsche Bank, in a recent report, suggested may overtake America in less than 50 years.

“But how well do we understand globalization?” Mr. Utley said. “How focused are we on teaching students how to manage effectively across borders and cultures? What’s increasingly required is not only management skills but also knowledge of – and sensitivity to – the politics, history, and, indeed, social anthropology of societies. There is often a divide between management and such other disciplines. Who’s bridging that gap?”

It’s being bridged by Mr. Utley himself through a new graduate program established by the State University of New York. Named after the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, who was killed on September 11, 2001, the Neil Levin Graduate Institute of International Relations and Commerce seeks to integrate the study of international affairs and management and business techniques at the master’s degree level.

The idea is to prepare young and midlevel American executives to do business overseas. The idea is also to instruct foreign executives who might be posted to America to better understand business customs and procedures.

Mr. Utley saw the Levin Institute as a natural extension of his career as a TV correspondent for NBC, ABC, and CNN. For more than four decades, he traveled to scores of countries, reporting coups, earthquakes, and disasters. For his work, he won awards and, with his mid-Atlantic accent and the ubiquitous trench coat, he cultivated an image of a quintessential foreign correspondent.

Though not a specialist in economics, he nevertheless kept an eye on business trends and the way world markets were being transformed through globalization – the freer flow of capital, trade, and people across borders.

Mr. Utley’s career change, though, was driven by more than his fascination with globalization.

“Other than major crises like Iraq and the Southeast Asia tsunami, international coverage has largely disappeared from American TV screens,” he said. “What I did as a TV journalist was no longer wanted in the marketplace.”

When he accepted an invitation from Governor Pataki and the SUNY board to become the Levin Institute’s first president, Mr. Utley had scarcely imagined that, within a few weeks, a group of Chinese software managers would be sent to the Levin Institute for a 16-week management course. Its staff scrambled to rent classrooms and hire faculty members.

Not only did he have to jump-start the Levin Institute, but Mr. Utley also had to find real estate to permanently house his own office, in effect creating the 65th campus of the 410,000-student SUNY system.

With the resourcefulness he’d displayed as a TV journalist and his network of contacts, Mr. Utley found a well-located townhouse complex on East 55th Street. The price was right.

His timing was right too. Forces were converging that would not only accelerate globalization but also require corporations, public institutions, and nongovernmental organizations to adapt to greater competition.

For example, the World Trade Organization had eliminated all textile quotas, emboldening developing nations to make strengthened forays into America. Technological advances were occurring at bewildering speed. American supremacy in software and hardware development was increasingly being challenged by Asian nations.

“Like any trained journalist would, I asked myself, ‘What’s the story?'” Mr. Utley said. “What would be our added value to business?”

The story was that virtually no institution in the city offered master’s level programs that integrated business, management, and international affairs. The story also was that American corporations hungered for programs to help executives who would need to do business in markets foreign to them. And the story was that foreign companies wanted their managers to better understand business in America.

“At the Levin Institute, our objective is to enhance management across borders and cultures,” Mr. Utley said. “And what better place for all this than New York – the business and media capital of the world, the world’s most cosmopolitan city?”