QUT will welcome United States information science postgraduate students in August to begin studying for a QUT PhD.
A small cohort of students will come through the San José State University's (SJSU) School of Library and Information Science.
Faculty of Information Technology senior lecturer Helen Partridge said the School was the world's largest library science school with 2500 students.
"QUT has internationally recognised researchers in information science and we are delighted to be able to offer these students the chance to internationalise their degrees," Dr Partridge said.
The part-time San Jose Gateway PhD Program would be offered online with short residencies in San José.
She said Californian legislation did not allow the school to offer a PhD program and so they had chosen to partner with QUT to offer their Masters students a pathway to the San José Gateway PhD Program.
"SJSU decided to partner with an Australian institution to offer their students doctoral degrees and, because QUT had similar philosophies and a strong focus on quality teaching, they invited the Faculty into a partnership."
Dr Partridge said it was a "win/win" situation because SJSU could give their academic staff the opportunity to start building their own research culture while it built QUT's research capacity in a dynamic, emerging discipline.
"The partnership benefits our Masters of Information Management students as they will be able to take elective units of study on line with SJSU and give their degrees an international dimension."
SJSU School of Library and Information Science director Ken Haycock said SJSU had sought a premier partner when developing the San José Gateway PhD Program.
"Our international advisory council recommended QUT," Dr Haycock said.
"The new program builds upon the research strengths of QUT and San José and our track record of successfully delivering distance learning programs to thousands of graduate students." | 
